Pete Buttigieg on Where Democrats Go From Here

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The system is reliable through power outages. It reconnects automatically without needing to call customer support. So she's very happy and says everyone who's used SimpliSafe, that we know. We've partnered with SimpliSafe to offer our listeners the biggest savings of the year. 70% off your new system with professional monitoring when you visit simplisafe.com slash crooked. That's simplisafe.com slash crooked. And when you order, type in Pod Save America at checkout. It lets them know we sent you and it really helps the show. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Today, you'll hear my conversation with Pete Buttigieg. I wanted to talk to him post-blue tsunami because he's someone who's been thinking deeply about the way forward for Democrats, how to win elections, but also how to govern. He has a book out on that exact topic next year called Next. In it, he lays out his long-term vision for rebuilding the country. Plus, he's very likely to be running for president next year. He's going to be running for president in a few months. It was a great conversation. We talked about the election, about the agenda for Democrats going forward, and how he's thinking about running for president. But first, a quick reminder. You helped make the blue wave happen. You raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteer shifts. Some of you even ran for office and won. But there's more work to do, which is why now is a great time to become a Crooked Media subscriber. A subscription gets you ad-free episodes of all your favorite Crooked pods, excellent newsletters, exclusive subscriber-only content like Pod Save America Only Friends and my show, Polar Coaster. And most importantly, you're helping keep independent pro-democracy media going. Head over to crooked.com slash friends. And while I have you, I want to make a pitch for my newsletter, The Message Box. It's the best way to get serious analysis of what's happening in politics based on the data and my way-too-long experience working in politics. I'm breaking down the results from the midterms to tell you what happened, why it happened, and most importantly, where Democrats need to go from here. I have a special discount for Pod Save America listeners to get 20% off your subscription. Go to crooked.com slash yes, we den. And now my conversation with Pete Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg, welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks for having me on. We are here in Denver at the What's Next conference, which is a gathering of elected officials, operatives, political people to have a conversation about what's next for the Democratic Party. Obviously, the mood here, like it was at CrookedCon last week, is much better than it has been at a Democratic gathering in many, many years. You were out on the trail. You campaigned, I think, for about 100 people. You were one of the, in some cases, you were the only national Democrat who campaigned for some folks in some pretty red areas. You saw a lot. Obviously, these results are a dramatic shift from 2024. Political environment's very different. We had wind at our backs this time. But when you look at what Democrats actually did, the kind of candidates we had, the message they had, what was different in 2026 than it was in 24 that led to these results? Well, look, there were a whole set of specific things about excellent candidates, candidate quality mattered, the way that they said things, not just what they had to say, how they said it, but where they said it, I think was really important. What do you mean by that? Well, the kind of go, everything, everywhere strategy from somebody like Rob Sand doing a town hall in literally every county in his state to Scott Colom in Mississippi literally working the line at a MAGA rally, right? I mean, it really just kind of embodied that idea of reaching out to everybody and it kind of matched something that I've long believed, which is that if you really think there's no such thing as a permanently red seat or state, then you got to campaign accordingly and act accordingly. And I think we had candidates who did that. They had a different tone and style. It wasn't just trying to go tweet for tweet with Trump or, in fact, a lot of it wasn't reactive to him that much at all. It really was kind of about what's next and what people need. There was message discipline, something we don't give ourselves credit for often as Democrats, but definitely I think we saw what had worked in the few elections of 2025. Voters made it abundantly clear that affordability was on their mind. But I also think a lot of candidates did a nice job not getting caught in this idea that, that you can't talk about the corruption or the problems in our political system because that would take away from the kitchen table. They connected the dots. Like, this is why we can't have nice things. And the problem at the kitchen table has to do with the corruption in the system. So all of that, I think, was, you know, not just a dynamic that worked out well for us. It's like to the credit of the candidates and the campaigns and everybody who was part of it. Now, the other way to look at it is we are, we had these results largely because of disgust with the status quo. And disgust with the status quo is also what got Republicans elected the last time. And so if we want to make sure that this is not just one more mark in the oscillation of this pendulum that just is swinging faster than ever, then we got to make sure that we materially change the status quo, that we get that we're not here to put in some prior status quo. And that's going to be really hard because we still don't have the White House and we don't have a lot of time. What does that look like specifically, right? Because you're right, like we cannot, we do not force Donald Trump to sign bills. We do not have enough votes to override his veto. We've been able to get them to his desk. Like, how do we actually show people that we are either making their lives better or trying like hell to make their lives better? Well, I'd like to see a rapid fire of discreet, clean pieces of legislation. I know the kind of norm here is you spend months putting together the giant HR one and it winds up having 2,000 pages and 300 amendments and it's supposed to carry everything. And if you ask for a clean bill, they tell you you're naive. This time around, I think it's really important that we just do up or down on basic stuff. Raising the minimum wage, reversing the Medicaid cuts, banning partisan gerrymandering, something immediate to expand access to healthcare, even if we're still working on the universal healthcare plan that might take longer to put together. Just these things, you know, child tax credit, things that we know are good policies that, two-thirds of the American people are for, that 99% of Democrats are for, that a healthy number of Republicans around the country are for, but that Washington Republicans are consistently against. Because that way, we really make it clear what we're about. And what all or most of these policies should add up to is we're putting money back in your pockets and we're trying to get politics out of your face. Those two things are definitely the things I kind of heard and felt the most out there. Now, how much of it does the president sign? I don't know. He might sign a lot of it. It's not like he cares about policy at all, right? So he might sign it and then we get a good policy. He might veto it and then we get a good fight. You know, as messy as the ending of the healthcare shutdown was, it successfully reminded Americans that they trust us on healthcare. So even that fight was a clarifying fight. It was a healthy thing. But obviously, the real objective is to get good policy done. And the other thing, of course, is, it's time for some blue federalism. We're in charge of all these states where we don't have divided government, where we got a trifecta. We'd better show people that when you give us that kind of power, when you give us a trifecta, we're going to use it to make your life better in every way that we can. And a lot of these decisions are made closer to home. It's no substitute for having the White House or having Washington. But you can make a huge difference. And actually, a lot of the good policies that then could be a model for what Washington ought to do. There's a lot of question about whether Democrats are the right leaders for that strategy. Do you have a view on that question? I think, you know, a lot of that is kind of emergent. I think, you know, in many ways, it's, especially in the attention economy, like whether the word leader is in your title is kind of less necessary to you being a leader than ever. But I do think it's a really good thing that so many of the people now in, not just in the media, but in the Democratic caucus are people who just figured out how to win in a very Trumpy district or a supposedly bright red state. And I think that's going to help us be kind of calibrated for what to do next. We're obviously, there's this debate happening on the Hill now where Schumer is running for re-election as leader. Chris Van Hollen is announced last night that he's challenging him. That's sort of a proxy for a larger sort of post-election debate we're having in the party about ideology. Should we be, did we win because we were progressive or moderate or what's the right way to govern or run or what makes someone more electable? You were asked this question on Fox News recently. You rejected the premise as I suspect you will right now. You described yourself as a Pete Buttigieg Democrat. Yeah. Tell me what that means and are there people without the last name Buttigieg who are Pete Buttigieg Democrats? I think so. I don't know if they want to call themselves that, but to me it has to do with being seriously committed to major economic policy that is both popular and wise and believing that we need to undertake major systematic change in what's broken in our political system. That those two things go together and don't cut against each other. So whether it's economic issues we know we need to tackle, raising the minimum wage, getting the child tax credit out, getting everybody healthcare. or, you know, things that were pretty provocative when I was floating them. You know, when I was running for president talking about Supreme Court reform, it was pretty lonely. Even Bernie didn't want to talk about adding justices. It seemed pretty far out. I would argue that view has aged well. And now I think that's, if not in the country, certainly in the party, a mainstream view. So I think we need to take these big swings, be ready with a constitutional amendment if that's what it takes to deal with Citizens United and not be afraid of those major systemic changes. And also be ready right now to deliver economic policies most people already want. Because otherwise, I mean, the funny thing is, I think we came up at a time when, as Democrats, so much of our stuff was unpopular. Like when I was just getting old enough to follow the news, we were on the back foot on welfare, healthcare, both in the Clinton years and in the Obama years up through 2010, which was my first time on the ballot. Taxes, right? Choice. It was not as strong of an issue for us as it is now. Marriage, obviously, right? You have all these issues that have kind of imprinted on us the idea that if we're for something, it must be unpopular. Now, actually on issue after issue after issue, we have not just like a 51% majority, like a 70% majority on the issue. And yet, we're not exactly winning 70% in a lot of these elections. Although, you know, a lot of that changed this year. So I think part of what explains that is we no longer have to persuade people that these are the right thing to do. We have to persuade people that we're serious about doing them, which is where the reform piece comes in. So anyway, that's kind of how I look at it. You know, for people trying to, there's going to be a lot of people, as there always are, demonstrating why the recent election results proved that they were right all along, right? In their factional fight. So there's a remarkable consistency in people's takes on that. Sure enough, you were right all along. But, you know, what I've seen is moderates won, progressives won, people across the country won when they were connected to where they were from. And when they had a message that appealed to lots of people, and when they took that message out and didn't just rely on kind of familiar, traditional channels and formats to try to talk to people. One thing that we saw from a lot of the Democrats who won in red states or, you know, dramatically reformed to red districts is that there was always one or two issues where they disagreed with the party on, right? Whether it was James Tallarico being perhaps more supportive of oil and gas than your typical national Democrat, Scott Coulombe talking about the Second Amendment in Mississippi. Are there one or two issues where people were like, he disagrees with the mainstream Democratic Party view? I mean, you know, in the 2020 campaign, I definitely staked out some positions that I still believe in that weren't always kind of popular in the party. You know, one thing is I think we got, we really over-torqued on the student loan thing as a party. I have a very hard time explaining to my relatives in Michigan who did not go to college why they should be paying for people who do. I believe there are, there are ways to make sure that you come out of college debt-free. I believe college should be more affordable. I don't believe in like a magic wand to fix that for everybody who borrowed money. And look, I also have a lot of issues with the two-party system itself. I am a Democrat. I will always be a Democrat, I think, unless the party does something very strange. But I think a huge problem with the system, the huge problem with the parties is that there's only two of them. And that makes some, you know, Democratic organizations nervous when, when you talk that way. But I think that a lot of the problems we've had around polarization, gerrymandering, even some of what goes on with money would be better if we were actually a healthy multi-party democracy. That's interesting. Are there, the main reason we are not a multi-party democracy is the way the Electoral College works. But there are other things you think we could do that would allow for there to be more, you know, more vibrant, additional parties out here? Yeah, look, I'm still working on how to explain this one in plain English. But, you know, one thing that would make a difference is if we had our district set up where you had multiple members elected at the same time. And this is not like a totally exotic thing that you can only do in like Switzerland. We do it all the time for like school board. We just haven't done it lately for Congress. If you do that, there's a lot of evidence that you would have more parties and more independent candidates represented in Congress. So that's one model for, for proportional representation. And that would, that's an uncapping the house, right? You'd increase the overall number of- It's separate from how many members are in the house. This is, so you take Indiana, we've got nine districts in Indiana. If you have three districts and those nine members were elected by taking the top three vote getters out of every district. So you have fewer districts and they're bigger. You would expect to see more first-time candidates. You would often, I saw this on my city council where three out of the nine were at large. You get people who are actually very different from each other, elected by the same people. You just get kind of more diversity of thought than the people you elected. Also harder to gerrymander when you do it that way. Now the question of how many house members we have also, I think it's not as important, but it is important. Part of why I invoke it is to remind people that we've acted like a lot of things are set in stone that are actually not. I, you know, sometimes we'll ask the trick question of like, which part of the constitution says 435 members of the house? Or nine Supreme Court justices. At one point we had 10. People forget this is in the Lincoln years. Obviously kind of complicated to try to have an even number of Supreme Court justices. Like we went with that for a while as a country. I think we started out with three or five. And same with the house. The number of house members changed again and again and again and again. And the reason we got to 435 is, well, there was no reason. We just stopped. There was some weird fight in the 20s while they were doing the bill and they just stopped. Now, having dealt with Congress, I understand why a lot of people are thinking like, more congressmen? Are you sure we want more members of the house? I mean, you've spent time in New Hampshire. They have about, what, 400 state reps? It's like. But you know, they also have that culture of a true, citizen legislature. Yeah, yeah. And one of my favorite things, going back to the midterm results, is how many candidates stepped up who were really just, they reflected that ideal of the citizen legislator. You think about like Katie Padilla Stout, just a very like normal human who was also committed to, you know, she's a teacher and a family lawyer. Rebecca Cook, I think, was still waiting tables until not that long ago, you know, running for Congress. Bob Brooks is a firefighter. You know, you had folks who, who were, really were what we all fantasize about politicians being like, which is that you're just a regular citizen. You get fed up and you decide to run. Yep. And it's pretty cool to see that happen. Pazzi of America is brought to you by Willy's Remedy. Tired of waking up hungover and bloated after your post-work drink? Now you can have fun and relax without the regrets. Thanks to Willy's THC infused social tonic. Willy's is an alcohol alternative that actually works, delivering an uplifting euphoric buzz that you can really feel with no negative side effects. Willy's is a premium THC infused social tonic crafted by the legendary Willy Nelson, who is, as we all know, an expert in the cannabis space. He has done his 10,000 hours and more, that is for sure. With only 15 calories and three grams of sugar, this tonic gives you all the fun and relaxation and none of the regret. 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Noble is having the biggest sale of the year. Head to nobletravel.com for up to 67% off your entire ride. entire order. That's nobltravel.com for up to 67% off. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that Pod Save America sent you. One of the consequences of having two parties is that we have growing factions within the two parties we have. And one of them, obviously, in the Democratic Party is the Democratic Socialists of America. You know, they won a bunch of primaries this time. I think there's upwards of 50 members in Congress who've been endorsed by DSA. When you think of—two questions on this. I'd like to know why you think socialism or the DSA is growing in popularity within the side of the Democratic Party. And second, where do you differ from the Democratic Socialists when you think about the role of government in the market? I think it's actually a little hard to define some of their commitments, even though the definitions of socialism are usually about the market. The stuff that gets thrown around, at least on the internet, and everybody's talking about what DSA is, are more about the— I mean, I think it's really important to point out that even though, for example, when I was on Fox, they asked me about those things that they had pulled from a DSA handbook, I don't know of any Democratic candidate for Congress who's on board with that. So, you know, what does it mean to be endorsed by the DSA probably really depends a lot on the candidate. What I know is that, you know, most everybody in the Democratic Party believes in some kind of market economy. Like, I haven't seen even the leftiest candidates for Congress saying that we need to, like, you know, have the workers control the means of production and, you know— Or have the government take the stakes in companies. As the Trump administration is doing. Yeah, so I think really what we need to think about is, okay, what's going on with the relationship between government and markets? And I think it's hardly a radical leftist position to say that part of what's happened is that it's out of whack in ways that have led to enormous concentrations of wealth and power. power with not just wealthy individuals, but corporations kind of getting their way. Yeah. Many markets where there are too few players for there to be a healthy market. I mean, I saw this with freight railroads when I was at DOT, increasingly with airlines, which is why we intervened in a proposed airline merger. It's part of that. But you see it in a whole, obviously around tech, we see a lot of this too. So I don't know, I'm still finding that a lot of the supposed debate over socialism is kind of incoherent when you try to take it down to brass tacks. What interests me in the short term for a legislative agenda, and I say this with some humility because I'm not even a legislator, I wasn't just elected to Congress. But what I hope the people who just were will do is identify those things that, again, they're like 60 or 70% issues with the American people, but they're also like 99% issues within the Democratic Party. Like the idea of raising the wage, which even a majority of Republicans believe we ought to do, depending how high you go, is not something that pits like moderates and the left against each other either in our party. Maybe we disagree about like exactly how high it is, but like we'll figure out a number, right? the premise at the very least that we should be moving in the direction of expanding access to healthcare. And by the way, I've also seen like a pretty striking convergence within the democratic coalition on, uh, something resembling what I was proposing back in 2020, we called it Medicare for all who want it. I think a lot of people who, uh, say or said they were kind of Medicare for all or bust have now decided that what they really meant was, uh, a public payer, but you don't absolutely We don't command you to be on it, which is what I was calling for. Can you say a little bit about exactly what that means? Because this was a big debate in the Michigan Senate race. There's already demands on the Hill from some of these newly elected members to vote for a Medicare for All vote. Abdul-Aziz called for one. Just talk a little bit about the difference between what was commonly understood as Medicare for All, at least in the 2020 campaign, sort of Bernie's idea, what you propose and where you think folks are now. Yeah. So what I propose, we call it Medicare for all who want it, is you set up a Medicare or Medicare-like public health insurance and everybody is on it by default. But if you don't want to be on it, you can opt out. So it's the default. It's not just available, but we assume that you're on it unless you say that you don't want to be. But if you'd rather not be, you'd rather be in a private plan. You have to have some kind of insurance. But if you'd rather be on a private plan, you can do that. And I got beat up a lot in 2020 from the left for saying that this was the way to do it. But what I believed was it put enough humility in the policy that if we're right, if the Medicare for All view is right, that this is the best answer, then given a choice, everybody will choose to stay on the public plan anyway. if some people would rather not be on the public plan, then that's evidence that at least for them, it was not the right answer, right? And so we'll be really glad that we didn't abolish private healthcare. Now, Medicare for all 1.0 was you ban private insurance and you order every American to be on public insurance, whether they want to or not. I thought that went too far. I feel the exact same way eight years later. But I also think we should consider what it tells us that back in 2020, when we had, what did we have, like 10 presidential debates? I mean, at least, yeah. You would have thought the question in American domestic policy was exactly which flavor of universal health care we were going to deliver the following year. And here we are eight years later, and none of it happened. So the really important question is, what is actually going to happen sooner rather than later? Since you ran last time, you know, you have, you entered government service, you were the Secretary of Transportation for President Biden. My administration did lots of great things, take that away, infrastructure, which you worked on, the climate bill, a whole bunch of things, did a lot to repair the damage from Trump. But ultimately, the ultimate project was to defeat Donald Trump, defeat Trumpism, and move over and sort of make that period from 2017 to 2021 this brief aberration in American democracy. That obviously did not happen, sort of, there's a system failure, we end up back with Trump more powerful than before. What are the things that you think that the administration, not necessarily in transportation, but broadly, got wrong that led to that outcome? Look, we could point to particular policy mistakes. I think not paying enough attention to the border quickly enough was a big one. And I think we wanted to wave it away as just like Fox News making something out of nothing. But the border really did amount to a crisis. It really was a problem, and we really did not. The administration did not act quickly enough there. There are other specific things. Getting the schools open more quickly with COVID, I think, would have made a big difference. But to me, the deeper, more fundamental thing was the premise that you talked about, the idea that there could be such a thing as a, quote unquote, return to normal. And, you know, I did my part to support that, even though in 2020, you know, competing against Joe Biden and everybody else for president, return to normal was not my message. It was not my premise. But I thought if anybody could achieve return to normal, it would have been Joe Biden. And the administration came in and tried to take care of the basics, infrastructure, industrial policy, some things. I'm really proud of what we did on the infrastructure front. But the reality is there was no way that – it just wasn't true that Trumpism was a blip. It just wasn't true. And so instead, what turned out to be the case was that the Democratic administration was the kind of anomaly in what basically amounts to a Trump era, Which began, you could argue, the moment he came down that escalator in, what, the summer of 2015? Yeah, 11 years ago. And has been going on ever since. And some would argue it began to end on election day a few days ago. But whether that turns out to be true or not, I think all depends on what we do next. And I worry, in fact, I'm preaching against this at this conference and elsewhere. I do worry that we still have a temptation to, you heard the phrase, for example, reverse the damage a lot. I look, I get it, the damage is brutal, what the Trump administration has done. But I'm trying to really minimize my use of any word that has the prefix re in it to reverse or restore or return, certainly rewind, cannot be our project. Because if the old status quo was working, we wouldn't be here. Trump wouldn't be here. Like we are, all of that is what led to all of this. We've got to show that we get that. And by the way, that's exciting. This could be a moment that is as defining for what the rest of the 21st century is like as the kind of New Deal post-World War II moment was to define everything we grew up in. But what we have to accept is a lot of things that we inherited growing up, these institutions from international institutions to like federal agencies, were getting rickety. They were breaking down. It doesn't mean it was okay to demolish them and destroy them. But now that they have, there's going to be a clean slate. And we should really think about how we re. It's very hard. The rebuild is the tricky part there. Yes. Yes. And maybe rebuild is appropriate. But if we're going to say re, often the job is more about replace rather than repair. Things about the Department of Education, totally wrong to destroy the Department of Education. Also, I don't know a lot of people who would say. In a vacuum, they would have created the Department of Education the way it looked in, say, 2020 or 1999 even. So if we're going to start over, which you kind of have to because they blew it up, what are we going to do? Foreign aid. We should absolutely be doing humanitarian aid. Criminally wrong to have destroyed the US Agency for International Development. I hope that Marco Rubio is held accountable for lying to Congress about children dying on his watch, especially because by the time he sat in Congress and said no children had died on his watch. We knew some of their names. Criminally wrong, what they did. Also, everybody I know in this country, we're going to have to do a lot of things. We're going to have to do a lot of things. the world of international development aid, would have liked things to be structured very differently than they were as of a few years ago. Now's our chance. Pods of America is brought to you by Built. Here's a question. Are you getting rewarded for paying your rent or mortgage right now? If the answer is no, you need to check out Built. 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That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash crooked. Use our link so they know we sent you. You announced a book this week called Next, which, tackles this very topic. I don't care. I have to go back and look at the blurb. I'm not sure there are any words that begin with R-E in there, but that is the, the basic point is what, how do we come out of this? What are some of the, I'm going to hear a little bit about the book, but also what are some of the principles you would, you know, and I will also bother you about running for president later in this podcast, but presuming that you had that role, what are some of the principles you would bring to that process of, I have to use a reword, rebuilding or reinvigorating what USAID, Department of Education, or any of these other things that Trump destroyed? So I tried to write it in a way that would matter kind of no matter who's running for president and really focus on, on exactly that set of questions. And I think we do need to go to basics, something actually the right sometimes does more than we do to really engage with, with first and core principles to look at two sets of things. What is it like to be an American? And I think we just won an election because what it's like to be an American is not good enough. And then what does it mean to be an American? And weirdly people like JD Vance spent a lot more time talking about what it means to be American than we do. And we need to change that. I think we start, you're asking about some of the principles that guide us with the very basics about the principles that make America, America. I think there's three sets of things. Uh, one is political equality, just the idea of a political system that is fair. That is a founding core principle of our country's entire existence. Obviously we're not, we're not there right now. And, and addressing that and having a fair political system is, is I think, unless we do, we, we struggle to recognize ourselves as a country. There's a related economic one, the American dream, which actually was not exactly the way the founders were thinking and talking about it, but it became as integral to America as the constitution. And the American dream is no longer available to most Americans. If you, and I mean that statistically, uh, if you were born when my mom was born in the end of world war two, 90% chance you were going to finish ahead of your parents economically, that number is now slipping to below 50, 50. So there has to be an American dream that's available social mobility. Uh, the, the belief that if you know, to borrow the old Clinton era formulation, if you work hard and play by the rules, you get ahead. And then the third thing that I think has been a little harder for Democrats to talk and think about, which is, I would argue that America playing a positive and positive role in this world is very important to us. Even though it's fairly new since world war two that it's become core to who we are as a country. And if we don't have those three things, a fair political system, uh, the American dream and access to economic mobility and a constructive leadership role in the world, then we're really not America. We won't recognize ourselves and everything falls apart. And when you hold those in mind, you get to, or at least I get to very specific policy ideas. So the, the book, uh, which comes out in January, it's not a policy manual. It's not a grand unified theory of everything. Um, but it guides us in these things kind of guide us in certain directions on why we prioritize things like banning partisan gerrymandering, why we refuse to accept that just money in politics has to work the way it does forever, ever since citizens United. And also much more concrete things about giving people more control of their lives back and people, some of their time back, which is why everything from a higher minimum wage to paid family leave are priorities or ought to be priorities. So I try to tackle all of that. I try to tackle all of that, wrestle with all of that and, um, hope that, that it starts some good conversations. You talk in a lot of interviews, you did it right in 2020 and you just mentioned your, in your book, you're talking about structural reform to the system. That's something that was very, very in vogue, um, in the party in Trump one, it was a part of the 2020 campaign. Not everyone was on Supreme court expansion, but you know, abolished a filibuster electoral college. We're talking a lot about that. So I'm going to go through a couple of those with you. Electoral college, you said we want to get rid of it. Yeah, you ran on in 2020. I've heard you say it several times this year on podcasts requires constitutional amendment. Now there's also the national popular vote interstate compact, which is suddenly viable. That's what I was pointing. And so for people to understand that's a, that's a process where states get together. And once you get to 270 electoral votes among those states, those states all agree to award their electors, whoever wins the popular vote. We now with all the trifectas that we now have, have the capacity to do it. Do you think that is a good way to go about it in electoral college? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a good way to go about it in electoral college. Yeah, I think it's a good way to go about it in electoral college. So I think it's a good way to go about it in electoral college. I think we need to hold out like big, long term ambitious things, including things that require updating the Constitution, and ask ourselves, like, what could we get done by September? And we should be like, basically, it's getting the base hits every time we can, and also, you know, taking the big swings. So on the national popular vote compact, the, there are obviously a lot of legal questions about it that are out there. But even beyond those, one of the questions, one of the criticisms you hear about or one of the concerns people have is, is that at a time in which there is tremendous distrust of the system, the fact that a handful of states, all governed at some point in time by Democrats, would give the popular vote, would give the presidency to someone who maybe did not win the electoral college under traditional means. Like, what's your level of concern about that? I think it's a little backwards. A fair election is one where the person who got the most votes wins. And a fair election is one where everybody's vote counts. Counts the same. And for all the stuff people think up to somehow defend this weird, arcane, twisted system we have, at the end of the day, I've never heard a serious principle argument for why everyone's vote shouldn't count the same as each other, or why the person who got less votes should. Every other election we have, for Senate, for governor, for county assessor, for dog catcher, for class president, always, a fair election is one where the person who got the most votes wins. And for all the stuff people think up to somehow defend this weird, arcane, twisted system we have, at the end of the day, I've never heard a serious principle argument for why everyone's vote should count the same as each other, or why the person who got the most votes wins. Right, and that's what they call packing. And that is, I think, a race to the bottom. On campaign finance reform. we just spent you know an ungodly sum of money in these elections billions of dollars there's a half a billion dollars spent in the state of ohio alone like just insane stuff this has all changed dramatically since citizens united yes congress you've talked a little about the need to do a that we should actually be out there trying to do a constitutional amendment for citizens united but are the which i 100 agree with i think we should do and i'm kind of surprised that more that we're not actually out there like actually really doing this yes it's true because it's been uh well think about this uh citizens united i think was in 2010 yeah 16 years ago yeah so if the big objection to a constitutional amendment is it takes 15 years if we'd started in 2011 this would be the year yeah right and then that's what gets my earlier thing of like obviously we need to act in the here and now we also need to take on longer term projects there are some other we can't solve the exact problem of citizenship but there are two other there are some other ways we can address the problem money in politics one is through legislative action on some things and the other is this idea that's in hawaii right now that there's a lot of places where states are trying to make uh corporation there maybe you could explain exactly how that process yeah so this is a a bank shot around citizens united uh i campaigned for this in montana and montana passed it with i think 65 percent of the vote so it tells you that this is something that people want and the basic idea and again i try to not get out of my depth as a non-legal non-scholar but the basic idea is okay the courts said that like you can't regulate campaign spending because that regulates speech and that's a first amendment problem i think that's wrong but whatever that's that's the law of the land at the moment but even now corporations don't actually have rights they have powers and they only have the powers that are conferred on them by law and it turns out the relevant law here is state law corporations exist as a creature of state law and so one way to approach this is to update the state law that enumerates the powers the corporations have to just say by the way if you want to be a corporation doing business in montana you do not get to be a corporation that uses your treasury dollars to manipulate elections that's just not a thing if you do that you're not a corporation and it is uh built on something that in principle should be robust against citizens united you know obviously let's go all the way to supreme court we'll see what happens but just as importantly i think having the people turn out and vote two to one in a very conservative state to do this by the way montana has its own interesting history of powerful anti-corruption tradition dates back to 100 years ago when bill clark who's kind of the elon of his day richest guy in america he was a copper king when that's what they called the copper kind of barons when copper mining dominated montana and was stuffing the pockets of legislators to buy himself a senate seat it's interesting even then richest man in the world maybe definitely the richest man in the country and his fondest desire was to become a u.s senator like this pattern of people who want for nothing deciding to get involved in politics is uh apparently uh something that never goes away anyway important thing is that law passed hawaii did it the other way they did it through state legislature uh there are i think a dozen states thinking about this and we should absolutely do that we should do everything we can there's also things we could do by the way around disclosure that should not run afoul of citizens united so again do what we can now under the current framework and everything we can to change the framework in 2020 as you mentioned 2020 medicare for all was the dominant conversation i don't want to pretend what the dominant conversation that 2028 democratic primary will be but one very very divisive issue within the party right now it involves around israel in our relationship with israel how do you think our relationship to israel should change should should we are you open to cutting off aid to israel arms sales how are you thinking about that yeah the relationship has to change i mean you could argue that the relationship has to change i mean you could argue that the conduct of the netanyahu government conduct of the netanyahu government conduct of the netanyahu government changed it uh but also so much has changed it uh but also so much has changed it uh but also so much has happened and so much has changed and happened and so much has changed and happened and so much has changed and any u.s ally anybody who wants to be a u.s any u.s ally anybody who wants to be a u.s any u.s ally anybody who wants to be a u.s ally it matters what you do and what ally it matters what you do and what ally it matters what you do and what your choices are so the the basic way i your choices are so the the basic way i your choices are so the the basic way i come at this is that there are three come at this is that there are three sets of things at stake when we talk sets of things at stake when we talk sets of things at stake when we talk about and think about what's going on about and think about what's going on about and think about what's going on in the middle east and our relationship in the middle east and our relationship in the middle east and our relationship to israel and our responsibility to to israel and our responsibility to to israel and our responsibility to promote the safety of palestinian and promote the safety of palestinian and promote the safety of palestinian and israeli people israeli people israeli people first before we go abroad look around at first before we go abroad look around at first before we go abroad look around at home where there has been an explosion home where there has been an explosion home where there has been an explosion of anti-semitism of anti-semitism of anti-semitism also disturbing rise in islamophobia also disturbing rise in islamophobia also disturbing rise in islamophobia and much of this of course has traveled and much of this of course has traveled and much of this of course has traveled with with with activity and interest in what's going on activity and interest in what's going on activity and interest in what's going on in the middle east and we just have to in the middle east and we just have to in the middle east and we just have to be full-throated be full-throated be full-throated unequivocal and unambiguous in rejecting unequivocal and unambiguous in rejecting unequivocal and unambiguous in rejecting any kind of hate including this any kind of hate including this any kind of hate including this just hate is wrong no matter what your just hate is wrong no matter what your just hate is wrong no matter what your politics are but we've seen how these politics are but we've seen how these politics are but we've seen how these things travel together and we got to be things travel together and we got to be things travel together and we got to be on top of that there is the on top of that there is the on top of that there is the right and need for the palestinian people right and need for the palestinian people right and need for the palestinian people to have human rights to have human rights to have human rights and safety and self-determination and and safety and self-determination and and safety and self-determination and that is true that is true that is true not only in the context of the not only in the context of the not only in the context of the atrocities that took place in gaza atrocities that took place in gaza atrocities that took place in gaza but also what's going on in the west bank but also what's going on in the west bank but also what's going on in the west bank and the settler violence and in some and the settler violence and in some and the settler violence and in some cases settler terrorism cases settler terrorism cases settler terrorism and then there is of course the and then there is of course the and then there is of course the continued need at least i believe a continued need at least i believe a continued need at least i believe a continued need continued need continued need to support the idea of a jewish to support the idea of a jewish to support the idea of a jewish democratic state democratic state democratic state well if all of those things are true well if all of those things are true well if all of those things are true then all of those things then all of those things then all of those things are compatible or at least are compatible or at least are compatible or at least should have to be compatible right if should have to be compatible right if should have to be compatible right if they're all true they're all true they're all true and we need to hold space in our party and we need to hold space in our party and we need to hold space in our party for all of those things to be true for all of those things to be true for all of those things to be true now there are some people who now there are some people who now there are some people who will not will not will not embrace one or more of those things but embrace one or more of those things but embrace one or more of those things but it get that i very much agree with that it get that i very much agree with that it get that i very much agree with that but there are you get to some specific but there are you get to some specific but there are you get to some specific questions pretty quickly right trump two questions pretty quickly right trump two questions pretty quickly right trump two days after the election said he wanted days after the election said he wanted days after the election said he wanted to end aid to israel we had there was a to end aid to israel we had there was a to end aid to israel we had there was a vote in congress where a lot of vote in congress where a lot of vote in congress where a lot of democrats voted to cut off aid to israel democrats voted to cut off aid to israel democrats voted to cut off aid to israel do you have a position on that Yeah, I think that, you know, we're at a point now where that is, we've kind of outgrown, even, you know, the Israeli government would acknowledge that it does not make sense in the long run for there to be that kind of financial aid. I think where this issue really comes to a head more specifically is questions of, you know, the details of the security partnership between the U.S. and the Israeli government. And I think that U.S. law has to be followed and U.S. values have to be upheld. And whenever the Israeli government does something that contravenes our values or our policies, that could affect any number of things. Especially if we know that, you know, part of what happens in that partnership, part of what happens in that relationship between these countries could shape what happens on the ground. We do bear responsibility for what a country that we have partnered with chooses to do. I don't have every kind of if-then scenario mapped out. I think the most important thing, though, that has changed in the relationship. And must change in the relationship. Is we have to move out of this idea that nothing they do could change anything we do. And instead say, you know, the choices that they make, especially if they're made with American money or American, you know, defense equipment sometimes. That does, in fact, affect the relationship. And it could affect what we decide to do next in the context of that partnership. I think that's what we need to do next. Pod Save America is brought to you by ChiliPad. The news doesn't clock out. Late alerts and midnight screen time make a full night's sleep hard to come by. When your mind stays wound up, your body stays too warm to drop into deep sleep. The good news, that temperature problem is fixable. You could put your phone down, but that's impossible. So enter ChiliPad 2.0, the water-based mattress topper that actively controls your bed temperature from 55 to 115 degrees all night long. No new mattress if it's right over what you already have. ChiliPad 2.0. 2.0 actively cools or warms your bed using water. And water is key here. Fans just move hot air around. 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This special offer is available for Pod Save America listeners and only for a limited time. Order today with free shipping and enjoy an extended holiday. You can return it for free if you don't like it with their sleep trial. That's www.sleep.me slash crooked. The headlines will still be there in the morning. You might as well wake up ready for them. Now we're at the part where I try to get you to tell me you're going to run for president, which you could do. It would be cool if you did on this podcast. I don't suspect you will. But you have said you are, I think you might have said inclined or leading towards or possibly thinking. You're obviously thinking about. Where are you in your decision process? How are you thinking about it? I mean, I guess the only thing that really. makes sense to say is that, you know, I'm not on the cusp of some announcement right now. Maybe some folks will be, maybe some folks will be out there, uh, any day or any week. Um, it's not like that for me, but, uh, you know, what I'll say is that, you know, a year and a half ago when I decided not to run for Senate and not to run for governor in Michigan, the only thing I knew for sure was that I had to try to be helpful to make myself useful in the campaigns that were actually happening and to help the people who did choose to be on the ballot. And I'm thrilled with what happened and thrilled to have played a part in that. And also really energized by what it was like out on the road. We did these town halls, you know, Derek Van Orden wouldn't do a town hall in Western Wisconsin. So we went and did one for him and, you know, a thousand people came all the way through to, that was early, that was in the winter, you know, all the way through to a few days before the election when Scott Colom and I were in Biloxi and a thousand people came to that. And that energy has been incredibly encouraging. And what I've seen is there is a hunger, not just for one party or another to win, not just for a particular policy, but there is a hunger for a different kind of politics in this country. And that's what I've been working on since I started getting involved in national politics when I ran for president. That's what I've been writing about. And there is clearly a moment here where we can get this right. We have to get this right. And that continues to be my focus. One thing that's changed a lot since, you ran last time is you now have young kids. Yeah. Your kids are about the same age as my youngest. Doing anything with young kids is hard, but especially running for president, you've done it before. So you know what you're getting into. When Barack Obama made the decision to run with the young kids, he had not run before, he did not know what he was getting into. How does that affect your calculus? How are you thinking about, were you to run the logistics of having kids, bring them on the trail with you? How do you get home? That sort of stuff. Cause it's, it's a very different thing. Not that many people do it. Yeah. With young children these days. Yeah, it is hard. I mean, the one thing I can tell is that there's no right answers or easy answers. Um, obviously the priority is the safety and the privacy of our family and that they're going to be okay, no matter what I do professionally. Um, but yeah, there's everything from just the, the worries that you have taking on any kind of intense and demanding job that means traveling a lot, which is tough in its own right when you have little kids, uh, all the way through to the implications of, you know, what, what we have to think about when it comes, comes to privacy and security. Um, and you know, honestly looking at my kids and being around my kids, like kind of propels me in two opposite directions. I mean, there's a side of me that wants to run away from all the bullshit and right into the arms of my family. And, and there's another part of me that looks at them and thinks like they have so much at stake in what's about to happen. They don't have a vote. They don't really have an idea of what's going on around them and yet it will decide what their life is like. And I gotta be part of making that better. And I think, I think anybody who's, who cares about the country and cares about their family feels those tugs all the time. And it's more kind of celebrated in the case of, of, uh, you know, people who run for office, but, uh, you know, anybody, especially anybody who's involved in politics. And, and I think about the, um, you know, campaign staff and, and, um, volunteers, advocates, everybody who's involved in this. I think there's, there's some, I felt it, you know, we're in a lot of people's living rooms and backyards doing canvas kickoffs and many of them, um, you know, their kids were around and sometimes their kids had something to do with why a couple in Michigan decided to kind of convert their house into a launch pad for, you know, canvases and, and, and door knocking every weekend. And I think there's a version of this. It's obviously it's extreme if you're deciding whether to run for president, but there's a version of this that every, every citizen with a family kind of feels, which is like, how do I, you know, when do I kind of take time away from the family or complicate the day-to-day routine of our family in order to do, do right by my family as a citizen and participate in this, this process to try to make our community and our country better. How has having kids changed you as a politician? I mean, all the cliches are true, right? Like it changes everything. It changes how you look at the world. It changes how you look at yourself. Um, you know, I tell a lot of stories about conversations I have with the kids. Um, I, and I, you, by the way, I used to think it was kind of unbearable when like politicians mentioned their kids all the time. And now I just like, I get it. Cause like, it's just, you know, they're the most important, uh, people in my lives, them, them and, and, and Jasson and like what they do, of course, shapes like what I think about when I get up in the morning. Um, I think it, um, it tugs me back out toward the longterm. Like when I was, when I announced, I had this line in my stump speech in 2019 or 2010, 2020, about 2054 being the year that I would reach the age of president Trump at that time. And so like, as a very, you know, young person to be running for president, I, that's sort of like authenticated that I was like thinking about the long view, but it was about me. Now I think about, you know, it's 2026. We did all this America two 50 stuff. And I'm realizing that like, they'll be there for America 300. Yeah. I got like a one in 10 shot of making me in my nineties. It's like, we can hope. Yeah. Uh, but like, they'll be there for now. Like they'll be grilling out. Uh, and they'll be like talking and thinking about what, what was going on in the twenties, the 2020s, the way I might think about like, and ask my parents about what the sixties was like, you know? Um, so I think like you just have a different sense of the stakes when the people you care most about are going to be, they're going to see the 22nd century and, uh, all this stuff just matters in a different light that way. Does anyone else's decision affect your decision? Gavin Newsom said he would not run if Kamala Harris ran. Does her decision affect your decision? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Does her decision affect you in any way, or is this solely about you and what you think you can bring and how you think about the race? I think it's, it's mainly about what you bring. But of course, if you see somebody else who you think ought to be the person out of the entire field, including you, then the right thing to do is to support them and follow them. And again, there were many times in my career when I thought about running for an office and then I didn't. And sometimes one of the reasons was there was somebody else that I was very happy to vote for and volunteer for and, and, and help. Um, every time I run for office, it's looking at the two sets of things. Like what does the office call for? What does the office need specifically in this moment? What does the office need? And what do I bring to the table? And part of what I bring to the table is like, is it different from the others? Part of what I, part of what propelled me to do this in 2020 was I thought I have something that's different, something that won't be part of this debate unless I'm there. And, and I'm not like the others. I brought up Kamala Harris and I brought the question Kamala Harris in particular, not just because Gavin Newsom said that, but I've heard you say on a podcast recently, she's the person who's running, you probably know the best. You obviously worked with her, you campaigned for her. And so just about the, whether just she specifically affects you at all. I don't think that any one person right now kind of drives our decisions. Um, but yeah, I mean, obviously I, you know, I wanted her to be president. I, uh, did everything I could to help when she was running for president. Last question for you. So obviously you're in this active process of thinking about running for president. I'm sure you're looking back at your last campaign, which by almost every single measure was a tremendous success. You started out at zero in the polls, you won the Iowa caucus, you made it to the very end, but the goal was to become president and that did not happen. So are there less things that you, when you look back on that, are there things, lessons you want to apply to this one, things you want to do differently? You thinking about the race differently based on that experience? Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, anytime you do something, you learn how to do it better. Right. And, uh, there's so many things I'm proud of. I mean, again, our, I think a lot of our policy ideas from Medicare who all for, for all who wanted to Supreme court reform aged well. Uh, I think our style of politics, the go everywhere thing is something that, that, uh, aged well on some more, um, uh, the blocking and tackling stuff. Like, uh, you know, we were one of the first campaigns at that level to really do relational organizing at a large scale. And now I think that's just kind of, uh, uh, table stakes, but that was pretty novel. So there are things that, that we got right that I would, I would love to keep doing. And of course there are things I got wrong. I grew as a candidate every day. Uh, I became a better debater. Um, I, um, learned how to relate to groups that, um, uh, were not groups I understood well from my time as mayor of South Bend. Um, and I think it'll be really important, not just for any one candidate who wants to run, but also as a party that we kind of learn from that moment of 2019, 2020, when, when the world looked a certain way. Um, and, uh, uh, all kinds of things that you think about, uh, doing differently. Pete Buttigieg, thanks so much for joining us on Pod Save America. Always great to talk to you. Same here. Thanks for having me. That's our show. Thanks to Pete Buttigieg for coming on. John, Tommy, and Love will be back in your feet on Tuesday with a brand new episode. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Michael Goldsmith with Ree Churlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heathcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kenny Moffitt, Adam Lippert, Joseph Dutra, Desmond Taylor, Dan Farrow, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Singel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.