Pete Buttigieg speaks at 2024 Democratic National Convention

Please welcome former South Bend, Indiana mayor, Pete Buttigieg.

Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Democrats. Thank you, Chicago.

(00:31)
Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself saying, I’m Pete Buttigieg, and you might recognize me from Fox News. I believe in going anywhere, anywhere, in service of a good cause. And friends, we gather in a very good cause, electing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the next president and vice president of the United States. The choice could not be clearer.

(01:10)
Donald Trump rants about law and order, as if he wasn’t a convicted criminal running against a prosecutor. As if we were going to forget that crime was higher on his watch. Talks about the forgotten man, hoping we’ll forget that the only economic promise that he actually kept was to cut taxes for the rich. And don’t even get me started on his new running mate. At least Mike Pence was polite.

(01:55)
JD Vance is one of those guys who thinks if you don’t live the life that he has in mind for you, then you don’t count. Someone who said that if you don’t have kids, you have, quote, “No physical commitment to the future of this country.” You know, Senator, when I deployed to Afghanistan, I didn’t have kids then, many of the men and women who went outside the wire with me didn’t have kids either. But let me tell you, our commitment to the future of this country was pretty damn physical.

(02:42)
Choosing a guy like JD Vance to be America’s next vice president sends a message. And the message is that they are doubling down on negativity and grievance. Committing to a concept of campaigning best summed up in one word, darkness. Darkness is what they are selling. The thing is, I just don’t believe that America today is in the market for darkness.

(03:14)
I believe America is ready for a better kind of politics. Yes, politics at its worst can be ugly, crushing, demeaning, but it doesn’t have to be. At its best, politics can be empowering, uplifting. It can even be a kind of soul craft.

(03:36)
My faith teaches me that the world isn’t made up of good people and bad people, but rather that each of us is capable of good and bad things. And I believe leaders matter because of what they bring out in each of us, the good or the bad. Right now, the other side is appealing to what is smallest within you. They’re telling you that greatness comes from going back to the past. They’re telling you that anyone different from you is a threat. They’re telling you that your neighbor or nephew or daughter, who disagrees with you politically, isn’t just wrong, but is now the enemy.

(04:21)
I believe in a better politics, one that finds us at our most decent and open and brave. The kind of politics that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are offering. And as you have felt these many days, that kind of politics also just feels better to be part of. There is joy in it, as well as power.

(04:47)
And if all of that sounds naive, let me insist that I have come to this view, not by way of idealism, but by way of experience. Not just the experience of my unlikely career. Someone like me serving in Indiana, serving in Washington, serving in uniform.

(05:09)
I’m thinking of something much more basic. I’m thinking of dinner time at our house in Michigan, when the dog is barking and the air fryer is beeping and the mac and cheese is boiling over. And it feels like all the political negotiating experience in the world is not enough for me to get our three-year-old son and our three-year-old daughter to just wash their hands and sit at the table. It’s the part of our day when politics seems the most distant. And yet, the makeup of our kitchen table, the existence of my family, is just one example of something that was literally impossible as recently as 25 years ago, when an anxious teenager growing up in Indiana wondered if he would ever find belonging in this world.

(06:11)
This kind of life went from impossible to possible. From possible to real. From real to almost ordinary in less than half a lifetime. But that didn’t just happen, it was brought about through idealism and courage, through organizing and persuasion and storytelling, and yes, through politics. The right kind of politics. The kind of politics that can make an impossible dream into an everyday reality. I don’t presume to know what it’s like in your kitchen, but I know, as sure as I am standing here, that everything in it, the bills you pay at that table, the shape of the family that sits there, the fears and the dreams that you talk about late into the night there, all of it compels us to demand more from our politics than a rerun of some TV wrestling death match.

(07:23)
So this November, we get to choose. We get to choose our president. We get to choose our policies, but most of all, we will choose a better politics. A politics that calls us to our better selves and offers us a better every day. That is what Kamala Harris and Tim Walz represents. That is what Democrats represent. That is what awaits us when America decides to end Trump’s politics of darkness once and for all. That is what we choose when we embrace the leaders who are out there building bridges and reject the ones who are out there banning books. This is what we will work for every day to November and beyond. So let’s go win this. Thank you, Democrats. Thank you.