CHICAGO — During a powerful speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg drew a stark contrast between the Republican and Democratic presidential tickets to illustrate the choice voters will face in November.
The openly gay former mayor of South Bend, Ind., has emerged as among the most high profile surrogates for the Harris-Walz campaign.
Buttigieg said Donald Trump’s decision to choose, as his vice presidential candidate “a guy like JD Vance,” the U.S. senator from Ohio, sends the message “that they are doubling down on negativity and grievance, committing to a concept of campaigning best summed up in one word: darkness.”
“The other side is appealing to what is smallest within you,” he said. “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.”
By contrast, he said, “I believe in a better politics, one that finds us at our most decent and open and brave, the kind of politics that [Vice President] Kamala Harris and [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz are offering.”
Buttigieg explained that when he and his husband Chasten are struggling to get their young children seated and ready for dinner, “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.”
“This kind of life went from impossible to possible, from possible to real, from real to almost ordinary in less than half a lifetime,” he said — adding that it was, at least to some extent, thanks to politics.
“So this November, we get to choose,” Buttigieg said. “We get to choose our
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