4 Magic Words That Could Change The Election: Pete Buttigieg
November 4, 2024
Glennon Doyle:
Hello, everybody. It is Election Day eve and today, we are talking to Pete Buttigieg. The reason you need to listen to this episode is in it, we discuss the most effective thing you can do today to affect the election results tomorrow. We also discuss what all four of us believe to be the secret, magical way to penetrate the tribalism that is dividing families, communities in our country. There is a energy we can invoke that can break through that tribalism. I believe it with every bone in my body and we discuss it today and I think it’s the way forward.
Amanda Doyle:
I really appreciated that it was also only four words.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. This is the four magical words that we can use to reach each other today. Listen today and just know that we know that this is a hard time and we’re going to do it together. We’re going to make it through this together. We have heard that we can do hard things.
Amanda Doyle:
And we love you so much that we’re doing today and we’re also coming back tomorrow with the one and only Senator Warren to be with us on Election Day, so we will be your companions tomorrow also.
Abby Wambach:
And I just think this episode will calm you, rather than rile you up. And sometimes Glennon gets mad at me because I try to tickle her right before bed and she said, “Don’t rile me up. I’m going to sleep.” This is not that.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. We are not trying to rile you up. We have been trying to rile you up.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. But now, it’s-
Glennon Doyle:
Now, it is not time for riling up. It is time for settling in, doing the hardest thing today, which we’ll talk to you about today, and then really just being together in it and maintaining some sense of strength and peace and calm in this storm.
Today, we have Pete Buttigieg. The first openly gay person confirmed to serve in the president’s cabinet, Buttigieg previously served two terms as mayor of his hometown, South Bend, Indiana, where he worked across the aisle to transform the city’s future. Household income grew, poverty fell, and unemployment was cut in half. He also served for seven years as an officer in the US navy Reserve, taking a leave of absence from the mayor’s office for a deployment to Afghanistan in 2014. The son of Joseph Buttigieg, who immigrated to the United States from Malta and Jennifer Anne Montgomery, a fifth-generation Hoosier, Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard University and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and completed a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. He lives with his husband, Chasten, who you will hear in this episode as kind of the genesis of this whole conversation, friend of mine, and their two children, Gus and Penelope, who are as cute as the day is long and goddamn is the day long, and their dog. Welcome, Mayor Pete.
The story I want to start with is this. Chasten called me a few days ago, okay, your husband. You guys were about to go to a pumpkin patch, okay? So he was about to put the kids down for a nap. He had this 45 minutes of nap time or whatever it is before the pumpkin patch was going to happen, okay? And he called me because he thought of me as a vulnerable storyteller, okay? And the reason he called me was because he’s working so hard in the days up to this election and as you both always are, and he had this thought that this close to Election Day, and today is Election Day eve, that we have to very quickly change the way we’re talking to our family members, to our neighbors, to the undecided people in our lives, to the people who think, “I’m going to sit this one out because I don’t like either of these candidates. I’m going to sit this one out because politics doesn’t matter to me.”
Chasten was saying he feels like we have taught people to approach the other side or approach the undecided people in our lives with facts. We arm ourselves up and then we approach them and we argue with facts. And in fact, all of us know that that is not how we reach people. That instead, we need with 24 hours left to this election to think of the person in their life who is sitting it out, to think of the neighbor, to think of the uncle, and to approach them. And instead of arming ourselves up so that they are also armed, we need to change the way doing it. We need to approach them with vulnerability. We need to approach them with an open heart and we need to disarm ourselves, so that they also can be disarmed. And instead of saying, “Here’s why you should vote for Kamala,” or, “Here’s why Donald is awful,” we say, “Here’s who I am. Here’s what I am afraid of. And here’s how you can help me and my family.”
So many people think right now, “This doesn’t matter to me. I don’t like Kamala. I don’t like Donald.” And what we need to remind people is do you like me? Do you love me? Because this election is about me and my fear and my family and you are incredible at this. So first of all, before we get into showing people how to have the hard conversation today because time’s up, today is it and we have to do it differently today, today, I want everybody to think about the person you could call and how we can deactivate tribalism and activate familial love because your uncle might hate democrats, but your uncle loves you. Okay? Before we do that, can you explain to us, Pete, because you are the expert on this, how is politics about all of us? How is politics not like sports? Okay? Because when the Red-
Abby Wambach:
Sox.
Glennon Doyle:
… Sox are playing whatever other Sox-
Abby Wambach:
The White Sox.
Glennon Doyle:
… or the Yankees, but so many Sox, I see all the people are getting excited. I see my wife is having a nervous breakdown. I cannot care. I do not give a shit. I don’t understand how it matters to me. So I actually understand the people who say, “To me, the Democrats versus the Republicans sounds the same as the Sox versus the Sox, and I don’t know how it applies to me.” How is politics different than the Sox versus the Sox? How does it apply to all of us?
Pete Buttigieg:
I think it’s such a powerful way to think about it because for me, the most important thing about politics is the politics of the everyday, that the decisions that are made in big white buildings in Washington D.C. or for that matter, in your state capitol or city hall, come all the way into the most important corners of your personal life. Certainly, in a household like ours, we are reminded of that all the time because the ring on our fingers is there by the grace of a single vote on the Supreme Court. There’s a one vote margin that said, almost 10 years ago now, that marriage equality is the law of the land. So I may not be thinking about campaigns and elections when I’m doing my taxes or getting a new license plate or filling out the health insurance form for next year or doing any of the other just basic things that are part of what our household does, except that that household’s only there because we have had people make decisions that protected our household. And this in different ways is true for everybody.
Everything from your ability to pay the bills, to your job, to the road you drove to work on, to just absolutely the air you breathe, all of it has something to do with the decisions made by our government. And the thing about our government is we pick who makes those decisions, so it’s not about the red shirt versus the blue shirt and who wins. Unfortunately, the coverage talks about it that way. I mean, it’s kind of disturbingly similar to the way you would cover the Red Sox versus the Yankees, right? Much more coverage of how the different sides are doing as political athletes versus what we should be doing as a country or as a society. But I think the core of your question is so spot on. If you’re this late in the game and you haven’t decided, by the way, there’s a lot of people out there who haven’t decided. Maybe they haven’t decided how to vote and this could be what everything depends on. More likely folks haven’t decided whether to vote. Right?
Because you don’t see a candidate who’s a hundred percent the way you would want your candidate to be. And you know what? Unless you yourself run for president, there will never be a presidential candidate who is a hundred percent aligned with you on everything. But we choose somebody we think is going to move the country in a way that speaks to us. But I think you’re right. By now, the arguments are in. Right? The data is in. I could go all day on how the stock market is doing better now than it was before and wages are growing more now than they were before, and the crime went up under Donald Trump and it’s going down right now. But if you haven’t digested that and that hasn’t help you made a decision by now, that’s not what’s going to move you in the last 24 hours here.
The other thing about reaching into our own stories and our own experiences is you don’t have to be an expert on the capital gains tax rate to be an expert on your own life. And when you’re speaking to somebody, that uncle, that neighbor, that coworker, whoever it is, you can talk to them about the thing you know best, which is how your life, your freedom, your everyday is different depending on who’s in charge.
I think that way of talking about things has become that much more important now that America has seen the right to choose withdrawn from millions of women. Matter of fact, every single American woman lost that national constitutional protection. Some live in a state where there is still protection. Some don’t. Some are wondering whether they’re going to have access to IVF. I mean, so much has happened there that I think has reminded the whole country of how your freedom, not in some abstract academic way, but literally, your freedom is different. Unfortunately, right now, less because Donald Trump kept his promise to take away that freedom, one of the few promises he did in fact keep among all the ones he broke.
And I think a lot about it in terms of our family, of course, because our family’s the most important thing going on in my life when I’m not at my day job or out on the campaign trail, whether we’re going to the pumpkin patch or whether we’re just trying to survive a dinnertime or bath time. But I know that everything for that family depends on whether we’re protected or not, supported or not, whether we got leaders who care about us or not. And right now, there’s really, really a big difference. So if somebody’s not sure whether there’s a candidate for them, you can talk to them about why you think in their lives it would make a difference, but you can definitely talk to them about why you know in your life it would make a difference.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I want to ask you to tell us the story that you told about the hospital. So in that, I want to ask you as dad, Pete, to talk to us in that capacity of being a father. I also want to tell you that when it comes to political things, I always try to act like I know what’s going on and I often don’t. So I think it was Chasten who asked me, “In what capacity are you inviting Pete onto your pod?” And I didn’t know what that meant, so I said something like, “Well, we would like for him to be in his full capacity, but I know it’s a hard time with the election coming up. So if he’s tired, we understand.”
Amanda Doyle:
I’d take 10% Mayor Pete capacity any day. It’s better than most. Yeah. That’s a Hatch Act joke. We can come back to that.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah. Yeah. No. That’s right. That all has to do with some important rules on how people who have jobs in government participate in campaigns. So in order to exercise our ability as citizens to participate in the campaign when you have a day job, in government, you got to keep those two things totally separate and that’s what he’s getting at. So I’m here not as an official. I’m here as a dad. I’m here as a Democrat. I’m here as somebody raising kids in Michigan with my husband. I’m here as somebody who cares a lot about the future. And I’m here as somebody who knows Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and wishes everybody had the chance of getting to know them. I mean, I think people are getting to know them through media, podcasts, you name it, but having had the privilege of actually spending lots of time with each of them, I’m that much more confident that our kids are going to be better off with them in charge.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. So are we.
Pete Buttigieg:
You mentioned the hospital and that’s something I’ve talked about from time to time. We had a really tough experience just weeks after our twins came into our lives. They were in our arms on their first day. We got a phone call, and the next day, we were holding them and it was the most incredible thing, a boy and a girl, newborns. And they had a few medical issues, so it took a little while for them to get out of the hospital, but that day came. We came home and everything seemed fine. And then they both got sick. They got something called RSV. This is a common respiratory infection. If you and I get it, we probably wouldn’t notice or it’d feel like a bad cold, but if somebody who is vulnerable, an older patient or an infant, gets it, it can be extremely serious.
Both of them wound up in the hospital just a few months after being born. Both of them wound up on oxygen. And then she started to get better and he started to get worse. And next thing we knew, they were talking about using a helicopter to get him to a larger hospital. The helicopter couldn’t fly because of the weather that day, so that meant Chasten and our son, Gus, after he had been intubated and was on life support, took a two-hour ambulance ride to get to Grand Rapids to go to the children’s hospital there. And the next day, I was driving our daughter down in our minivan to catch up to them. And the next few days were some of the worst days of our lives. But what we had going for us, well, there are a lot of things we had going for us and every one of them has something to do with the kinds of things that are decided indirectly by elections.
One thing we had going for us was health insurance because of my job. And even before I had this job, we had health insurance because of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, something that Donald Trump has promised and repeatedly tried to dismantle. And I’m worried of what would happen if he gets the chance. That’s how my in-laws get their health insurance because they have a small business landscaping. As we speak, Chasten’s mom is in the family pole barn making Christmas wreaths and they have this wonderful business, but it’s not a big corporation. It’s her and him and sometimes a few more folks they bring in to work with them like the women working in the pole barn today with Sherri making those wreaths. So for them to be able to have health insurance, this Affordable Care Act made all the difference. So we had health insurance. And we weren’t wondering about whether our family would be bankrupted or we’re just worrying about whether our son was getting better medically.
Another thing we had going for us, of course, is our marriage. We were able to support each other. We would take turns who was overnighting in the ICU with our son, who was in a hotel room we got around the corner with our daughter. And being able to just know that the law understood that we were a family, when I’m checking in at the information desk at the hospital or when we’re picking up a prescription or any of the other things that you do in that scenario, was again something that just wouldn’t have been possible without the legal protections that we had. Over time, thank God, Gus did get better. He got worse before he got better, but this Halloween, you wouldn’t have known the difference because the moment that candy hit their bloodstream, both of them were running around like little running backs basically, him and his Spider-Man costume, her and her Elsa costume. And you would never have known how close we came to losing him.
But again, part of that’s a very personal family experience. And then part of it’s inseparable from decisions that get made and laws that get passed that all of us have to live by, about how our healthcare works, and how our economy works, and how our families are set up. That is part of how we were able to get through all of that as a family. And part of what I ask people who don’t think about politics that much to think about is how much it meant to our family to know that we experienced equal protection under law and to know that we had healthcare and all the other things.
Another thing was family leave. Federal employees benefit from leave, but most Americans don’t. Most people around the world do. And in most developed countries, it’s understood that women and men, moms and dads, should have access to family leave. That yes, physically recovering from childbirth is important. That is nowhere near the only reason why family leave matters. Being able to be there to get set up to connect with your children from their earliest days, I would add that in our case. And I’m used to working very, very hard. I served overseas in Afghanistan, worked around the clock sometimes when I was mayor. I work very hard in my job now. I’ve never worked as hard as Chasten and I did during those weeks when we were on leave, taking care of the kids because they needed to be fed every three hours or so. And nobody told us with the whole bottle feeding thing that that means three hours between when they start. Not three hours between. It’s not like you get three hours of rest.
Amanda Doyle:
There’s no between. There’s zero minutes between.
Pete Buttigieg:
Right. It’s an hour, hour and a half. Especially our daughter had some issues with digesting and she had reflux, so you had to kind of prop her up right. You had to stay up with her. They didn’t always wake up at the same time as each other, of course, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, of course.
Pete Buttigieg:
So after a few days of walking into walls because we were so tired, we hit on a shift system that was basically, I would go to bed as early as I could. Maybe as early as 9:00. And Chasten would stay up as late as he could. And then somewhere around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, he would tap out and I would get up and start my day and get some cereal and cup of tea and start in with the kids. If I was lucky, I could get a nap around 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning. But they tell you, “Sleep when they sleep,” and Chasten was joking, “Yeah. Okay. So then we’ll wash the dishes when they wash the dishes and get the formula ready when they get the formula ready and we’ll go shopping when they go shopping. Great plan.” Everything you do as a new parent is-
Amanda Doyle:
Come on, Gus.
Pete Buttigieg:
… in the minutes. Right? So expecting parents to be able to handle that without the benefit of paid family leave is nuts. Now, we almost had it. The Biden-Harris Administration proposed paid family leave for every American, same as you have in every other country, and Senate Republicans blocked it. But Kamala Harris wants to do it and if we elect her and have the right kind of majority, which would mean a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, then we can have that. You can have that, sitting here at home. Somebody else you’re talking to who’s ready to sit this one out, if they or someone they love is even thinking about becoming a parent, let them know things like family leave are on the table. Not to mention the child tax credit. Right? So-
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Pete Buttigieg:
… getting that credit, she wants a $6,000 child tax credit, something to help especially when you got newborns because I’ll tell you, for us, I’m not complaining about our finances. We make a good salary. But definitely, for us, having to suddenly get two of everything, that changes everything for family’s books. She wants to make that easier. So again, this is really in-your-face personal everyday stuff that is as much at stake in the election as the finer points of monetary policy. I mean, we’re talking about what’s going to happen in your living room.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
May I repeat two things? You said that we’re all the expert on our own lives and that because of politics, you got to have that personal family experience, as hard as it was to have. And it strikes me that this election is about whether those two things even exist, whether we in fact get to be the experts of our own lives, whether we get as hard as it may be to have personal family experiences. Because the landscape that I look out ahead, if I am in the position where I’m about to lose a baby, if I’m about to start college and can’t afford to have a baby, if I’m in an abusive marriage and this is the only way I can get my other baby out, as hard as it can be, I don’t even get to have that difficult decision with myself and my partner and my pastor and my doctor. I don’t get to that and I also don’t get to be the expert of my own life.
Pete Buttigieg:
Exactly. You’re talking about this relationship between you, potentially a partner, maybe others that you seek counsel from, a doctor. The last thing we need to do is to put a politician in the middle of that matrix, right? Yet the decision that they made when they took away the right to choose was to do just that, to say, “Actually, no, you don’t get to make that call. The government’s going to make that call for you. The government’s going to take certain options off the table.” And by the way, it’s going to be different in every state and there’s a push to make it a national ban. There’s a push to have penalties for crossing state lines in order to exercise those rights or make those decisions. This is as personal as it gets. By the way, I’m talking to a lot of men out there, saying, “Okay. You’re not going to confront this choice the way women are, but you’re worse off if someone you love or someone you care about doesn’t have that choice. We all are.” And this is an example of how freedom is at stake here.
More than anything, I think it connects to freedom. Sometimes you give freedom by getting government out of your face and that’s a good example of why we care so much about the right to choose. Other times, government provides a service that actually makes you more free. And one example I would give is the infrastructure bill is being used to change water pipes in a lot of areas where there’s lead water lines because children are being exposed to lead. There is no safe level of lead. And if you get lead poisoning as a little kid, that can affect you for the rest of your life. You are more likely to struggle in school. You’ll be more likely to have trouble with the law. I mean, all kinds of terrible outcomes just because of what was in your water.
So I would suggest you’re less free if you can’t get clean, safe drinking water out of your tap or if you even have to wonder, if you even have to think about it. That’s definitely taken away your ability to have focus on whatever is best for your child, to focus on whatever brings your life meaning, right? You can’t be thinking about that business you want to start or that trick-or-treat you want to take the kids to or anything else if you don’t think the water’s safe.
So sometimes it’s about delivering, using the tools of government to make certain things true, to make you safer and better off. And other times, it’s about getting government out of the way and that’s really what I appreciate about Kamala Harris is that kind of balance. It’s not always the government is the answer. It’s saying, “Hey, there are certain things that are just yours and yours alone, but there are other times when the law, the government, needs to protect your rights.” And certainly that’s the case, for example, with something like marriage equality or any of the other constitutional protections that we’re fighting for right now.
Even free speech is coming into play, right? I mean, now you got Donald Trump out there saying that he wants to revoke the licenses of TV stations that broadcast things that he doesn’t like. This is America. Anybody who even talks about that I think should be disqualified. So yes, it’s kind of political freedoms, but it’s more personal freedoms than that.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And we have to discuss it personally because when you look at the way the country is set up right now with the two different silos and one side of our country hearing certain things and the other side hearing other things and the sort of identity and tribalism that that creates, you could be forgiven for feeling a little bit hopeless about that because it feels a little bit hopeless, tribalism that is that entrenched and that encouraged. I actually do believe that there is something, probably only one thing, that can penetrate that sort of entrenched tribalism, and I really do believe it is familial love. I really do believe that that is our only hope, that friend to friend, father to daughter, uncle to niece, neighbor to neighbor. The only thing that will penetrate the propaganda is eye to eye, somebody saying, “This is who I am. This is why I’m scared. And this is what you can do to help protect me, your daughter, your kid.”
In these last 24 hours, we need to think of the person that we can do that with, that we can get that vulnerable with, that we can get that brave with. So, Mayor Pete, if you were going to call the person that you knew that comes to mind… Everybody has somebody that comes to mind, right?
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Buttigieg:
Mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
The person we’ve been sparring with, the person we’ve been activating their conditioning, the person who’s felt like they have to defend themselves around us because we are coming in hard with our tribalism, what would you say if you were going to talk to them as the father of your babies afraid that you could lose those protections that allowed you to be there for them in the hospital? What would you say to them directly on the phone, not in a political way, but in a personal way?
Pete Buttigieg:
I think it starts with, “I need your help,” because I think a lot of people in our lives who we disagree with politically are the kind of people who’ll give you the shirt off their back if they thought you needed it. And it’s also a chance to call out to what’s best in people because part of what’s going on in this campaign, I think, is a lot of calls to the worst in us, telling us to be fearful, telling us that anybody who’s different is a threat. And that activates a part of our brain that’s not the best part of us.
But everyone, certainly people we love and care about, if you say, “Hey, you matter to me. I know that I matter to you. And I need your help, but this time, I don’t need your help spotting the kids while I run to pick up a prescription. I don’t need your help giving me a ride to the airport. I don’t need your help with a home repair. I need your help because I’m worried that what’s about to happen in this election is going to be a setback for me and my family. I need your help because it’s going to take people doing something uncomfortable and having courage, including doing something that’s out of habit like voting in a different way than you’ve ever voted or voting in an election where you really don’t feel like voting at all. And I know that you care about me and I’m telling you I care about this, so can you help me by doing this?” Right? I mean, I think that’s where you’re appealing to what’s best in people.
It’s not a spell. There’s no magic words that make it happen overnight, but those kinds of appeals, I think our intuition tells us that speaking to people’s heart that way matters. The data also confirm that the most effective thing in getting somebody to vote more than any other tactic, more than any other tool, more than commercials, more than digital ads, more than people like me going on cable, the most effective thing is if somebody you already know reaches out to you. It could be a text. It could be a conversation.
And I think you’re also right that it’s because it can help cut across that tribalism, but we need to really make the most of whatever circles of belonging are in our lives that are overlapping, instead of being concentric. And what I mean by that is it used to be all of our circles overlap, but now often, if you draw a circle around people who watch the same TV network and maybe even live in the same neighborhood and have the same educational background, you may well be finding they’re also in the same political party. What I love about different forms of belonging that cut across that is they compel us to challenge that sense of being sorted into piles.
It’s one of the things that serving in the military made a huge difference for me around because in the military, you get thrown. Obviously, you’re not pre-sorted based on any political or other background. You’re part of the same unit and you got to go do a mission, and you’re trusting each other with your lives. And the reason you’re there is the flag on your shoulder is the same, not your politics are the same. And people I served with, they didn’t care if I was going home to a girlfriend or a boyfriend or what country my dad immigrated from. They want to know if I was going to do my job, and same when I was recruiting one of them to get in my vehicle to go outside the wire. So military units can do that. Sports teams can have that, right? That’s obviously a group of people who are there. Again, it’s the flag on your shoulder or on your jersey and it’s your talent that brings you there, so it cuts across a lot of the other ways people get sorted out.
I think faith, it’s harder now. There is some kind of political tribalism that’s even gotten into our faith affiliations, but still, every faith community I’ve ever been part of, you’ve got Democrats and Republicans worshiping together and it’s an important community that cuts across those lines. Sometimes your neighborhood can be like this. Often, your school. We still have those, but the most powerful by far is the family, when there’s somebody who’s related to you. Whether we’re talking about a chosen family or a blood family, those are connections that are so deep. And unfortunately though, even those have been strained and stressed and tested by this political environment, which brings me to one other thing that I actually think is helpful when we’re trying to move people to vote, as well as when I’m trying to move people to vote for her, which is if she gets in, I think we have a chance to get politics out of our face.
Look, I live and breathe politics, but actually, even I’m exhausted with it right now. Look, if he comes back, you know that we’re going to have four more years where every time you look at the news, every time you check social media, it will be punching you in the face every time. And I think blue, red, or purple, there are just so many Americans who are just ready to have politics on the back burner. It matters. We should all be engaged. We should all have our views. But what if we didn’t have to talk about this at Thanksgiving? What if it was seventh on the list instead of the elephant in the room when you get together with your extended family? Wouldn’t that be nice?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Pete Buttigieg:
Just for the last 10 years, ever since he emerged, when he was a candidate and then when he was president and then even ever since, now that he’s a candidate again, we’ve been just catapulted into this world and I think we’re forgetting that it doesn’t have to be this way. It usually isn’t. It usually isn’t this polarized. And it’s part of why she’s been reaching out. She gave her big speech on how, “Look, if you disagree with me, it’s not going to be like him saying you’re the enemy.” She’s saying, “If you disagree with me and you’re going to have a seat at the table, it doesn’t mean we’re all going to agree. You may not like every single policy that I believe in, but I recognize that you belong.” And I think wherever you come down on these policy issues, so many people I know would love to have this be just a little bit less in your face. And I think she’s the way to make that happen.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
The way you started that out of how you’re going to call that person on your list, if it’s your uncle or your neighbor, you started with, “I need your help.” And that takes something from us too, to admit that. There is a tendency among even…
I’ll just own it myself. If we can get to 270, screw the rest of y’all because you’re wrong and we won and now we get to do it the way it should be done. But the truth is, it’s the same thing. Like what you said in the military, we’re trusting each other with our lives. I’m looking out in America right now, my neighbors, my people who might sit it out, and say, “I am trusting you with my life, literally my life. If I get pregnant and I am not on death’s door, so that a doctor is not worried about getting prosecuted and going to jail and losing their medical license, I’m not dead enough for them to save me? That’s my life. I need to trust you with your vote to save my life.” And I just think that that’s true of this election and it’s also true of America. We as a collective, we need each other. Whoever gets to 270 before the other, we’re still going to be the same America we grow up. We wake up in the next day and-
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. It’s lasting. Approaching each other this way again. This is who I am. I need your help. The breaking of that tribalism is not just for this election. It’s a way forward and out of this mess completely.
Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah. Exactly. It’s not about this policy or that policy. I mean, it is of course, but it’s not only about that. It’s about how we get through because at least for most of us, this is the only country we’ve got. We’re all going to be living in it together one way or the other. And people who view politics differently aren’t the way he seems to view it like some phenomenon to be destroyed. These people that we need to call into some kind of shared project, which I think the shared project is the future of this country.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. And if you’re listening and you’re thinking, how do I have this conversation if protecting women’s lives isn’t speaking to you or queer family rights isn’t speaking to you, you can say, I need your help. I have prescriptions that save my family’s lives. I need your help. I have a child with a pre-existing condition, who might lose her… I need your help. I’m scared about the planet. Whatever is your… We belong to each other and we protect each other and a lot of us aren’t fighting as hard as we are because we are for either candidate. We’re fighting as hard as we are because we are for us. We are for us.
Pete, is there anything that you can talk to us about… This is the day before the election. Our community is going to be nervous and scared and we have been told time and time again that these next few days might not go the way that we’ve expected. And is there anything you can tell us about what to expect, what we should stay calm about, what we should freak out about? I don’t know. Just give us a what to expect when you’re expecting situation.
Pete Buttigieg:
On election? First of all, know that we have a really strong process that is the beating heart of democracy in this country. Elections that are administered by neighbors, right? So many of the people who do this are volunteers who do this out of civic duty, hugely and cautiously monitor means of ensuring there’s transparency and clarity and accountability in the way that our elections are run. I know that the other side unfortunately has found some strategic value in trying to call America’s election system into question, but what we’ve seen time and time again is that those checks and balances, that those means of transparency and accountability have worked. They’ve served us well. And it’s one of the reasons why often you have to look through hundreds of millions or even billions of votes to find a handful where something went wrong. Literally, it could be one in a hundred million. And those protections have been built up over the decades and centuries of our country, forming an election system that we know is so important to us.
So when there is an issue, there are a lot of people watching, lots of teams of lawyers and observers, making sure that any concern, any possible irregularity gets addressed. Now, it’s important to remember that last year, the election was Tuesday. It’s always on Tuesday and we found out on Saturday. That was when we officially saw the results called. So when elections are this close, we can’t assume that we’re going to go to bed on Tuesday night knowing the result. I hope we do. That’d be helpful. But it’s not crazy to imagine that it could be a few days. And during those few days, there will be a lot of people working very hard to make sure that every eligible vote is counted and that any questions that come up are addressed. Remember, last time, there were I think 50 or 60 lawsuits trying to challenge the legitimacy of election. None of them prevailed and the reason was that in a court of law… This isn’t Twitter, right? In a court of law, you have to bring evidence when you’re making a claim. You have to tell the truth.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s the real kick in the shorts about a court of a law.
Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah. That and there’s actually penalties for lying. Right? Those two things make the court of law very, very different than the court of public opinion or some dude on the internet. Right? And that system held. I would add that a lot of the people who tried to deny or undermine the legitimacy of that system, who were themselves running for things like Secretary of State in different states last time around, they lost, right? Because Republican as well as Democratic voters, mostly don’t want to see that sort of thing.
Amanda Doyle:
And some of those lawyers are disbarred who brought those lawsuits. Yeah.
Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah. I mean, if they were proven to have done something wrong, then there are consequences for that, which is again, why there’s just a lot more seriousness and stability in the courts and the system for handling that, than there is in people getting to say whatever they want, hiding behind the keyboard or without having to present evidence.
Look, the way an election is supposed to work is if you don’t win, you say so and you move on. That’s what I’ve done. I know what it’s like to win and I know what it’s like to lose. Losing is no fun, but obviously, you congratulate the winner and you move on. Unfortunately, we’re at this moment in American history where we can’t always count on that, but that doesn’t change the legitimacy of the process of our fellow citizens, our neighbors, volunteers, and local officials working through to make sure every eligible vote is counted. The other thing we got to think about is we’ve got to just hold on to what keeps our country together in that time too. So during an election, before election, they test it in one way. What happens after election, they test it in another way. But we’ve been through so much as a country both in these last few years and in the last couple of hundred years. We’ll come through this too.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
That sounds a lot like faith, what’s going to get us through, what’s going to take us through. How does your faith inform how you approach your politics and being an American in this moment?
Pete Buttigieg:
Well, one thing that I really draw from the Christian tradition, the Episcopalian tradition that I belong to is an understanding that the world isn’t made of good and bad people, which means among other things, you’re not a good person or a bad person based on how you voted. And I think about that a lot because of the polarizing rhetoric we have around us. That’s kind of a check on my own attitudes, but also as a source of strategy, it reminds me that this is not about making sure the good people outnumber the bad people. It’s about appealing to what is best in people, knowing that politics can call out what is best in us and it can call out what is worst in us. So that’s one piece.
The other thing that I draw a lot from my faith is reminders that it’s not about you. I belong to a faith tradition that says that your value, your worth has a lot to do with what you can do to make others better off as the blessing, which is invoked at our wedding. It says, “Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk with us, so make haste to be kind.” And when you realize that it’s not about you or in the paradox that my faith teaches, that the best thing that can happen to you is for the self, the ego to take a back seat, and that you find yourself while you’re making yourself useful to others, that’s how public service ought to work. And by the way, I seek out leaders who I think live that or show that and I think we have leaders like that on the ballot right now.
One thing I love about Tim Walz is that his whole career… He was a school teacher. He was a sergeant in the National Guard for 24 year career service in the National Guard and he was a coach. Is that each of those is a career field where it’s not about you. The mark of a great teacher is how well your students do, and the mark of a great sergeant is how well your soldiers do, and the mark of a great coach is the performance of your players. You get some credit for it, but it’s very much not about you. And that’s how governors ought to think and that’s definitely how vice presidents and presidents ought to think, especially when you have the visibility and frankly, the power that comes with offices like the presidency. Whether they have the same faith tradition that I do or not, I’m looking for people who have that way about them, that they get that this isn’t about them. And that’s something I lean on a lot for my faith in order to remind me of.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. That’s beautiful. I know that the people that are listening are feeling your nervous system. It’s really, really-
Abby Wambach:
Admirable.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a beautiful thing to be working as hard as you are and to also be maintaining such a comforting strength and a calm. It’s almost a calm. And I just want to say to everybody, the people who are listening to this podcast are people who’ve been working their ass off for the last months and years leading up to this election largely for each other. And they’ve written hard and they have been angry and they’ve been activated and they’ve been powerful. And I think today, we’re just asking one more thing, which is to have this conversation, which is to make the call to think of that one person and to ask for help in a vulnerable way.
Abby Wambach:
I think what you just said is really important because what activate so many of the Pod Squad, our listeners, is something that they are angry about, some liberty or freedom that they feel is going to be taken. I think that the time right now is we have to switch into love.
Glennon Doyle:
I think that’s right.
Abby Wambach:
We have to switch into connectedness and love somehow. And yes, the energy of rage and anger has gotten us to this point, but we have to cross this finish line and the way we cross it is with love.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. For each other and for ourselves. I just want all of you to hear me say, you know how hard I’ve written. I’m going to make that one call, even though I’m thinking of the person that I cannot do it to. You guys, whoever you’re thinking of right now that you’re like, “Not that one. Not that one,” that one.
Abby Wambach:
Do it.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s the one. Sorry, friends, that’s the one.
Pete Buttigieg:
Do it with as much love as you can bring.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
And that’s what it is. And I also just want to say to people when you’re saying all these people who have worked so hard, I want to speak to all of you who haven’t because there is no shame in that. If you feel disenfranchised, if you feel left out because you have never been moved to vote, not once, there is no shame in that.
Stevie Nicks got on the stage this week, stood up and said… She’s in her 70s. “The first election I’ve ever voted in.” And she took some shit for that and all I could think is that is the bravest, most admirable, beautiful thing you could do because she stood up and said, “It’s not too late. If you’ve never been involved, it’s not too late.” This is not for you and of you. This is of you. I want to say to you people right now, I need your help. My life depends on you. Please come. Join us. Show up. Go today. Vote early. Go tomorrow and do that thing and it is not too late for you. If you want to do it for you, please do it. If you want to do it for me, please do it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
And then we’re going to be calm. I think the days after this, I really am asking people to… If I can be calm, I don’t want to hear anybody saying they can’t be calm. Okay? Okay. The other side will be sowing chaos like we can’t even imagine. They thrive on fear and chaos and on us losing it. If we don’t lose it, we can’t lose.
Abby Wambach:
You want to know what we would do on the national team when the other team-
Amanda Doyle:
I do really much want to know that.
Abby Wambach:
When the other team was trying to get in our head and they’d be talking shit, fouling us, doing anything they possibly could… We were just the better team and we had a thing on the national team that we would look at each other in the eyes and just go, “Ice. Ice in your veins.”
Pete Buttigieg:
Oh, I like that.
Glennon Doyle:
Ice in your veins.
Abby Wambach:
Just ice. Cool. Got to be cool. Ice. So maybe that can help, just ice, even if you got to think it to yourself.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I mean ice has some different connotations for some different people, but soccer, ice, yes. Ice in our veins.
Amanda Doyle:
Ice in the veins is good.
Glennon Doyle:
Ice in the veins. Love. We need to be like-
Amanda Doyle:
Warmth in our heart. Ice in our veins.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Pete Buttigieg:
There we go.
Glennon Doyle:
Go ahead, Pete.
Pete Buttigieg:
I like it too because so much of this election cycle in particular has been about pushing people’s buttons. There’s been so much rage bait, right?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Pete Buttigieg:
And I think it’s a strategy to get us not talking about things like the personal freedoms that are at stake or the economic future that’s at stake. That’s why we’ve been subjected to all these news cycles where we’re hearing about just McDonald’s or-
Abby Wambach:
Dogs.
Pete Buttigieg:
… cats and dogs getting allegedly… Or Arnold Palmer, whatever the dumb thing of the day is going to be. And I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I suppose it is a bit like a team getting in your face to knock you off your game. I think that’s a really powerful comparison. So whatever disciplines help you through this, draw on them now because what’s at hand is the possibility of a form of politics that is a little bit less of a blood sport or death match, or choose your analogy, and it’s more just a process.
Remember, as messy as it is, our political process is a huge part of what makes America, America. If you go back to the founding, the best things about America and the things that distinguished us from all these monarchies we were breaking away from, it wasn’t language. We had the same language that’s English. It wasn’t religion. We had the same religion as lots of European monarchies. It wasn’t ethnicity. We were a mix of ethnicity. It was our system, our choice. However imperfectly we did it from version 1.0 to what we have now, that’s still not perfect, but the process is actually what made our country into what it is. That process comes with responsibilities. It comes with obligations. It comes with certain kinds of discipline too and this is one of them. But also remember, the sun will come up and we will go forward, but I also think we’re going to go forward with new and better leadership and I’m excited.
Glennon Doyle:
The sun will come up and we will go forward, Pod Squad. We will be here for you tomorrow. Come back. We will make it through this together. We belong to each other. Thank you to you for what you have been day in and day out for us. How many days do I say, okay, what would Jesus do? What would Pete say? That’s what I ask myself. Thank you and can you please give the kids a hug for us and Chasten a hug for us. We just adore your family and you all are a lighthouse to us.
Pete Buttigieg:
Thanks. I sure will. They are the best and it really is with them in mind that we’re doing all of this.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right. That’s right. Pod Squad, go make the call. Stay calm. Ice in the veins. Warmth in the heart. See you back here tomorrow. Bye.
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us. If you’d be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you’ll never miss an episode and it helps us because you’ll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audacy, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you’re there, if you’d be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle. In partnership with Audacy, our executive producer is Jenna Weiss-Berman and the show is produced by Lauren LoGrasso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.
