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Former Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg revealed what he thinks Democrats should have done differently if they could travel back to 2020 — to avoid them currently licking their wounds after President Trump reclaimed the White House last year.
The first thing former President Joe Biden’s Cabinet member admitted was that they should’ve reopened schools sooner during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“One, for the love of God, figure out a way to get the schools open sooner,” Buttigieg, 43, told The Bulwark in an interview published Tuesday.
“We got very knee-jerk about this and the costs were — not just politically — but in a profound way I think, for a generation, the costs were profound, and I think anybody who’s involved, who was, by the way obviously doing their best to deal with a crisis that killed a million Americans, but I think most people involved would like to be able to have found a way to safely get more schools open more quickly,” he said.
He would also act differently on the border if they could go back in time — an issue that Democrats were afraid to address at the time.
“That’s real, and that’s going to be something that you can’t just, like, take your time to deal with,” he said.
“These are all things, by the way, that’s super, you know, policy-wise and politically, we have the benefit of hindsight to reflect upon this.”
On the economy, Buttigieg said prices are something voters care about — not just unemployment numbers.
“Three, even though you spent your entire political lifetime believing that ‘the economy and jobs are the same thing, and if you have lots of jobs, it’s a good economy, and if you have a problem with jobs, it’s a bad economy.’ Remember that prices is just as big a part of the economy, it just hasn’t come up much in the last 40 years,” he said.
The likely 2028 hopeful is one of the Democrats raising their voice as the party strategizes on how to avoid another devastating defeat, a la former Vice President Kamala Harris, going into the next presidential election.
Buttigieg already made a pitstop in Iowa earlier in May — the first state where presidential hopefuls flock to — and admitted that Biden “maybe” hurt the Democratic Party by seeking a second term.
“With the benefit of hindsight, I think most people would agree that that’s the case,” he said in Cedar Rapids.
No Democrat has officially tossed their hat in the 2028 ring, but Buttigieg, who ran for president in 2020, is widely seen as a likely contender, given his recent public profile.
