Mayor Pete Buttigieg wasted no time in destroying the myth behind Trump’s MAGA and making a real appeal to rural and Rust Belt communities.

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While kicking off his presidential campaign in South Bend, IN, Buttigieg said, “And that’s why I’m here today. To tell a different story than make America great again. Because there’s a myth being sold to industrial and rural communities, the myth that we can stop the clock and turn it back. It comes from people who think the only way to speak to communities like ours is through resentment and nostalgia. They’re selling an impossible promise of returning to a bygone era that was never as good as advertised to begin with. The problem is that they’re telling us to look for greatness in all the wrong places. Because if there’s one thing that the city of South Bend has shown it’s that there is no such thing as an honest politics that revolves around the word again. It is time to walk away from the politics of the past and towards something totally different. So that’s why I’m here today.”

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Buttigieg is right. Trump did sell a myth to rural and Rust Belt communities. He sold them on the belief that he had a time machine and could take them back to the time when prosperity, not unemployed, opioids, and despair filled their streets.

It wasn’t true, and even though most voters in these places knew that Trump couldn’t do what he promised, they voted for him because he made them feel good. He talked to them about the good old days. Some of them knew they were being conned, but they liked the attention.

Pete Buttigieg should scare Trump and the GOP

Pete Buttigieg understands what did and why he will do it again. Many of the voters in the Rust Belt and America’s small towns used to be Democrats at one time. Some of those people can be won back simply by showing a real understanding of their situation and talking to them. Luckily, for Democrats, they have some Democrats who can do exactly that.

Whether or not Buttigieg can win the Democratic nomination is something that the voters will decide, but there is something different about some of these Democrats running for president. There is a new generation of Democrats coming who see and speak to the entire country.

Donald Trump is the last gasp of a bygone era. 79,000 votes were Trump’s margin of victory in the three states that put him in the White House, and it seems like Democrats learned after 2016 that every single vote in every part of the country counts.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association