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Pete Buttigieg
“Our job is not to go around picking up the shards of what there was and trying to tape them back together,” the former transportation secretary said.
Pete Buttigieg traveled overseas Friday with a warning for progressives: If they do not reclaim the language of patriotism, they risk ceding it to those who wield nationalism as a weapon of exclusion.
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The gay former presidential candidate and U.S. transportation secretary delivered that message at the Global Progress Action Summit in London, where he joined leaders from across the democratic left for what amounted to a strategy session in an era of populist resurgence.
“It wasn’t that long ago that progressive patriotism was considered in our country a contradiction in terms,” Buttigieg said. “Patriotism can either be a cudgel that is used to exclude and beat people down, or it can be a way to summon more and more people into a shared national project.”
Buttigieg, who served in Afghanistan as a Navy intelligence officer, recalled how survival in a combat zone depended not on political identity, religion, or sexual orientation but on the flag on a soldier’s shoulder. “We learned very quickly to trust each other with our lives even if we had really nothing in common besides the flag,” he said.
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The New York Times reports that the London summit gathered Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. The event underscored progressive vulnerabilities. Starmer, trailing Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. by nearly 10 points, warned against “a politics of predatory grievance” and called for “patriotic renewal.”
For Democrats in attendance, including Buttigieg and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the gathering doubled as a workshop for a post-Trump future. With the U.S. political landscape dominated by the president, the question of how to offer a persuasive alternative loomed large.
Buttigieg argued that progressives must pivot from defining themselves primarily in opposition to Trump and instead emphasize what they can build. “Out with the old, we’re going to do something about these abuses isn’t enough,” he said. “The more we are talking about him, the less we are talking about you.”
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That means delivering on basics, from infrastructure to health care, and making those achievements visible. As South Bend’s mayor, Buttigieg noted, residents rarely praised clean water or safe roads. The political task, he said, is to highlight the struggles behind those victories and the values they represent.
Just as vital, he argued, is cultivating a sense of belonging. South Bend’s revival succeeded not only through development projects but through a new civic identity strong enough that residents tattooed the redesigned city flag on their arms, he said. Nationally, he suggested, Democrats must offer a similar sense of pride and purpose. “Our job is not to go around picking up the shards of what there was and trying to tape them back together,” he said.
Buttigieg emphasized the importance of preparation for what’s ahead. “I did not come here to tell everybody that things are better than they look. They’re not,” he said. "They’re probably going to get worse before they get better. And yet I’m optimistic, not because things are better than they look, but because things have reached the point where we will have to fashion something entirely new. We will have to do it on the day, and it will come when Donald Trump is no longer politically active in the United States, which will happen."
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