Pete Buttigieg: This is what Iowa has taught me

[brooklynite]

Des Moines Register

This election will decide whether the next president will mobilize Americans behind bold ideas or polarize them around the same Washington fights that have held us back for decades. We need to elect a president who can not only end the era of Donald Trump, but can launch the era that must come next. I’m running for president to lead a nation done with division and hungry for action.

I’ve seen that hunger on display throughout Iowa.

I’ve seen it in the Des Moines mother who wrote me that her medical bills had become so expensive that she and her parents sold their homes to pay for her 24-hour care. That’s why I’ve proposed Medicare for All Who Want It, which guarantees every American affordable coverage while letting you choose which plan is best for you, and introduced Long-Term Care America to ensure all Americans are supported. I measure the power of an idea not by how much controversy it generates, but by how many people it can help.

In a sweltering barn in Shenandoah, I met a young man who wanted to know how agriculture in the Midwest could help lead the fight against climate change. “People tend to forget about us,” he said. I told him how we’d put rural communities like his at the center of a national project and achieve a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.

During a Fourth of July parade in Storm Lake, I marched alongside 24 floats proudly displaying the two dozen countries that made up the area’s immigrant population. Places like Storm Lake inspired my plan for community renewal visas to attract immigrants to areas experiencing population decline, and strengthen my faith that we can manage our border in accordance with our values and our laws.