If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here. Flag, faith and family don’t belong to one political party
When I first met and spent time with Pete Buttigieg a decade ago, he gave me a vocabulary lesson. He was then 34, in the first year of his second term as mayor of South Bend, Ind., and a flyspeck on the national political scene. But he was going places — I was sure of it. I was even surer when he explained his frustration with the word “freedom.” He hated how Republicans had claimed it. He hated how Democrats had let them. That contrast perpetuated the fiction that government regulations, social spending and anti-discrimination laws were enemies of freedom when they were often its guarantor. “You’re not free if you have crushing medical debt,” he told me. “You’re not free if you’re being treated differently because of who you are.” Buttigieg was then dating the man to whom he’s now married, and he added: “What has really affected my personal freedom more: the fact that I don’t have the freedom to pollute a certain river, or the fact that for part of my adult life, I didn’t have the freedom to marry somebody I was in love with? We’re talking about deep, personal freedom.” Buttigieg was on to something bigger than “freedom.” He was recognizing how readily and foolishly Democrats ceded many tradition-tinged, conservative-coded concepts — freedom, patriotism, family values, law and order — to their opponents and how routinely they played defense rather than offense. A Democrat was more likely to question the genuineness of a Republican’s commitment to those ideals than to step forward as their true, unabashed, exuberant champion. But I’m seeing the inklings of something different among some Democrats at center stage right now, and it’s a shrewd, fitting response to a president and a political movement whose perversion or abandonment of longtime Republican rallying points creates an opening for Democrats to redefine terms and reframe discourse. Take “capitalism.” While there has been enormous fuss over leftists, including some recent Democratic primary winners, who deride it and identify as socialist or socialist-adjacent, there has been inadequate attention to Democrats who insist that they’re real capitalists in a way that President Trump and his MAGA supporters aren’t. Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic primary for the Senate in Michigan early this month, does precisely that. “Let’s talk about capitalism,” he told Tim Balk of The Times shortly after that primary. “Are you recording?” He went on to assert — as he had in a previous interview with Anand Giridharadas that was published in The Ink — that he was a committed, rapt student of capitalism and that America was betraying it by allowing too much wealth in too few hands and failing to ensure adequate competition and access to markets. “If you believe in capitalism,” he told Balk, “you have to believe in government regulation.” He added: “You don’t have to be a socialist to believe that you should be taxing billionaires their wealth. In fact, if you are a capitalist, you should believe in that. So, I’m capitalist who just knows about capitalism.” You can read El-Sayed’s remarks as a canny rebuttal of Republicans’ caricatures of him and other progressive Democrats as unhinged communists. But his argument is also born of opportunity: What kind of capitalist, after all, is Trump, who insisted that the U.S. government get a 15 percent cut of A.I. chips that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices sell to China, who leverages his presidency for his and his cronies’ enrichment and who lets slights and grievances drive the erratic and irrational imposition and alteration of tariffs? For that matter, what kind of America-first patriot is he? At no point since he went to war with Iran nearly six months ago has he been able to convince a majority of Americans that their economic pain and sacrifices are worth it. Many of them clearly regard his alarming depletion of our country’s arsenal as an ego-driven folly, and many Democrats are calling that out by turning his “America First” blather against him. El-Sayed, for example, cited his own opposition to the war in proclaiming: “I’m the most America First candidate in the country, proudly.” Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who is clearly weighing a 2028 presidential run, produced his own answer to “America First” in an opinion piece last week on Fox News website of all places. It was a 14-point plan — measures related to economic growth, income inequality and social mobility — for what he called “Team America.” I’ve spoken at length with Khanna over recent years, and like Buttigieg, he insists that Democrats be more proudly assertive with certain themes that Republicans toss around. He has told me that Democrats need to be explicit about their patriotism and incorporate more praise for the country into their remarks, coupling critiques of its shortcomings with gratitude for its achievements. That celebratory tone came to mind as I read about a ritual being practiced by Rob Sand, the Democratic nominee for governor of Iowa, on the campaign trail. He begins town halls by asking everyone to sing the first verse of “America the Beautiful.” That’s not necessarily what you’d expect at a Democratic rally, but Sand has said that it’s a gesture of unity among the partisan mix of voters that his events draw, and it’s an important counterpoint to all the coverage of anti-Thanksgiving, anti-flag outliers running as Democrats. Sand’s singalongs provide a fuller and truer portrait of the party. They’re music to Buttigieg’s ears. In a Zoom conversation on Friday morning, he told me that Democrats are even better positioned than 10 years ago to own the “freedom” mantle, because they’re now arguing not only for “freedom to live a life of your choosing” but also for freedom from the police-state tactics of an administration whose agents have fatally shot protesters and sometimes indiscriminately round people up. While Republicans profess to espouse “family values,” Buttigieg said that Democrats can and do make the case that “it’s harder and harder to have a family right now because of the economy — the Trump economy.” Democrats also have at least as much to say about faith as Republicans do. “God does not belong a political party,” Buttigieg said. He noted that Republicans frequently use religion as “a cudgel to hit people over the head” but that there’s “a more deeply Christian way of coming at it that suits our times, especially in response to how the Trump administration behaves, from the corruption to the cruelty.” He reminded me that Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee in the potentially crucial Senate race in Alaska, has adopted the slogan “Fish, Family, Freedom.” He and I weren’t sure whether the party needed to reclaim salmon and halibut from its opponents. But we liked the direction in which she was swimming. Forward this newsletter to friends … … and they can sign up for themselves here. It’s published every Monday. For the Love of Sentences
In The Times, David Coggins anticipated and addressed pushback from men displeased with his insistence on fully covered legs — i.e., long pants — in the office: “But wait, you say, these are nice shorts, of tobacco linen made by a company that shot its lookbook on Ischia. Well, that’s great — save them for when you’re wearing espadrilles, nursing a Negroni and having lunch at three in the afternoon far from the imperatives of capitalist enterprise. But today we’re in the city, getting work done and possibly loathing our lives. At least we’re wearing trousers.” (Thanks to Ellen T. Herman of Berkeley Heights, N.J., for nominating this.) Also in The Times, Thomas Morton theorized why so many young people dress in such a confounding fashion: “When you can order a cheap facsimile of any article of clothing you’ve ever seen a picture of — from any period in human history, delivered in days — it takes tremendous discipline not to leave the house looking like the fashion equivalent of a 10-year-old’s soft serve at the Tasti D-Lite where there’s that entire wall of toppings.” (Zoe Donahue, Maynard, Mass., and Jay Kardon, Pittsburgh, among others) Emily Keegin saw America in a jade object that Gwyneth Paltrow infamously peddled to wellness-minded women: “When asked to shove an egg-shaped rock up our vaginas for $66, a healthier nation might have said, ‘Heck no!’ instead of ‘How far?’ But in lieu of a functioning health care system, we’ll take what we can get.” (Phil Hinrichs, Dayton, Ohio, and Bruce Steinback, Palo Alto, Calif.) Matt Flegenheimer summed up summer: “These are disorienting times with disorienting headlines, across the algae-plagued capital and the befuddled world it shapes, with zigzagging tariff pronouncements and straits that open and close.” (Shehla Anjum, Anchorage, and Peter Drake, Portland, Ore.) And Michelle Cottle took Nebraska’s political pulse: “Regardless of how the political winds are blowing nationwide, a Democrat winning a Senate seat here anytime soon feels about as likely as Tucker Carlson becoming the next mayor of Tel Aviv.” (Greg Giles, Saint Paul, Minn.) In Bloomberg, Mark Gongloff explained how solar panels and wind farms are surviving President Trump’s emphasis on fossil fuels: “His own policies have made renewable energy more attractive. It can’t get stuck in the Strait of Hormuz, for one thing. And if you are hastily slapping together a data center to satisfy the world’s appetite for hallucinations and bad advice, then you need electricity quickly and preferably cheaply.” (Laura Mondok, Schooley’s Mountain, N.J.) In The Atlantic, Matthew Aucoin mulled the mysterious movements of the captain at the helm of a symphony orchestra: “The very act of conducting — waving a wand to summon ravishing or ethereal or earsplitting sounds — can look like either inexplicable magic or embarrassing nonsense, a kind of tuxedoed air guitar.” (Janet Hart, Lake Lure, N.C., and Marisa Guerin, Media, Pa., among others) And in The Washington Post, Monica Hesse revealed a Midwestern culinary tic: “The rest of the world is simply not ready to hear about the things we put ranch dressing on. You would need a couple of years to train up. If you’re thinking ‘pizza crust,’ you’re barely thinking at all.” (Russell Pittman, Takoma Park, Md.) To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence. What I’m Reading
I’ve been on a bit of a book binge, and I’ve been lucky, starting with …
On a Personal Note
While I made clear in the previous section that I “read” the audio version of “Mad Mabel,” I didn’t specify that I listened to the audio of “The Things We Never Say” and “Furious Violet” as well. That has much to do with convenience: I can continue my progress through an audiobook while tidying the kitchen, driving to the grocery store, lifting weights. But it also has to do with my eyesight. And because it has been a long while since I provided any update on my vision and many readers have asked for one, I figure it’s time. For those who don’t know the back story: Almost nine years ago, I had a stroke that ravaged the optic nerve behind my right eye and rendered that eye pretty much useless. I wrote about that in this 2018 essay in The Times and then in a 2022 book, “The Beauty of Dusk.” Since the incident, my slightly off-kilter monocular vision hasn’t deteriorated further and my moments of visual confusion — of slower reading, scrambled typing — are no worse or more frequent than just after that optic nerve quit. My update is stasis. And stasis is good. A principal theme of “The Beauty of Dusk” is the gap between what each of us struggles with and what the people in our orbits know or see of it, and I remain fascinated by that. It’s the source of so much ignorance, insensitivity and even cruelty. I’ll share a relevant personal story, and I do so not as a complaint — I’m the grateful recipient of much, much more good will and grace than animosity — but because it’s an excellent example: When I’ve alluded to my penchant for audiobooks in casual conversation or in this newsletter, I’ve occasionally been chided and told that they’re bastardizations of the real thing and that printed volumes are truer to an author’s intent, better suited to lingering over language, superior through and through. Maybe so. But do the evangelists of that religion pause to wonder why we heretics exist? Some of us worship differently not because we haven’t seen the light, but because we don’t see well. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Send me a note at bruni-newsletter@nytimes.com.
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