Pete Buttigieg makes the case for "democratic capitalism"

The rising Democratic candidate on everything from his vision for the economy, military interventionism, and the role of gender in the 2020 campaign.

Curious for answers, I reached out to Buttigieg while I was reporting a piece on his campaign. During our conversation, he dug into big ideas in a way that I found refreshing, giving me a series of interesting answers without many talking points or much deflection. The conversation helped me understand why he’s taken off so quickly: He seems to be genuinely thinking things over and giving genuine answers. That’s a luxury of a candidate who doesn’t have to worry about electability, and it’s somehow morphed into the very case for Buttigieg’s candidacy.

“I think of myself as progressive. But I also believe in capitalism, but it has to be democratic capitalism. Part of the problem here is that you have one generation that grew up associating socialism with communism like they’re the same thing, and therefore also assuming that capitalism and democracy were inseparable. I’ve grown up in a time when you can pretty much tell that there’s tension between capitalism and democracy, and negotiating that tension is probably the biggest challenge for America right now.

You don’t have to look that hard to find examples of capitalism without democracy — Russia leaps to mind. And when you have capitalism without democracy, you get crony capitalism and eventually oligarchy. So a healthy capitalist system, working within the rule of law, is the stuff of American growth and can be the stuff of equitable growth. But we don’t have that right now.

In recent times, appealing to Republican legislators has been wasteful because they’ve mostly been acting in bad faith. But appealing to Republican Americans — voters — I think is absolutely worth doing. I’ve done it here in South Bend, not by being more conservative than I am but by focusing on results and making common-sense arguments and making it clear that I was motivated by values even if those values were a little bit different from theirs.

Appealing to independents, in particular, has never been more important. It has also never been less connected to ideological centrism, which was the formula in the 90s when we thought of everything ideologically. It seemed very natural that, if you want to appeal to independents, they must be in some middle — and if you’re on the left you just move to the right.”

full article:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/28/18283925/pete-buttigieg-mayor-pete-interview-capitalism