Pete Buttigieg says Thanksgiving can be normal again if Trump loses

It's not the first time that Demcrats have said they hope a Trump loss would mean the end of the MAGA movement. Transportation Secretary and Kamala Harris surrogate told former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki that if Trump loses, the GOP would return to "normalcy" and the MAGA movement would be no more. He also indicated that perhaps there would be no need for political division if Trump were no longer in the picture, going so far as to say Thanksgiving will be normal again.

Buttigieg posted to X on Sunday: "A vote for @KamalaHarris is a vote to get politics out of everyone’s face - and maybe even start to see a normal Republican Party reemerge." To Psaki, he said he hopes that a Trump loss will "lead us to a moment where the Republican Party finds some way to part ways with what him and everything he represents. And we can sometimes, just sometimes, like at Thanksgiving dinner, maybe leave politics on the back burner."

But who was making Thanksgiving abnormal in the first place? In 2021, The Texas Observer wrote "This Thanksgiving, Call Your Racist Uncle a 'Racist," while The Washington Post wrote in November 2018 "What's with all the 'racist uncles'?" "This Thanksgiving," The Chicago Tribute said in 2018, "fight the racist uncle." HuffPo offered "What To Do About Your Racist AF Uncle at Thanksgiving." As far back as 2016, McClatchy issued a guide called "How to talk about race and politics at Thanksgiving dinner."

The ACLU gave their own guide, called "Your Mini Guide to Discussing Abortion Rights at the Dinner Table" and in 2022, The Nation penned "We're Thankful for Our Abortions." USA Today got involved in 2022, saying that it was Republicans who "will get a chance on Thanksgiving to better understand liberals," offering their own guide as to how to do that. In 2018, it was Rep. Maxine Waters who told Democrats that they should harass Trump supporters in public and in 2017, Harper's Bazaar said "If You Are Married to a Trump Supporter, Divorce Them." The trend was so big there were t-shirts printed with the slogan. CNN said "Swipe Left if You Voted for Trump." Former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci said that his wife did file for divorce when he took a job with the administration. Last week, Newsweek admitted, "Dating Is Rough for Gen Z, Especially for Men Who Support Trump."

"There's one other message that I think is important," Buttigieg said to Psaki, "and it is something that is kind of evoked by some of the craziness and ugliness of his campaign, which is I think that a lot of people, left, right and center in this country, who are just yearning for a more normal future, one which frankly has a more normal Republican Party. A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for politics not to be punching you in the face every day, every time you turn on the news. Because we can get back to a way of doing things in this country where, of course we're not always going to agree, but it's not this constant in-you-face death match where it's felt like—whether he's president or whether he's candidate."

Over the weekend, it was revealed that a Trump supporter was beaten up by an author in a New York grocery store. A man in California suffered a brain bleed when his Kamala-supporting neighbor beat him up over a Trump sign. And some ill-informed liberal Eagles fans attempted to remove the MAGA hats from the heads of brothers Jack and Kevin Posobiec during a game (it did not go well for the libs). President Joe Biden said he'd like to "smack" Trump, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul said "If you’re voting for these Republicans in New York, you are voting for someone who supports Donald Trump, and you’re anti-woman, you’re anti-abortion, and basically you’re anti-American."

In July, Buttigieg said "beating Donald Trump the first time in 2020 ended his term, but it did not end his grip on the GOP. Beating him twice would, I think, will have a different effect on a lot of people in the GOP who know better than to be on board with him. He goes against their values, too, not just my values, but they've gone along with it because they think it's the path to power," Buttigieg said, assuming that the values of the MAGA movement are mutable and meaningless were it not for Trump at the head of it. 

"And it would become abundantly clear that that is not true, if we beat him, not just the way we beat him in 2020, not just the way we indirectly beat him in 2022 in the midterms, but beat him a second or so to speak third time," Buttigieg continued. "And we will always have fierce and meaningful disagreements between Democrats and Republicans, but there's a chance of that difference, those debates being a little less ugly. Or to put it another way, a little less weird."

The goal of the Kamala campaign isn't just to beat Trump, it's to destroy the movement he represents and eliminate the policies he supports.