in your background equips you to be the unifier in chief? well, when you are a mayor, you live and breathe a community that is often divided or torn apart by different issues as we have been in my own city many times. and it s helped me understand the urgency of drawing together people who sometimes have nothing in common besides the fact that they live in the same city. when you re in the military, you are put into a difficult situation with people radically different from you, i mean people with different life experiences, definitely different politics, and you come together to get something done. we need that same unifying spirit in washington, not because we re all going to agree on everything. that s not the point. but because the presidency needs to be something that belongs to all of us and builds up that sense of belonging in the united states as well as being able to hold together, galvanize not polarize the majority that we re going to need to govern and deliver these thing
ago. what s your response? well, being responsible for the well being of a population and the conduct of the government the way a mayor or a governor or a president is, is different, i think, than any other experience in public service. i certainly respect the experience that she and all of the people on that stage bring. but this is a moment i think that calls for something different than the conventional establishment washington capitol hill experience. what i was making the case for is what we have had to do, especially if a community like mine, when i arrived, our poverty rate was pushing 30%. even basic things that a lot of cities that had more prosperity could count on were not there for us in south bend. they described us as a dying city. and now more than any individual achievement i would point to, we ve got a city that believes in itself a different way. guiding a community through that i think is as relevant as any experience you can bring to the office. no job is like the
people together should not be in the position of saying that one group s pain is equal to or less than or greater than another s. what about the experience question? that was a big theme tonight. senator klobuchar talked about it. mayor buttigieg was kind of on the defensive, saying washington experience isn t the only experience. what s your view? you re a senator, but you re a relatively new senator. right. i have served in local government as twice elected district attorney of the city and county of san francisco. i was elected and re-elected as attorney general of california, a state of 40 million people, where i ran the second largest department of justice in the united states, second only to the united states department of justice. i am now serving in the united states senate as only the second black woman in the history of the senate to serve there, and i serve on the senator homeland security you reminded joe biden of that tonight. but i serve on the senate homeland s
thought he was going to be gordon sondland up there tonight just to go back to the impeachment, just that he was going to be under fire all night. he did come under fire a bit at the end of the debate. he got off this one line, there s more than one hundred years of washington experience on this stage and look where we are. that was a tough shot on the field and he did distinguish himself as someone who comes from the middle of the country and doesn t have the same experience. it s one of the things that s animating him in these early states. i was heavily influenced by watching the impeachment hearings all day. it made tonight seem a little flatter i think. took some of the emotional drama out of the evening. but there was something else that came out in the contrast. i think watching the last few days of these impeachment hearings has made you very, very aware that among democrats, there are two lanes. it s not just the centrists versus the liberals. it s the people that put the
not. he lost his statewide election. he did not win the suburbs and rural areas we need if we re going to win big and not just take back the white house but send mitch mcconnell packing. that was a playing nice moment. towards the end of the debate, you and mayor buttigieg really kind of went at it on the question of experience. yes. and you said to him experience matters, and his retorte to you was washington experience isn t the only experience. okay. so, first of all, i have had the local experience like he has. i ve managed a major agency and a major county. and i think that is really good hands on experience to have that management experience. but i go beyond that because i have shown an ability to actually get through the gridlock of washington. i passed over 100 bills where i m the lead democrat. i think that s going to matter to voters when you have a president that has made all these promises to them about i m going to bring pharmaceutical