Pete Buttigieg warns that beating Trump won’t fix what made him possible

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned Democrats on Sunday that defeating President Donald Trump would not be enough to repair the country, while Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey cast her reelection campaign as a defense against the administration’s attacks on immigrants, healthcare and LGBTQ+ rights.Speaking at a fundraiser for Healey at the Gifford House in Provincetown, Buttigieg argued that Democrats must offer voters something more ambitious than a return to the political and economic order that existed before Trump. Healey, one of the country’s first out lesbian governors, told supporters that Massachusetts must serve as a bulwark against the president, and warned that Trump would attempt to undermine the midterm elections.The event came one day after the formal conclusion of Family Week, the annual gathering that draws LGBTQ+ parents and their children to the Cape Cod community. In one of the nation’s best-known LGBTQ+ enclaves, both politicians framed queer freedom as part of a broader struggle over democracy, economic security and the power of government to protect people from Washington.Related: Michigan AG investigates how an unvetted, false allegation separated Pete Buttigieg from his childrenDemocrats need more than a return to normal“What our task is before us is not just to reconstruct the broken pieces of the previous status quo,” Buttigieg said. “When we talk about something better, that means not just better than now. It means better than before.”It was the central argument of his speech. Trump did not emerge from a country functioning as it should. The economic and political conditions that preceded him helped make his rise possible, Buttigieg said, and merely rewinding the clock would leave those conditions intact.Buttigieg said he and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, had traveled through about 32 states since he left the Biden administration, including Republican-held communities that rarely host nationally prominent D