You! This time 12 years ago in 2007, there was a big Democratic Party dinner in Iowa, and all the candidates running for president spoke,

but the breakout performance was by a guy named Barack Obama, whose candidacy quickly started to take off from there.

Well, this time around, there's a guy named Pete Buttiguajaj, also young, also inexperienced

in the way that you'd think of traditionally for presidents.

Also, seemingly on the cusp of a breakout moment.

This Friday he'll be one of 14 candidates headed to that dinner. But we caught up in

Washington at the beginning of the week. I wanted to get to him before Iowa to talk

about this crazy candidacy that he has. I was there that first day when he announced his exploratory

committee. No one, including him, could have guessed that it would have gotten to this point.

But here we are. Take a listen.

So Pete Judge, thanks for being here on Radio Atlantic.

Cool.

So coming here today, I was thinking about the day that you launched your exploratory

committee which was a couple of blocks away third floor of a Hyatt Place hotel that you went to basically because it was close

to the White House so you get reporters to pay attention to.

But that happened in the middle of a really difficult week

in your life with your father.

And you'd left your father in the hospital in South Bend, announced your explorator

committee, went back and then he died that weekend. He just, it's been a wild campaign.

That was not that long ago, it was January.

What was that week like?

Well, it was, I guess I could best describe it as a kind of out-of-body experience a lot of the time.

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