What Democrats Should Do Next, according to One of Indiana...
What Democrats Should Do Next, according to One of Indiana’s Own
Source: (Photo by Stefani Reynolds – Pool/Getty Images)
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — If you voted Democrat during this year’s general election, you may be wondering why the party was defeated in several races. If you voted Republican, you may feel you know the answer already. A Hoosier Democrat in the Biden Administration has his own perspective.
“I did not come here to add to the pile of takes,” said current Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg during a forum at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics this week, “there are plenty of takes. There’s some really good ones – there are some half-assed ones.”
Buttigieg chose to focus his discussion on local and state level political activism.
The former South Bend mayor said many of the answers to Democrat’s questions are within those communities, “in moments like this, our salvation really will come from the local. The local and the state levels. Something that, again, sometimes Democrats have lamented. We would kind of like a little more consistency at the federal level.”
Buttigieg said a lot of the answers are going to come from those states and communities that aren’t held captive by some “wacky ideological project.”
Rather, Buttigieg explained, Democrats should study how those communities operate in the name of “just getting things done.”
This week, two Indianapolis religious organizations called for the resignation of state Democratic Party chair Mike Schmuhl. He’s being blamed for local and state Democrats losing focus during Indiana’s races for governor, Congress, Senate, and state attorney general.
“The party is fractured in terms of reaching out to some Democrats but not all,” said Reverend David Greene, Sr., president of Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis, “they don’t spend time in Indianapolis, Gary, Fort Wayne, or South Bend; they’re much more focused on rural areas, which are a huge Republican base. In my opinion, they need to be intentional about building a faith-based coalition that can be an extension of the party.”
