Does a red state Democrat know how to beat Trump?

WASHINGTON – Could the next leader of the Democratic Party come from a state that Donald Trump won by 19 percentage points?

“Let me begin by bringing progressive greetings from Mike Pence’s Indiana,” South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg said at a recent forum for candidates running to head the Democratic National Committee.

Buttigieg has been arguing at those forums that he knows how Democrats can win in red states, both up and down the ballot.

But Indiana is one of 10 states where Democrats, according to a recent Washington Post analysis, “barely have a pulse,” based on the large majorities Republicans hold in the state legislature, congressional delegation and statewide elected offices.

Nationwide, Republicans control both the governorship and state legislatures in half the states.

“I’m not as worried about our national prospects as I am the erosion and dissipation of the Democratic Party at the local level,” said former Indiana Rep. Tim Roemer, who ran for the DNC chair in 2005 when he was trying to expand the party’s appeal to working-class white and religious voters. “You can’t be a national party if you can’t win local and state elections.”

State Sen. Dave Niezgodski, a plumber who represents South Bend, said Hillary Clinton lost blue-collar voters in states like Indiana because she focused on Trump instead of talking about the people.

“Whether or not they really believed his message or not, he was talking about what he was going to do for the people,” Niezgodski said. “And that is where I believe the touch with reality was lost. Pete realizes that.”

If he wins the DNC race, Buttigieg has promised to visit every state and territory, coming up with tailored victory plans while selling an economic message that resonates with working- and middle-class families.

He points to the expensive cancer treatments his partner’s mother is receiving through her Obamacare insurance as an example of why Democrats need to fight efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

National security issues, he said, are not theoretical to him. As a Navy reservist who served in Afghanistan, he could get called up if “a reckless president leads us into peril.”

And Democrats can’t make false promises to bring back manufacturing jobs that were lost primarily to automation, he said. But, “we have to make sure working people understand they have a role in the story of a modern and globalized economy.”

“I don’t think emulating Trump is the way forward. But I do think he was speaking to a lot of people who were hurting,” Buttigieg said. “I think when people are fragile, they’re more inclined to vote for somebody with that style.”

The style he’s offering is what he calls the “happy warrior,” a term that has also been used to describe Pence.

The warrior part, to Buttigieg, is “every falsehood has to be met with fact, and every outrage has to have a response.”

At the same time, he said, you can’t win the hearts and minds of voters if you come off as a sour complainer.

“We want to make sure we’re not only raising our voices in opposition but also establishing a movement that people would want to be proud of,” he said.

That cheerful spirit, he said, was present in the women’s marches. (And he’s been pointing out at the DNC forums that he was the only candidate to attend one of the marches.)

Because there’s no Democrat in the White House, the ability of the next DNC chairman to be a strong messenger for the party is key, said former DNC chair Joe Andrew.

But even if the party doesn’t chose Buttigieg, Andrew said, the race will have boosted Buttigieg’s reputation and helped Indiana’s image.

“Unfortunately and unfairly,” he said, “Indiana has gotten labeled a certain way right now” because of Pence. And Buttigieg — an openly gay, Ivy League, Afghanistan veteran, mayor of a Rust Belt city — is not what people usually picture when they think of Indiana.

“To have someone who defies all these expectations, that’s great for Indiana,” Andrew said. “And it might take him all the way.”

Contact Maureen Groppe at mgroppe@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @mgroppe.