Matthew Tully

Many Democrats have celebrated recent polls showing that President Trump’s approval rating continues its waterfall-like decline, along with support for a Senate Republican health care plan that seems to have failed.

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, however, looked at those same polls and saw something different — something he rightly believes his fellow Democrats should be both worried about and working on. The source of his concern: Data showing that most Americans do not see Democrats as the party of ideas or solutions, or as representative of the middle class.

How bad is it? Well, a Washington Post poll taken last week found that only 37 percent of Americans, and only 32 percent of independents, think the Democratic Party “stands for something” other than opposing the president.

“That’s a problem,” Buttigieg (BOOT-edge-edge) wrote on Twitter.

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Yes, it is. Particularly for a party that has found every which way to lose elections of late. Buttigieg said those poll results should be seen as a warning to a party that might be willing to settle for being the ardent voice of the loyal opposition.

“Too many Democrats are looking at the failures of this administration and seem to think that criticizing the president alone will bring us back to power,” said Buttigieg, who has emerged in recent years as one of the most thoughtful voices in the Democratic Party. “But even if it does result in us winning back power, it leaves unanswered the question of what we would do with that power to address the challenges facing regular people.”

He is absolutely correct. As a left-leaning independent, I struggle to see a coherent, potentially impactful vision from the national or even state Democratic Party. And I certainly don’t see leaders capable of connecting en masse with voters in, say, Indiana.

Buttigieg sees the problem clearly.

He worries about the state of a party that is too focused on the day-to-day drama and gamesmanship in Washington, D.C., and is often incapable of defending its policies in real-world terms. He watches the Sunday news shows, filled with party bosses from the coasts, and doesn’t understand why Democrats don’t select as their representatives lawmakers from red states, or mayors who are dealing with the potential impacts of budget cuts, Medicaid changes and immigration policy.

“The party is losing its soul,” he said, bluntly. “This should be a party of ideas and a party that is all about standing up for regular people. There is so much of our party that is obsessing over the individuals on the political stage, rather than the individuals we serve.”

The good news, Buttigieg argues, and I agree, is that Democratic policies more closely align with the challenges facing most Americans. He mentioned Democratic-led job-training programs for those hit by manufacturing plant closings. He said support for civil rights should be better communicated as support for average people simply seeking to live their lives, make a living or, for heaven’s sake, go to the bathroom. He pointed to the millions of previously uninsured people who have benefited from health care coverage since the passage of Obamacare.

The impact of policies, however, too often takes a back seat to insider politics.

Recently, Buttigieg said, he met a man at a needle exchange program in Scott County, where a heartbreaking HIV outbreak followed an epidemic of opioid addiction. Medicaid expansion under Obamacare has been a path to treatment for many people such as the man he met.

“I believe that man’s life depends on what the Senate is about to do,” Buttigieg said of the potential repeal of President Obama’s health care initiative. “But we seem to talk more about the personalities on Capitol Hill than people like him.”

He did not downplay the importance of fighting bad legislation, or of Russia-related investigations. But he argued that Democrats need to realize that most people in this country don’t know and don’t care who Jared Kushner is. They don’t care which party won today’s news cycles, or who scored points on social media. They have other concerns, he said, and they are not likely to flock to a party that isn’t obsessing over those concerns.

Buttigieg ran for chairman of the Democratic National Committee earlier this year. He didn’t win but he gained notice for his record of success in South Bend, his resume as a veteran and Harvard graduate, and his performance at candidate forums. He was able to tie big policy issues to everyday life, and to tell Democrats truths many perhaps did not want to hear.

For instance, he talked about the “smugness” of upper-middle-class Democrats who shake their heads and say that blue-collar workers, or people in struggling rural communities, are voting against their economic self-interest every time they vote Republican. Those folks, Buttigieg said, “can turn right around and say, ‘Hey, so are you.’ So lecturing people isn’t how you win friends and influence people. We have to have a better answer.”

The better answer, he said, “is that our party exists to support people going about their daily lives. Our party was founded to help the people, and if people don’t see that, then we have a lot of work to do.”

The mayor is right. His party has a lot of work to do to start winning more elections. The first step might be for its leaders in Washington to listen more to mayors in places like South Bend.

Thank you for reading. Please follow me at Twitter.com/matthewtully.