Briggs' mailbag: How Indiana Democrats could regain power

It's starting to feel like a big election year.

In this mailbag, though, I'm thinking about Indiana's distant past (when the Ku Klux Klan rose to power) and the distant future (when Democrats might matter again).

Thank you for keeping the questions coming. You can send more by using the Google form on the digital version of this story or sending email at the address below.

Let's mailbag.

Steve Morris: Will the Democratic Party ever be relevant again in Indiana? If so, what will it take?

Probably.

Indiana is solidly red with hopelessly (for Democrats) gerrymandered congressional and state legislative districts. The climb to relevance could be a multigenerational project.

On the other hand, politics can change quickly — and in unpredictable ways. Not many people could have foreseen how far Democrats would fall. Consider that there are rural townships in Northwest Indiana that used to be rock solid in favor of Democrat Evan Bayh and now those places vote straight ticket for Republicans by 2-to-1 margins.

As recently as 2016, Bayh was favored to win election to the U.S. Senate — which would have given Indiana two Democratic senators — and Democrat John Gregg seemed poised to become governor.

That was only eight years ago! But that's also the year Donald Trump promoted weak-polling Gov. Mike Pence to vice president and sprinkled rocket fuel on Republicans up and down the ballot.

What will cause the next Trump-like shift? I think about two factors: What will Trump voters do when he's out of the picture and will Republicans squander their capital?

Republicans have achieved virtually all of their major policy goals in Indiana since the days of Gov. Mitch Daniels, but they can't just sit back and say, "Look at all the conservative stuff we did — keep electing us as our reward."

As Republicans' grip on the state has tightened, they've had to pursue more right-wing policies — which, in turn, has motivated candidates to promise even more extreme measures in order to win primary elections. That path poses a risk that, eventually, Republicans might do something so extreme and unpopular (like the near-total abortion ban) that voters turn on them.

The competitive gubernatorial primary is fertile ground for risky proposals, with several prominent Republicans trying to out-promise one another. Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch wants to abolish Indiana's income tax if elected governor. That sounds nice — I don't like paying income taxes — but it could cause a budget catastrophe and reduce quality of life in tangible ways that jolt people into voting differently.

We don't have to imagine how that might play out. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback dramatically cut income taxes in 2012, which obliterated revenue and led to major cuts in education and infrastructure. The so-called Kansas experiment led to Democrat Laura Kelly becoming governor in 2018. Kelly won re-election in 2022, though Kansas' state legislature remains under Republican control.

That sort of divided government, with Republicans dominating the Indiana General Assembly and Democrats competing for statewide offices, is probably the best medium-term hope for Democrats. But it would count as relevance.

Why does IndyStar keep Gregg Doyel? He has a good dog story every now and then. But his negative IU stories (get) old.

The IU football and men's basketball teams are pretty bad, so I'm not sure what you're looking for. Doyel is the best sports columnist in America and we are absurdly fortunate to have him.

Edward Smith: Is there going to be a place to see all the questions being submitted so we can see for ourselves how "fair" your bias is in which questions you respond to and which ones you avoid?

Well, I suggested people post questions in the comments section and no one did that. Now, the comments are gone. So, no.

I'm thankful to be getting far more questions than I can answer, but, unfortunately, that means I don't respond to them all. The only questions I'm avoiding are the ones I don't feel confident answering.

For instance, someone asked a question about ways to protect the environment in Indiana. That's not an area of expertise for me, so I referred that person to a Facebook group run by IndyStar's environmental reporters.

I'm also trying to find a mix of questions so they're not all super-serious or related to one topic. That means I've been saving some questions I like for future mailbags because, if I answered them all at once, you'd get something that reads like a 5,000-word college essay.

I'm trying hard to retain the lessons of Smart Brevity here in my new land of freedom.

Jon Tronc: I’m reading "A Fever in the Heartland" about the KKK in the 1920s in Indiana. Holy crap! I had no idea of the extent of their involvement in nearly every aspect of society. Have you read it? What implications does that legacy create for our current society? And are there any MAGA parallels?

This is a question I could write a college essay on. The term "must-read" is overused, but I think "A fever in the Heartland" by Timothy Egan is a definite must-read for anyone who wants to understand Indiana.

I'd say the most meaningful implication is to understand we are immediate heirs to a society that, during the day, sought to gain control over all levels of government and codify whites as the dominant race and, at night, committed terrorist attacks to extinguish resistance.

One hundred years is a blink of the eye in terms of history — recent enough that many white families did not want Indiana's KKK records released to the public because of the shame they could cause for people alive today.

Those records are uncomfortable because they point to more than a paper trail. We inherit ideas and attitudes from our ancestors, no matter how much we deny it and no matter how much some people insist racism is too ancient to maintain its hold on modern society.

The hatred that bubbled up in Indiana during the 1920s didn’t just float off into the ether. It oozed into the shadows, where it yet lurks, carrying out the KKK’s legacy at the margins through more implicit and polite means than costumed intimidation.

The most obvious MAGA parallel to me is the way Christian leaders in the 1920s sacrificed their principles and Jesus’ teachings in exchange for the power they gained by joining an ascendant political movement founded on hatred and fear of others. Clergy lent their reputations to the KKK movement, giving it the credibility and momentum it needed to surge.

Sound familiar? Egan lets the reader decide.

To read more on the current trend of evangelicals driving the MAGA movement, I recommend "The Kingdom the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism," by Tim Alberta.

That's all for this week. If you can't use the Google form, you can send questions for future mailbags to james.briggs@indystar.com.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How Indiana Democrats could regain power