"When Buttigieg was first elected to office in his hometown of South Bend in 2011, the city was on its knees. Job growth was nonexistent and like many Rust Belt cities with declining industry, it had been hemorrhaging jobs since the ’70s.
Just because Buttigieg is from the Rust Belt doesn’t mean he can win a general election in places like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
First, he improved the cosmetics of the town by demolishing more than 1,000 abandoned homes, and then focused on revitalizing it by attracting hundreds of millions in private investment for commercial development.
You won’t find Buttigieg ridiculing fellow Midwestern voters or taking them for granted, the way Hillary Clinton’s campaign did in 2015. After the University of Notre Dame, based in South Bend, invited her to attend their prestigious St. Patrick’s Day event, her campaign declined, telling organizers “white Catholics were not the audience she needed to spend time reaching out to,” according to The New York Times."