On Sunday, the New York Times ran a piece on the voters in Terre Haute and Vigo County, Indiana. The area has the distinction of picking every presidential winner since the beginning of the 20th Century except Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and William Taft in 1908. And, yes, that means they voted for Barack Obama twice and also for Donald Trump. To me, that makes this community’s political behavior something that needs to be understood if the left is going to diagnose why they’ve been losing support in the Midwest, in rural and small-town America, and how they lost a presidential election to a man like Donald Trump.
Here’s one clue from the article:
Its economy is struggling. City finances are a mess. Markers of misery — lower family income, higher rates of smoking and obesity, surging opioid use — are many. Its 108,000 residents are much whiter than the nation as a whole, and its demographics are changing only to the degree that the population is skewing older and less educated. It has benefited from government programs, like disability payments and a stimulus grant under the Obama administration that delivered a flood control project, but people here rail against Washington…
…The headquarters of Clabber Girl, the baking powder company, is a point of civic pride, along with Indiana State University, which has rising enrollment, and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a highly regarded science and engineering college. One old factory is being converted into lofts. But several people, when asked about the state of things, simply responded with a wince.
How did a philandering New York City real estate developer turn this relatively conservative area from Obama territory to Trump territory? I suppose we should also ask how how Obama turned them away from the Republican Party (twice), since they supported George W. Bush in both of his elections. Maybe the people of Vigo County are contrarian enough to turn against the party in power so long as an incumbent isn’t on the ticket. If that’s the pattern, they’ll be voting for Trump again.
Yet, the reporting for this article indicates that they have a lot of buyer’s remorse about Trump already, and it could become Democratic territory in 2020. What makes this part of Indiana interesting is its propensity to swing back and forth between the two major parties, but the general drift toward Trump in largely white communities has been evident almost everywhere.
The centrality of immigration and racial issues is seen as a main culprit by almost everyone, including the architects of Trump’s campaign. But we still need to account for the fact that Vigo County voted for a black candidate two times over a white man. Perhaps it’s easier to identify what didn’t work for the Democrats than what did work for Trump. The massive amount of attention that was rightly placed on the Access Hollywood tape in October did not convince the people of Terre Haute that Trump is a sexual predator. Or, if it did, they seemed to still prefer him to Hillary Clinton for some variety of reasons. Likewise, Trump’s uncivil behavior throughout the campaign didn’t turn them against him, nor did countless exposés of his failed and fraudulent business practices. His transparent lack of knowledge wasn’t enough. The fact that numerous prominent Republican politicians and pundits refused to endorse Trump didn’t sway them. The fact that almost no editorial board of a newspaper in the entire country supported Trump did not matter. Trump’s poor debate performances weren’t a substantial problem for him.
As long as the focus was on Trump, it seems he was capable of weathering almost any bad news or coverage. What mattered more, apparently, is that he was offering something different from a status quo that is still making the people of Vigo County wince when they’re asked to talk about it. I don’t think people saw Trump as particularly credible about virtually anything, but he was more credible than Hillary Clinton when it came to satisfying the desire to change things up dramatically.
Now, a lot of people mock the idea that economic hardship had more to do with the election results than racism. Conversely, the Democrats’ fixation with “identity politics,” however defined, is frequently blamed for turning off Obama voters in communities like Vigo County. I think both of these arguments are basically dead ends. What we know for sure is that protesting Trump’s racism didn’t have the effect we hoped and had the right to expect it would. We know that he wasn’t wrong-footed by his positions on transgender bathrooms or Muslim and Latino immigration or his blind support for police violence. He know women didn’t turn against in big enough numbers even after numerous victims of his sexual predation came forward.
We tend to get bogged down in these facts and attack the communities who overlooked all these signs. We want to write off any voters who would support a candidate after all the evidence that was presented against him. But Vigo County was Obama territory. It could easily become Democratic territory again. And, to be honest, the things the left supports on the cultural or “identity” plane weren’t much different in 2016 than they had been in 2012 or even 2008. The answer isn’t going to be magically found by pandering to cultural conservatism.
What’s needed is a focus on the things that make people wince. We tend to wince at sexism and racism, and we expect everyone else to have a similar reaction and fault them if they do not. I can’t fault us for that, but I think the evidence is in that it isn’t a winning political message in a lot of the country. I also don’t think it’s a brilliant idea to assume that the Democratic Party can just tinker with their message or focus on mobilizing their base. What the people of Vigo County need and want is a set of fresh ideas that haven’t been tried before. The reason I’ve written about anti-monopoly and antitrust issues is because it something new in the sense that we’ve gotten away from it for so long that it will seem fresh. The national party can do whatever it wants, but Democrats running in Obama/Trump areas need to have something new to offer.
Does this guy sound like he read my piece How to Win Rural Voters Without Losing Liberal Values?
Stephen Webber, the chairman of Missouri’s Democrats, told a Midwestern caucus meeting [at the Las Vegas DNC conference] that his party had developed a message for rural counties “where we used to win 60 percent of the vote and now barely win 15 percent” — a populist campaign against corporate farming conglomerates.
That’s the kind of thing I want to see. Salvation doesn’t lie with selling out our base or compromising on our values or in pandering to the prejudices of people who have supported us in the recent past. We don’t need to turn a blind eye to racism or sexism. But we do need to find out what is making people wince and come up with new, credible ideas to address their communities’ problems.
Is that a message that will sell – will voters come when you call?
I just want to point out – as someone with a lot of connections to places like this – that very few people are living on farms in these areas now. Most of the people have to be living in the small towns (Terre Haute might even be considered fairly large). Their issues might be different. In some places they are going to be the employees of these conglomerates, or have other connections to them.
I really don’t know what drives them and what my relatives say doesn’t make a lot of sense. I know they have very depressed wages, property values are terrible compared to the coasts, and they are very exposed on energy costs – people drive everywhere very long distances routinely for groceries and other goods. Fortunately gas prices are quite low right now. Elder care is a big problem – medical care in general is tenuous but seems to be taken for granted.
To my mind, ‘farming conglomerates’ isn’t the important part, ‘against’ is the important part. We need to run against things other than the other party (which is totally expected, and easily tuned out). Democrats running against Republicans, and Republicans running against Democrats, is ‘dog bits man’. Who cares?
Trump ran against Obama and the Dems, but so did all the other Republicans. He’s the one who most loudly ran against Mexicans, Muslims, blacks, uppity women. All we see is the racism and misogyny, because holy shit that’s a lot of racism and misogyny, but we’re missing the forest for the trees. Trump ran the most ‘against’ Republican campaign.
Running against monopolies is great, even if people in the comments here say, ‘Oh, but everyone loves WalMart.’ Who cares? Everyone loves their mother, but they voted for a woman-hating sexual predator. That is why our affinity for Wall Street is a problem. Not because of any quid pro quo. Because it means we as a party can’t effectively vilify them.
If I were king of the party, we’d run against Nazis and Nazi sympathizers. Like the John Birch society: hello, Koch brothers. Like Jeff Sessions, the Mercers, Trump’s father, and the kapo Stephen Miller. Like Fox News.
There’s a reason they call it D-Day
They didn’t vote for Trump. They voted for the Republican party. They voted against the Democratic Party. They voted against Hillary.
Again and again and again, you make the same mistake, Boo. You focus on Trump. It’s not all about Trump. It is about the Party Conception. The Democrats are the party of liberals, libertines, BLM, lesbians, transgenders, illegals, tax increases. The R Party is not.
And one positive about Trump – he promised to bring the jobs back. A false promise, obviously. But he did promise.
Hillary also promised. “Those jobs are never coming back”. That was a dumb statement. It was both stupid and true. But you become what you aspire to. Trump aspired to bringing the jobs back. Hillary did not.
100%. Nobody is paying enough attention to two decades of relentless, well-funded, organized propaganda against the Clintons.
That’s it. That’s the whole ball game. Nothing else explains where we are — nothing else is necessary — except the goddamned Russian interference (which the Republicans insist was just generalized “disruption” and had nothing to do with supporting Trump per se.).
Sure, we need to learn how to sell our values to rural voters better than we have; I get that.
In this case, though, I think it is as simple as they liked Trump better than Clinton. After decades of reviling Hillary, and years of watching Trump on reality television, they just liked him better. They were willing and able to dismiss his foibles as part of the Hollywood Glamor Machine. Or New York Crazy. Whatever they wanted to label it to box it up and set it aside because they couldn’t stand Hillary Clinton.
They liked Obama better than McCain or Romney. They liked Bush better than Gore or Kerry.
It’s not that complicated. The fact that they now have buyer’s remorse matters a lot. More than people are paying attention to.
That said, if the Democrats don’t nominate someone these folks like better than DT, we’re hosed. Barack Obama was the first truly likeable candidate we’ve nominated in decades. If we can’t find another folksy but capable individual they want to have a beer with…I can’t even contemplate that scenario.
That’s just it. We’re all policy wonks and we like to imagine that most people pay attention to, understand, and vote on policy proposals. Sadly, that’s just not the case, at all.
This is the liberal delusion. That people vote on issues. They simply do not. They make a choice, and the issues are seldom part of the choice.
They don’t vote on the kind of bullshit you spout either, or Obama wouldn’t have won twice.
This. The GOPukeFunnel spent 30 years monstering Hillary, while Trump had years of positive TV exposure.
This x 100000!
Booman writes:
If you had walked among these people in a good deplorable disguise, you would not have hoped and thought that you “had the right to expect” anything except racism from them. Not necessarily flat-out racism, either. They are just intelligent enough to recognize as human beings the minority people with whom they work and associate in service positions. Go to any Trump-voting area and check in at the local motel for more on this. Betcha it’s run by immigrants, and I’ll also betcha that those people have little or no trouble from about 99% of the white population. Ditto the gas station/stop ‘n shop joints, ditto the people behind cash registers elsewhere and people doing manual labor. Fairly well paid manual labor, often as not. It’s always “Them other darkies” that get their dander up. You know…the welfare queens and urban rioters? The high-level media and government functionaries who spout off at them about how deplorable they are? Of course the locals are going to vote against them, just like you vote against people who knee-jerk consider people like you as just more dead-brained, useless middle class/upper middle class eggheads like all the people who rule their lives from above.
Sad, really.
Both sides of the population coin fighting to put the other side of the coin on the bottom of the flip. Meanwhile, the controllers work to keep these two sides at odds in order to better control them.
Very sad…but also apparently very effective. Except for the occasional outlier who can somehow fairly well pass through the walls that keep these groups apart, there really is no true contact. And the controllers are happy to keep it that way. Why? That’s how they make their fortunes.
Side by side, pounding away at the hustle.
All smiles and an inch deep.
Yuk, yuk, yuk.
Sad.
AG
P.S. If I had my way, they’d all be lined up and executed at sunrise, but it wouldn’t do any good. Before sunset a new cadre of hustlers would simply take their place.
Sad…
Another thing about that story: The picture of the three guys raking the bed.
All white. All guys. One 26 – no gloves. The other 2 had gloves – they’ve been doing this for some time. You learn that gloves are important when you do a lot of stuff outside.
In the midwest, we don’t rely on illegals to do manual labor. I have guys who do my lawn. They are white guys. They also do the snow shoveling. Think of it – white guys who do manual labor.
The notion that these are “jobs Americans will not do” is false. We hear that over and over and over. To the white guys, that statement is “we want cheap labor and will replace you if we can get a cheap illegal”. I don’t hire illegals, myself. In Flyover Country, we do our own work, and don’t rely on illegals.
sayonara.
That seems a bit harsh.
I live in LA and perhaps in a bubble (Caltech – an university with plenty of diversity and people making decisions, mostly, based on reason and logic).
YET, I have experienced low wage workers who perhaps are not all legal. (I myself am a legal immigrant, from India in the 1980s, so I have some experience with the immigration process)
Our gardener, a US citizen of Mexican descent (I asked him) has had trouble finding workers to help his small business. Same story with our house cleaner, who is now getting quite old to do the work herself.
Some years ago two close friends from India, who visit LA every year for a music manufacturers convention, wanted to start a specialized Indian restaurant featuring street foods from Kolkata. In particular they, and I, were interested in serving the chicken roll, which is like a wrapped burrito with tandoori chicken and grilled onions and cilantro, chilis, etc.
When the local Santa Anita Mall asked for a very high price, we considered a food truck as a more fiscally viable alternative. So we checked out the food truck that serves lunch at Caltech. The owner pointed out how he was graying prematurely because he is always worried about getting help. And at the low food truck price points, I am not sure he is paying a lot of money to his workers.
So it is not crystal clear to me whether our economy will survive strongly if ALL illegal labor was stopped at an instant’s notice (IF DJT had that magic wand)!
As far as the economic anxieties go, the main issue is the nature of future jobs and the workforce. The latest issue of the top scientific journal Nature has a cover story on the future of jobs. It is not clear what that will be, and the story urges the technological/scientific community to start focusing on that to help the politicians.
I think any viable Democratic candidate has to be able to address this issue in a way that is understandable to the voter in Terre Haute/Vigo County. That itself will be breaking the mold. The person has to have less baggage than HRC (of course induced by years of Republican bashing). Then perhaps those that voted for Si Se Puede will be back in the Democratic column.
Booman has warned dataguy on more times than I can count to stop purposefully using the term “illegals” in this space because other commenters asked him to stop. He was warned that doing this again would result in a ban. Woops.
Ah!
I stand corrected, since I am new to this site.
For reference, dataguy became a member of this site on July 17th, 2005.
It’s almost impossible to get banned with that long of a track record as a member. He was given way way way more leniency on this issue than a newcomer would.
I did not want to ban him and I was willing to take a lot of criticism, and did, for tolerating his behavior.
But he obviously just doesn’t care at this point. He doesn’t respect me anymore for whatever reason, at least not enough to follow my rules.
So, very reluctantly, I had to say adios.
It’s not just the word.
No, obviously not, but Booman explicitly cited the word to him as bannable if he continued to use it.
I’m not sure folks know what a conglomerate is. Nor do they care much, I’m afraid. For me the question is what was the common appeal of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump? It was about shaking things up. Trumps promises were empty and contradictory. His main positive was that he said stuff you’re not supposed to say. Bernie did too. Hillary did what folks have always done when running: she played to some imaginary middle. But this past election was about breaking the mold. Who do we have on the Dem side that can carry that message to fruition when Trump fails at it? Or who, anyway, can light that fire? (And I wouldn’t want to have a beer with Trump, sorry).
You couldn’t anyway, he doesn’t drink. (The mind boggles at the thought of a drunken Trump.)
To me his not drinking is yet another indicator of just how strange and limited he is.
(I mean, he’s not following some religious or moral guideline there. He just, like, doesn’t drink, because his mind is already is some kind of permanent fugue state.)
His brother died from alcoholism, yes? Freddy Jr. (Fredo).
I didn’t know about that. I partially retract the point.
I haven’t had a drop in 40 years. My reason would be the same as Trump.
It would be a strange upside down world of being a teetotaler is a sign of a personality disorder.
I can’t tell you how many terrible stories I have heard at work that started with “I stopped at the bar and…..”
.
Maybe he’s a stoner.
He is a classic dry drunk.
I haven’t the time just now to digest this, but the issue of corporate farms could well be a non starter. When I was just a lad we milked around 50 to 60 cows depending on how many we sold. Today there is a farm in Indiana with – wait for it – 30000 cows with enough milk for Chicago. ( I went to a farm show last spring and saw how they do it. Shit I’m told the cows literally milk themselves. ) That takes a good deal of money and know how. What are we proposing to do here? Go back to 50 cows? I bet the same is also true of farmers who raise grain. Maybe it is a little like the coal miners. Some things tend to go the way of the buggy whip. Here is a smaller scale look at it in New York state:
Robotics on dairy farms cows milk themselves>
I tend to agree. These areas of the country are hollowed out because the kids move away. They get an education and want to live in a big city where there are jobs, lots of people to fall in love with, music etc. The rural counties have nothing for them.
It would be an exercise to determine how the demographics of some of these areas have changed in the last 20 or 30 years. By age, by race, by educational level, etc. Did the Dems lose those counties by more votes than before, or just bigger percentages? The young and old liberal votes are concentrated, leaving many, many counties with only folks who dream of how it was when they were growing up, who wish their kids would come to work with them (on a farm, in a hardware store, etc.) But the times they are a-changin’
Yes, much of rural America may be trapped in a time warp, wishing things were like they were in the past.
it doesn’t help that wages are stagnant and people can’t get ahead. Pew Research did a study of the changing demographics. Here is a line from that study”
Add into that the identity politics issue and the democrats have a tiger by the tail. In the democratic party 57% of the voting base is white, the difference is minority. Once that becomes the issue, the party has a problem. I noted the other day this could be an issue in Virginia once the dog whistles come out. IMO we need to develop a vision for all of us that people can buy into. Time is a wasting.
The family farm is an American icon. Sure, there aren’t that many of them anymore, but look how much mileage Trump got out of bringing back coal mines. I’m not saying this is perfect but it’s worth at least exploring. Symbols matter. You just have to find the right ones.
I agree. There may be ways to work around it. I like the idea of helping people get into business. I suspect these big farms need lots of suppliers and that seems like something an enterprising young man can do.
Shit, I did it by buying a truck and hauling milk to the creamery and then hauled hay. Not hard to do. Didn’t make a fortune but ..
What was the life-span of and quality of life for those 50-60 milk-cows and what is it for those 30,000 that don’t even experience the touch of other animals?
Luckily we have video of the 50-60.
H
.
I know folks will move on to the next thread, but I just wanted to add that Terre Haute was the home of Columbia House and also one of three Columbia Records pressing plants. They employed thousands of people in factory work and shipping. But since the heyday of singles, LPs, 8 track, cassettes, and DVDs has died — replaced with streaming digitally — many folks are out of work. The buildings are empty. Once a source of great civic pride (and I’ve been there and seen it — years ago, I’d imagine its loss is devastating. People went from high school to those jobs and worked all their working years there.
I can’t help but imagine that Newton, Iowa, where Maytag pulled out, is much the same. And probably hundreds of other “company towns.”
And in Indiana, during the campaign Carrier became a big symbol of this same process happening again. Some caused by automation, some by new inventions, and some by shipping jobs overseas. That last was the easy one to latch blame to — cheap labor.
Where I lived in upstate NY, we also lost a factory and generations worked there. It is a devastating thing to see. There is a problem waiting for some solution, like helping the local people get back in business.
I was under the impression that some of the white goods manufacturing have moved back to US, because it needed tighter coupling with the designers who are still based in US.
Some years ago a Republican friend pointed this out to me and I had done some research and found that GE had moved back some of their manufacturing to US from China.
Here is an article that says Whirlpool moved some of its manufacturing from Mexico back to US:
http://investors.whirlpoolcorp.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=815121
The problem isn’t that we need to get them back in business. They were never business people, but workers. Many don’t want to be entrepreneurs. They just want the knowledge that there is a paycheck at the end of the week, they don’t want the responsibility of having to make payroll, or decisions, or take risks. They want security for themselves and their kids.