I’m just going to use the following Tweet as shorthand for giving you a comprehensive regional breakdown of congressional race polling data:
By far the Democrats’ strongest region in Senate + Gov + House polling has been the Midwest, and I don’t think you’d really gather that from the tonality of the reporting, which tends to fixate on demographic change and therefore finds races in the South & the West a lot sexier.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 10, 2018
It’s true that the Democrats are seriously contesting seats in California, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, and Florida that can best be explained by changes in the racial and ethnic makeup of the states or districts. But where we’ve seen the clearest snapback is in the mostly blue states of the Midwest where the Democrats have either won presidential contests routinely or have at least won occasionally. A few examples include Sen. Joe Donnelly looking very competitive in Indiana, which went heavily for Trump after voting for Obama in 2008, the Iowa governor’s race looking like a dead-heat after Trump won the state by a bigger margin than he won Texas, and recent polls showing Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown cruising to reelection and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray surging into a narrow lead in the Buckeye State.
Trump’s victory came about because he surprisingly won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin which were all considered part of an impenetrable blue wall for the Democrats, but the Democrats look extremely strong in both the senate and governor’s races in all three of those states.
This can’t be explained by demographic change and it isn’t based solely on turnout models and assumptions. The explanation is that a lot of Democrats who voted for Trump in the industrial Midwest have no intention of voting for a Republican in the upcoming midterms.
Now, when you build a theory of the case here, you should be mindful that you’re trying to explain the Midwest. A wholesale national explanation won’t do. So, for example, you can’t just argue that voters are disillusioned or angry with the president without explaining why this is more pronounced in one region than in others.
It’s the formerly blue element that distinguishes the Midwest from other Trump strongholds. Many midwestern lifelong Democrats were attracted to Trump precisely because he was taking a battle-ax to the Republican establishment and so it’s unsurprising that these voters won’t transfer their loyalty from Trump to down-ticket conservatives. Because of union membership and socioeconomic status and tradition, these voters having been voting against Republicans all their lives. They made an exception for Trump and many still support him. Some will even vote for candidates that promise to help the president or that Trump has explicitly endorsed. But the snapback comes from the fact that most longtime Democrats supported Trump but not the party he leads.
In this sense, it has hurt Trump most in the Midwest that he let Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell run Congress largely how they saw fit without taking out his battle-ax at all. With the exception of trade and tariffs issues, Trump has followed the traditional conservative movement line by pursuing tax cuts for the rich, anti-labor policies, the denial of access to health care, and court appointments approved by the Federalist Society. This hasn’t kept the promise of being a different kind of Republican who keeps the little guy in mind.
In traditionally red states, these standard Republican policies are reassuring to the majority of voters, many of whom were wary of Trump and supported him mainly because the alternative was Hillary Clinton. But in traditionally blue states, this has amounted to a betrayal.
Now, when a bunch of white working class union workers abandoned the Democratic Party for a guy credibly accused of sexual assault and promoting xenophobic and racist immigration policies, a lot of the more progressive part of the Democratic base concluded that these voters were so sexist and racist that they were gone forever and didn’t belong in the left’s coalition in any case. The idea that they were motivated by stagnating wages or hollowed out communities was widely mocked. But the midterms are going to test the theory that these voters left the Democratic Party for good.
I always thought that they took a flyer on Trump because they didn’t perceive him as a true Republican and they wanted someone who would disrupt the gridlock that had developed between the two parties that was preventing Congress from addressing almost any pressing issues of concern to their communities. They didn’t think Trump would develop into a hard-right Republican on economic or legal issues, and they never endorsed or voted for those policies.
Certainly, Trump’s tribal appeal to their whiteness was effective and raw racism played an enormous part in how Trump was able to make inroads with this group. But Republicans had been making many of these appeals to them for decades with only modest success, and they had largely voted for a guy named Barack Hussein Obama twice. Making racist appeals didn’t strike me as a durable plan if Trump didn’t actually govern with a new cross-party set of policies.
We’ve now arrived at the 2018 midterms, the first real test of Trump’s ability to build, sustain, and grow a political coalition, and he hasn’t endorsed a single Democrat or received the endorsement of a single Democrat. Since he didn’t even try, it is hard to say that he failed in creating a new kind of political movement distinct from either party, but the fact is that he needed to achieve this in order to fulfill the faith of his midwestern Democratic supporters.
On a national scale, Trump has been satisfied to let the polarization grow, with the result that more and more traditional Republican suburban districts are slipping away from the GOP. But, specific to states like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Iowa, he’s losing a big chuck of his supposedly deplorable vote. They wanted something different and, where it matters, Trump has given them what they had always rejected when voting against the Doles and Bushes, McCains, and Romneys.
Good analysis and I hope you are right. One quibble – you describe the thoughts of Trump supporting midwesterners w/o once mentioning why they would have turned their back on Clinton to join Trump. The election gave us a clear choice and just explaining the Trump side of the equation only tells half the story.
Identifying Clinton as another corporate insider certainly fits your model or was there more to it than that?
“just explaining the Trump side of the equation only tells half the story.”
I’m focused on gaining back ground in the mid-terms right now but I see your point–we’ve got to understand what happened in 2016 as well. One thing I’d suggest is that–after the major national triumph of electing the first African-American president, it was a bit of overreach to attempt to elect the first woman president and the first spouse of a former president. It all seemed too in-bred and ‘fixed’, I think.
We lost too many on the left because Hillary was seen as a corporatist fraud. With a unified party, we would have run away with it. Elizabeth Warren would have crushed Trump, particularly since she knows how to fight back and fire up the base.
I can only speak to what I’ve heard, anecdotally, from my family. For one elderly person in particular, it was simply that she didn’t like Clinton because of her perceived sliminess. She didn’t like Trump much, either, but he seemed to be a successful businessman. She preferred to take a chance with him rather than the “known” good that was Clinton. She did not think that presidents impacted her life much one way or the other, and so I don’t think that she perceived there to be any real stakes in going with Trump over Clinton.
I will say, though, that appearances do matter a great deal to her. I don’t think that she takes kindly to Trump’s daily displays of buffoonery, so I’m hopeful that she will vote Democratic again the next time around.
This is some of your best writing, BooMan. Clear, concise, knowledgeable and objective. Thank you. Glad you are still sharing your well-informed outlook with us.
Booman writes:
“…a lot of the more progressive part of the Democratic base concluded that these voters were so sexist and racist that they were gone forever and didn’t belong in the left’s coalition in any case. The idea that they were motivated by stagnating wages or hollowed out communities was widely mocked.”
Is classist discriminatory thinking “progressive?” I think that it shouldn’t be. That was HRC’s (and the DNC’s) worst mistake.
and:
“,,,the midterms are going to test the theory that these voters left the Democratic Party for good.”
Well…yes and no. The media have recently trumpeting Trump’s economic “successes,” even though they are way overhyped and have yet proven that they will last. Will these voters fall for the hype; will the reality of their rapidly emptying wallets wake them up or will a serious pre-election economic meltdown…which is well on its way already…do the trick.
We shall see.
AG
P.S. You still use Nate Silver as a prognosticator after 2016???
“Once burned, twice shy” should be a motto for all of us.
. . . is not “progressive”.
Nor is “classist discriminatory thinking” anywhere to be seen in what you quoted as though it evoked the question (it doesn’t!):
(Aside: booman’s phrasing there is problematic. “These voters” is doing an awful lot of ill-defined work there. For accuracy, I would rephrase that quote this way:
That, at any rate, was always my conclusion, and remains so to this day. And it’s the actual conclusion I presume I share with the many “progressives” booman refers to there. And it’s obvious that with that needed clarifying revision, there is nothing whatsoever “classis[t]” in that conclusion.)
Nor, obviously, is it evidence that “classist discriminatory thinking . . . was HRC’s (and the DNC’s) worst mistake.”
In fact, to call it “classism” requires defamation by you of the entire class(es) you pretend to support via conflating them all with sexists and racists (etc., i.e., “deplorables”)!
Something you in fact have a long history of doing here. Evoking the obvious question of why you’re so invested in defending deplorables by falsely conflating them with an entire class or classes, then pretending that deploring the actual deplorables within that/those class(es) is somehow “classism”.
Ockham’s suggesting an answer to that question . . .
You write (emphasis mine):
Had Booman written that, I would not have used the word “classist.” But of course, he didn’t. You did. In typical arguebonita fashion, you twist statements to make your point. And what is your point…at least in your anti-AG vendetta?
You don’t like me very much.
(Plus of course…Counterpunch once ignored a submission of yours, so the entire Counterpuch site must be full of shit.)
The feeling is mutual.
Bet on it.
I personally believe that what Booman wrote is more accurate than what you wrote…accurate throughout the length and breadth of the NY Times/WAPO-reading, MSNBC-watching, over 40, college-educated, white, middle and upper middle class, large city and surrounding suburbs-residing demographic that comprises the controlling heart of the Democratic Party these days. The…up until now and quite possibly after Election Day in November as well…primarily losing Democratic Party since 2010. You remember, don’t you? When the electoral tide began to turn after Obama’s real neocentrist/neo-Clintonite colors began to become apparent to the voters?
I further believe that said tide has begun to turn. More white working class and younger voters plus more Republican voters who are totally repelled by Trump’s entire act are beginning to change the overall makeup of the Democratic Party. Add to that the minority vote (seriously multiplied by Trump’s arrant racism) plus the usual loyal Dems and…barring another Sanders-like Clinton/Schumer/Pelosi/mainstream neocentrist DNC closing-of-the-gates fuckup (a still quite possible occurrence, I might add)…you really do have a “blue wave” in the making.
In time for November?
I don’t know.
And neither do you.
Have fun watching.
And kvetching.
I will. (Minus the kvetching part. Bet on that as well.)
Later…
AG
. . . discriminatory thinking” anywhere to be found either in booman’s original phrasing (despite its muddiness with “these voters” doing too much ill-defined work, as I noted) — which is of course why I first quoted booman verbatim (as you “interestingly” did not above) before offering my revision — clearly identified as an “aside”! — to clear up that muddiness re: what “a lot of the more progressive part of the Democratic base” had actually “concluded” about “these voters” (i.e., clarifying which voters “progressives” concluded that about). Here’s booman again, verbatim, starting a bit earlier for context, emphasis added cuz you obviously need the help:
So, nope, still no slightest hint of “classist discriminatory thinking” in there. None whatsoever. No slightest evidence, at all, that any “of the more progressive part of the Democratic base concluded that these voters were so sexist and racist that they were gone forever and didn’t belong in the left’s coalition in any case” based in any way whatsoever on class. That conclusion was based entirely and solely on the racist, sexist, xenophobic bigotry on display in their response to blatant appeals to their racism, sexism, and xenophobia, by those who responded favorably to those appeals. I’m unaware (and so are you! — “bet on it”!) of a single “progressive” anywhere expressing that conclusion about anybody, ever, based on their class membership. Nor does booman provide any such evidence. Nor do you. Obviously, there are many non-white, non-bigoted “working class union workers”, and no “progressives” are concluding that about any of them, either!
And of course it is perfectly you of you to get this so completely wrong!
No, not even remotely close. As anyone can plainly see there, in stark contrast to your idiotic/dishonest misrepresentation, what actually happened was
A reasonable person concludes from this experience that Counterpunch is unreliable — i.e., lacks journalistic ethics and cannot be trusted as a source. Note the equally stark contrast between this reasonable person’s conclusion and your idiotic misrepresentation: “the entire Counterpuch [sic] site must be full of shit.”
So, yeah, it is as true that I ever said
as it is true that
I.e., completely false.
I.e., perfectly you of you.
P.S. Note my generosity in refraining from calling this latest false claim of yours a “lie”. I did this in acknowledgement that you may not have made the false claim “knowingly”, i.e., knowing when you made it that it was false, the widely accepted defining element of a “lie”. It could be explained alternatively by the possibility that you just really are that stupid that you can’t discern the difference between what I wrote and how you totally misrepresented it. Of course, now that it’s been definitively refuted, if you choose to just let it stay there, unretracted and uncorrected, (as you have with every other falsehood of yours that I’ve definitively refuted with factual documentation), then the falsehood becomes “knowing” and thus clearly qualifies as (yet another) . . .
No reply necessary.
You win.
Thanks.
AG
One reason why racist appeals might have resonated more clearly in 2016 than before was simply that they finally had a Republican candidate who dropped all the dog-whistles and wink-winks to racism and went clear open bigot.
But, let us not forget that running a woman for President brought out a LOT of misogyny in white men. Obama may have been black, but he was a MAN who didn’t remind these voters of every upper middle-class woman who looked sideways at them or rejected them or even for some their ex-wives or girlfriends. The thought of Hillary as President was a bridge too far for all too many men.
I was very worried about this prior to 2016 that Democrats just blithely assumed that you could just run a woman for President and because a majority voted for Obama, they would vote for Hillary. That left out a lot of hatred for feminism that isn’t the same as racism.
We assume that if voters are not hard-core bigots and voted for Obama, they are fine with a women candidate for President, but that is clearly not the case. And even among those who might vote for a woman for Congress – it is NOT the same as a woman President – who is the “leader of our country.”
Since the Democratic party is very likely to run another woman in 2020 this is something to keep a close eye on. Because you know Trump is accomplished at denigrating women, and a lot of men love that about him. It’s probably the biggest reason why so many still support him despite every insane blitheringly stupid thing he’s done.
He still has the support of a significant majority of white men in this country – perhaps because he’s so rude to “uppity” women.
He’s still The Bitch-Slayer. For male voters, nothing can take that away from him.
Maybe a 30-point gender gap costs him re-election, but he’ll never be upside down among male vovers.
. . . politically stupid, was nevertheless spot-on accurate: as Hillary defined it, it is the negative value judgment assigned to bigotry — the general term subsuming “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it”.
You hit quite validly on two of those subclasses of deplorables — i.e., bigots: racists and sexists/misogynists, and how deplorable misogyny, beyond “just” racism, worked against Clinton.
“Build the wall” was transparently targeted at the xenophobic and Islamophobic subclasses of deplorables, with a toxic dash of “shithole-countries” racism thrown in for extra flavor. (IIRC, her comment was made to an LGBT advocacy group, perhaps partly explaining specific mention of “homophobic” among the deplorables, though I don’t question her sincerity in deploring it.)
While I think you’re right in emphasizing the part misogyny played against Clinton, I’m also hopeful — based on both anecdotal evidence and some data (e.g., polling) that we’ve passed a watershed divide — culminating with the re-abuse of Christine Blasey-Ford — where that can’t work anymore. Too many women now not just woke, but mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore. Unless, of course, Banana Republicans are successful in their pervasive attempts at subverting democracy to the point that it just doesn’t matter if inciting deplorables doesn’t work anymore.
I think this is mostly accurate, but I would make a slight correction insofar as I think that Democrats could run a generic woman and reasonably think they’d win (they won the popular vote with Clinton, after all). The issue is not just misogyny, but the durable myth that the Clintons specifically are Satan incarnate. 30-plus years of demonization took their toll, and unfortunately the email investigation/Benghazi did enough to convince people that there was some truth to it all.
Someone like a Kamala Harris, with less apparent baggage, would stand a better shot even with the misogyny factor, I think.
This is key. Trump’s “populism” was always the most transparent of his frauds. He never intended to do a thing to implement these promises, and from the moment he took office, he did the exact opposite. The only real question is whether the people who believed him are too stupid to realize it. I think the answer that most have the feeling they’ve been cheated.
The Midwest is doing the worst economically of the nation’s regions. Predictably this is producing more backlash against whoever is in power, because that is one of the main drivers of how people vote (when things are bad, vote out the government). They swung hard against the Democrats in 2010 and 2014, and now they are swinging against the Republicans. The anomaly was 2012, when the Democrats did OK there.
If we win the trifecta in 2020 they’ll swing back to the Republicans in 2022 (even if we set out to fix the Midwest’s economic issues there won’t be big results by then).
The midwest lost it’s ability to export Harley Davidson to the UE because of tariffs. That’s jobs lost that have nothing to do with abortion, gay folks, M13 or the value of Chinese money. Ask any of them how locking her up will get their job back?
It’s the donald’s trade war. You do realize Mexico still has a 30% tariff on US dairy. That trade deal the donald announced did not remove the steel tariff and Mexico refuses to remove their dairy tariff until the donald allows their steel free trade status. Beto needs to run an ad about the state of TX dairy exports to Mexico if he wants to win.