RUTHFULLY YOURS

While the media focus on two power-hungry, low-wattage men — one a stone-cold communist candidate and the other an “I’ll say anything to win” candidate — that’s not the real news. The real news, as two articles illustrate, is in the swing counties around America.

The Wall Street Journal looks at Howard County, Iowa, which swung wildly from Democrat to Republican in 2016. In 2012, Obama won the county by 20%; in 2016, Trump won the county by the same margin. This year, though, voters in Howard County still like Trump and are planning to stick with him:

Recent interviews with dozens of voters here suggest that most of Mr. Trump’s 2016 supporters, including Mr. Wacha [one of 2016’s swing voters], plan to stick with him, even though some said they have grown weary of his personal behavior and trade fights. Among those who previously voted for Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump, many said they are reserving judgment until they see who wins the Democratic nomination.

As for Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, now under way in the Senate, most voters said they haven’t followed the case closely and don’t expect it to weigh heavily in their decisions. Several said they view it as just more Washington partisanship.

What such swing voters do in 2020 will have national implications. Before Mr. Trump, Howard County hadn’t backed a Republican for president since Ronald Reagan in 1984. It is one of the 31 counties in Iowa—the most of any state—that backed Mr. Obama twice and then switched to Mr. Trump.

[snip]

For Mr. Wacha, the greenhouse manager, all the talk in the Democratic primary race about expanding the role of government is turning him off. “I wouldn’t vote for any of the Democrats running right now,” he said. “A lot of their platforms are too far to the left, with free health care and college. None of them have a solution for how to pay for all of this except raising taxes.”

A Politico article about a Michigan gun show also reveals that once solidly working-class Democrat communities have had it with their party.

politically, Michigan has four distinct regions. Northern Michigan is pro-Trump, Western Michigan might support Trump, and Southeast Michigan has Democrat Detroit, with a smattering of blue-collar voters and moderate suburbanites. The interesting region is mid-Michigan. Like Howard County in Iowa, mid-Michigan has seen wild swings since 2008:

The wild card is mid-Michigan. The story here is two majority-minority cities, Flint and Saginaw, surrounded by small suburbs and rural towns that are mostly white. But it’s not a simple story. In 2008, Barack Obama carried Genesee County (home to Flint) by 32 points; eight years later, Trump closed that gap to single digits. Meanwhile, Trump won Saginaw County in 2016 after Obama carried it by 17 points and 12 points in his two statewide victories.

As in Howard County, mid-Michigan voters aren’t planning on abandoning Trump. They like him and they fear Democrat radicalism:

Growing up in Michigan, guns never struck me as partisan issue, at least not in the mold of taxes or abortion or labor laws. Lots of people owned them, Democrats and Republicans alike, and those who didn’t never seemed to have a problem with those who did. No successful politician that I could recall went around campaigning on gun control. But Schenk had a point. It didn’t take long inside the expo center, looking out over endless rows of firearms and ammunition boxes interrupted by Gadsden flags and Make America Great Again hats, to realize this wasn’t just a gun show. It was a tribal gathering, a reunion of right-wingers who wanted to talk and listen as much as buy and sell.

[snip]

In certain wings of the hall there was more MAGA merchandise for sale than weaponry: Trump shirts, Trump socks, Trump bumper stickers, Trump posters, Trump flags, Trump scarves. There was even Trump currency—his likeness on a $2020 bill.

And people were buying this stuff. Lots of it. Some of them didn’t need to: Scores of attendees, more than I could count at a certain point, came wearing a hat or a shirt supporting Trump. It reminded me of NFL fans wearing their team’s jersey to a game.

Ronald Reagan famously explained his becoming a Republican by saying, “I didn’t leave the Democratic party; the Democratic party left me.” For those raised in the moderate(ish) Democrat Party after George McGovern was resoundingly slapped down in 1972, the modern incarnation has again gone too far to the left, leaving the average American voter behind.