on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans are bracing for a massacre in the Midwest.

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maybe



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“When we woke up after the 2016 election, there was a real possibility that we were seeing a realignment … in the Midwest,” says Matt Grossman, a political scientist at MSU.

“But two years later, there’s no sign that those gains are holding.”

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POLITICO Magazine


Donald Trump.

Isaac Brekken/Getty Images

2018
Trump’s GOP Braces for Midwest Massacre

A razor-thin margin in the Rust Belt gave the president his victory in 2016. But Democrats are rebuilding their vaunted ‘Blue Wall’ in 2018.

By TIM ALBERTA

November 06, 2018

Updated November 06, 2018




“Are we rewriting America’s Electoral College map tonight?”

In the predawn hours of Nov. 9, 2016, CNN’s chief national correspondent John King posed the question that would come to define the mechanics of Donald Trump’s victory. It had been 28 years since a Republican had won Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania—states belonging to a much-hyped “blue wall” that narrowed the GOP’s path to 270 electoral votes. As it became clear, however, that Trump would carry all three states, and secure blowouts in the traditional battleground of Ohio and Iowa, a new reality took hold. Whereas Republicans once believed they could only win the presidency using the George W. Bush playbook—appealing to affluent, suburban populations in diverse states such as Virginia, Colorado and Nevada—Trump proved the truer route to the White House went through working-class whites in the industrial Midwest.

The narrative of a sweeping realignment was irresistible. Analysts branded the Rust Belt as “Trump Country.” Streaming into greasy spoons, shot-and-a-beer bars and Wal-marts across the Midwest, reporters pumped out anecdotal insights into the forgotten masses in middle America. And Republican officials, almost instantaneously, shifted their outlook. It didn’t matter that Trump had won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by fewer than 78,000 votes combined—not enough people to fill a popular Big Ten football stadium—or that his path through those states was necessitated by his defeat in once-purple areas of the country. Trump had redrawn the Electoral College map, they insisted, and the implications were far-reaching: Rust Belt Democrats could soon become an endangered species.

Now, on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans are bracing for a massacre in the Midwest.

“When we woke up after the 2016 election, there was a real possibility that we were seeing a realignment among white-working class voters in the Midwest—and that they could go the way that white-working class voters have gone in the south over the past generation,” said Matt Grossman, a political scientist at Michigan State University. “But two years later, there’s no sign that those gains are holding or being extended. Instead, there are a lot of campaigns in that region where Republicans are struggling to be competitive.”

Trump bears much of the responsibility. His approval rating has plunged, by double digits, in most Midwestern states. His presidency has energized the Democratic base in ways Hillary Clinton's candidacy never could. His party’s rewrite of the tax code was disproportionately beneficial to wealthy people and corporations; to the extent the law is popular with voters, he barely tries to promote it. And his trade warring has been burdensome to farmers and blue-collar workers in manufacturing-heavy swatches of middle America, with numerous Republicans from affected states, including Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Steve Stivers of Ohio, pleading privately with Trump and his aides to find resolution.

[Guppy]

1. The republicans went down this path