Democrats Just Retook the Rust Belt. Can It Deliver the Presidency in 2020?
Democrats Just Retook the Rust Belt. Can It Deliver the Presidency in 2020?
TINA NGUYEN at Vanity Fair
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/democrats-rust-belt-elections-2020/amp?__twitter_impression=true
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On Wednesday afternoon, long after polls had closed, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker finally conceded to his opponent Tony Evers. He had clung on into the late afternoon, hoping to exceed the margin of victory that, thanks to his own legislation, would have allowed him to request a recount. But he was ultimately forced to pack it in, becoming yet another in a series of Rust Belt Republicans defeated by a Democrat. Across the storied post-industrial region, other Republican candidates, including many backed by Trump, likewise fell to Democrats: Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf was re-elected, as was Debbie Stabenow in Michigan, where Gretchen Whitmer defeated Trump-backedBill Schuette. Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwinwon her race handily.
Walker’s defeat, like that of other Republicans polling behind Democrats, was not surprising. Nonetheless, the suddenness with which the Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania flipped back into the Democratic column was noteworthy. Together, about 80,000 votes in those three states were famously responsible for delivering Trump the election, cementing an electoral college victory that stunned Democrats. Before 2016, the region had been considered a “blue wall”; after Trump, it seemed an open question whether his victory was a fluke, or the beginning of a more decisive political realignment.
Tuesday’s results alone won’t answer that question—but they are, undeniably, good news for a Democratic Party that has spent the last two years obsessed with the myth of a blue-collar rebellion. Wolf, Stabenow, and Whitmer were far from the only Democratic candidates propelled to victory: Pennsylvania alone flipped four districts, fulfilling a major component of Democrats’ plan to win back control of the House. Even more notably, the field was full of progressives and female candidates, many of them minorities—an indication that the new face of the Democratic Party has pull in parts of the country formerly carried by Trump. “People responded to Donald Trump for change, and now they’re responding to the women for change,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told Bloomberg. “In 2020, they’ll vote for change again.”
A variety of factors is likely to blame for the G.O.P. losses. For one, as The Atlantic noted, research by the AFL-CIO showed that Republicans had lost a crucial group, and one responsible for propelling Trump to victory in 2016: working-class white women had “clearly soured on Trump, largely because of his effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.” In addition, as Politico pointed out, Republicans there failed to capitalize on the Trump Bump, yielding weaker candidates, lower fund-raising hauls, and a lackadaisical base. Moreover, Trump’s victory in 2016 hinged on Democrats crossing party lines to vote for him. But without Trump himself on the ballot, those voters showed no inclination to defect this time around. Whether these factors will hold in 2020 remains to be seen. The Rust Belt is notoriously finicky, handing a victory to Obama in 2008, only to strip it away two years later. In 2012, the region leaned Democratic once again, and of course, in 2016, it broke heavily for Trump.
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