Task For Democrats-- Winning Back The Midwest

Yes, this does speak to voters in the Midwest

This morning we took a look at the economic uber-populism that dominates one lane of the Democratic primary-- and influences, for better or worse, another, more centrist lane occupied by careerists like Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, etc. Zach Carter's observation ended the post:

Running for re-election in 1936, FDR noted that the “economic royalists” of “business and financial monopoly, speculation” and “reckless banking” all counted themselves among his political “enemies.” 
“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today,” Roosevelt said. “They are unanimous in their hate for me-- and I welcome their hatred.” 
For today’s Democrats, that’s the ticket.

I agree; that's the ticket. And I want to run it through a filter Elana Schor and Sara Burnett set up for the Associated Press: 2020 Democrats weigh how to recapture voters in Midwest. A successful Democratic presidential campaign in 2020 needs to recapture the blue-leaning states that Bernie won in the primaries but that the centrist/corporatist who the Democrats burdened themselves with in the general election did so poorly in the general. The Upper Midwest went for Bernie's from-the-gut economic populism and rejected Hillary conventional establishment approach, even after she tried a Bernie-lite approach she barely understood (ala Kamala Harris today). Bernie won Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Kansas, North Dakota and Illinois minus-machine-controlled-wards in Chicago. Hillary lost Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana and drastically underperformed Obama everywhere in the Midwest (while outperforming Obama in many areas of the more traditionally conservative Sun-Belt).

Let's take Indiana as an example. Obama beat McCain there in 2008. In the 2016 primary primary, Bernie beat Hillary 355,256 (52.5%) to 303,382 (47.5%) and a severely corrupt Democratic Establishment led by a still-in-office Debbie Wasserman Schultz promptly awarded Hillary 47 delegates and Bernie 44 delegates. A few months later the Democratic Establishment and their candidate got a perfectly understandable response from Indiana voters. Trump swept all but 4 of Indiana's 92 counties and eviscerated Hillary 1,556,220 (57.2%) to 1,031,953 (37.9%).

No one-- except me (in my most optimistic of moods)-- believes the Democrats are going to wrest Indiana away from Trump next year. But everyone is counting on Wisconsin to come home. Last year the Democrats' very weak, generic gubernatorial candidate, Tony Evers, beat incumbent Republican Governor Scott Walker 1,324,307 (49.6%) to 1,295,080 (48.5%) while progressive Democrat Tammy Baldwin crushed Republican Leah Vukmir in the Senate race, 1,472,914 (55.4%) to 1,184,885 (44.6%).

In 2016 Bernie's economic populism resonated among Wisconsin Democrats. Although Wasserman-Schultz fixed the delegate situation so that Bernie got only 49 to Hillary's 47, he crushed her in the primary, 567,936 (56.6%) to 432,767 (43.1%). On primary day Cruz beat Trump, 531,129 to 386,370 but I'm sure you noticed that Bernie beat each of them. Look what happened in Dane County (Madison) on primary day:

• Bernie- 102,585
• Hillary- 61,072
• Cruz- 26,320
• Trump- 20,884
• Kasich- 20,055

Trump beat Hillary in both Racine and Kenosha counties-- must wins for Democrats if they want to win statewide. But Bernie won both counties in the primary. Kenosha:

• Bernie- 14,612
• Trump- 11,139
• Hillary- 10,871
• Cruz- 10,855
• Kasich- 9,730

Racine told a similar story, also worth taking into account today when you hear pundits shrieking about how only a centrist like Biden or Bloomberg or Gillibrand can win in Wisconsin:

• Cruz- 18,698
• Bernie- 14,651
• Hillary- 14,086
• Trump- 11,756
• Kasich- 5,269

Despite a silly narrative that fans of Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Sherrod Brown are pushing, "success in the Midwest comes down to more than geography."

Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law Poll at Milwaukee’s Marquette University, said he’s “somewhat dubious” that being a Midwesterner translates into success at the regional or national level.

“It’s not like his neighborliness did him any favors,” Franklin said of Walker.

More fundamentally, there’s no guarantee that voters are familiar with-- or fond of-- their regional political leaders. In a Marquette Law poll conducted earlier this month, nearly two-thirds of Democrats and independents said they didn’t know enough about Klobuchar to have an opinion about her. Of the eight candidates whose names were included in the poll, only Julian Castro of Texas was less familiar to Wisconsin voters.

With name identification numbers far lower than coastal rivals such as Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Brown and Klobuchar have their work cut out for them. Brown’s new tour, which will also stop in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, could give him a needed boost as he weighs a primary campaign.

As the tour begins, even Brown says he doesn’t see his potential candidacy as solely geared to the Midwest.

“I think it’s an appeal to working-class voters from all regions and of all races,” Brown told The Associated Press, describing his message as a product of “who I am and my whole career,” not shaped by “focus groups.”

Klobuchar also dismissed the notion that her commanding re-election victory in November, in which she won 42 counties that Trump claimed in 2016, makes her uniquely qualified to capture Midwestern voters. Yet she also touted the power of the playbook she’s used to win over Minnesotans “in this time of highly polarized politics, where people are in opposite corners of the boxing ring.”

“While I stand my ground on issues that matter to me, I’m also someone who looks for common ground,” she said in an interview. “That’s only way you can get to higher ground.”

Still, if she mounts a presidential bid-- she said she’ll announce a decision “shortly”-- Klobuchar could surprise rivals in Iowa, a neighboring state she’s visited multiple times since Trump’s election. David Johnson, a former Iowa state senator who switched his affiliation from Republican to independent in 2016 out of opposition to Trump, said Klobuchar is a familiar face who shares the workhorse sensibilities of many people in the state.

“She’s real knowledgeable, and she has a real sense of humility about it,” Johnson said. “She’s level-headed. She’s not a grenade-thrower.”

Recalling Klobuchar’s pitch to bridge the divide between rural and metro areas during remarks to the Iowa Farmers Union last month, Johnson added that “a majority of Americans want some sanity to return to Washington and the Congress, and I believe she’s the one candidate that can bring that together, rather than both parties operating in the extremes.”

Brown’s keen focus on blue-collar areas feeling the economic wallop of globalization has its own dark-horse potential. He also brings a fluency in civil rights issues that could break through with black and Hispanic voters in early primary states that follow the overwhelmingly white electorate in Iowa.

Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper pointed to one small but meaningful touch that’s succeeded for Brown: publicly name-checking their state’s smaller manufacturing hubs, a signal that he cares about areas seeking “a role that’s positive in this 21st-century economy.”

Pepper recalled that Democrats instinctively pushed back at Trump’s call to “make America great again” in 2016, but the president connected with Midwestern voters who “thought, at least they saw someone who seemed to appreciate they are struggling.”

That connection is at the core of the presidential pitch from another Midwestern hopeful, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana. “To me, the really important thing to do in the so-called Rust Belt is to demonstrate there’s a way forward that isn’t soaked in nostalgia,” the 37-year-old Buttigieg said this month as he announced his candidacy. “So, yeah, we have a relationship to our past, but we’re not trying to recapture it.”