I’ve written a lot about left-wing working class politics in the swing states, but these places are not limited to that. States like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin They are some of the most politically unorthodox in the country; That is why, of course, they are indecisive.
I was struck by a recent survey conducted by Blueprint, a left-leaning public opinion research initiative, that speaks to this point. As they put it, “Voters in key states are ideologically eclectic: They have conservative views on immigration and crime, but they are pro-choice and they favor government action to rein in corporate excesses, especially in prices. “They reward pragmatic populist positions rather than strict ideological coherence.”
They also “favor policy that punishes bad corporate actors, but are skeptical of government overstepping its limits and radical rhetoric of systemic change.” This point is interesting because it indicates that the decision of Kamala Harris Targeting price gouging—politically astute but blind to broader market forces—remains the correct strategy in swing states. The same goes for the stance on lowering prescription drug prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate with Big Pharma.
In fact, 57 percent of swing state voters believe the criminal justice system is not tough enough. They want corporations to pay for their crimes, but they also want people to be held accountable. This presents an opportunity for Harriswho, as a former prosecutor, is committed to seeing bad guys get what they deserve. Given that voters in battleground states also favor decreased immigration, I would say there is some room for her to lean toward immigration reform and make sure the government gets tough on illegal entries.
Voters in swing states also take a hardline position on the deficit. That makes a lot of sense to me, coming from the Midwest, where people tend to have soft attitudes about thrift and frugality; 69 percent of voters in swing states believe in deficit reduction, although they also appear to be tolerant of more government intervention in markets (only 23 percent agree that “Soviet-style price controls” will worsen inflation. It’s a paradox, of course, but it can be an opportunity to send messages about government efficiency versus spending.
As I wrote in a column a few years ago monthsbureaucracy is rampant in both the public and private sectors. Growing up in Indiana, I’ve seen entire farms labeled as wetlands after the wrong bird lands on a row of crops. I’ve seen factory owners have to rebuild entire operations because a certain type of paint is banned. I have heard US mining executives say that it will take them five to six years to obtain a permit to open rare earth mineral facilities. And don’t get me started on the complexities of federal student aid forms or New York City building codes.
The same goes for the private sector, of course, I have argued that Harris must do everything possible to combat rent-seeking by big bureaucratic monopolies, which favors voters concerned about the cost of living (73 percent of citizens in swing states say reducing the prices of goods consumption, gasoline and services is its main economic priority).
At the end of this investigation, I thought, more than before, that perhaps the approach of Harrisa bit vague, but pragmatic, on the economic front not so bad. Now he needs to engage people with many different points of view, and while more integrated systems thinking will be necessary to make good policies if he wins, heterodoxy can serve him well now.
Peter, in your travels through the battleground states, what are some of the points of political heterodoxy that seem most curious to you? And how do you see Trump and Harris taking advantage of them?
Recommended readings
-An article in Foreign Policy describes the two sides of those who have a hardline stance with China in the Republican Party and how they differ in their approach to dealing with the threat from the Communist Party of China. Although I also have a hardline position regarding the Asian nation, I think it is crazy to think that the US can achieve regime change in Beijing. The United States can do much better by focusing on a strong, integrated domestic industrial strategy that ensures supply chain resilience and fills gaps in areas such as shipbuilding, steel, chips, rare earth minerals and, of course, cutting-edge technologies.
-A magazine article The New Yorker about Russia’s spy war in the Arctic is a gripping story about how the top of the world is becoming one of the most geopolitically charged places on Earth.
-In Financial Times Don’t miss my column on how the United States, not just China, is increasingly perceived as a global risk node, and don’t miss lunch with Signal’s Meredith Whittaker, who has words of wisdom about artificial intelligence and the economics of surveillance.
Peter Spiegel responds
Rana, I certainly agree with you that swing states are politically unorthodox. And I may even become convinced that Harris is right to be vague about ideology in order to reach the maximum number of voters who can be convinced within these key battlegrounds.
But I have a problem with Blueprint’s proposed conclusions because they seem to argue the opposite: that the contested voters in these states share an identifiable set of issues and values that can easily be targeted by presidential campaigns. The reality is that the seven swing states are a heterogeneous group of regions, political histories, and demographics that make any attempt to identify a prototypical “swing voter” on a national scale impossible at best and misleading at worst.
To oversimplify, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have been swing states for several decades because of their common histories as large industrial centers that have moved closer to the Republican Party for decades thanks to the cultural and business issues you’ve written so compellingly about. , Frog. They are at stake because of Reagan Democrat calls that Biden was able to win back in places like his hometown of Scranton.
However, Georgia and North Carolina are completely different animals. They are moving in the opposite direction, from solid Republicans to “in play” for Democrats. They are the “New South” that was once in tune with conservatives across the region, but has seen the arrival of highly skilled workers in places like North Carolina’s Research Triangle or Atlanta’s burgeoning music scene, making which has given them an increasingly cosmopolitan flavor, and a voting bloc that will be more supportive of globalization than the undecided voter of the industrial Midwest.
Finally, Arizona and Nevada are younger Western states with less of the historical baggage of the Midwest or New South and more of a libertarian streak. They are also shifting from solid Republicans to centrists due to the rise of skilled workers, but both were shaped much more by immigration, with second and third generations of Mexican Americans playing an outsized role in changing their political makeup. Democrats believed they had the Latino vote locked in, but Republicans have proven resilient for some of the same reasons that many immigrant groups become gradually more conservative over generations. These voters need a different set of issues addressed than undecided voters in the Midwest and New South.
In short, undecided voters may be even more unorthodox than you think they are, Rana. Still, so much Bill Clinton as Barack Obama (and Joe Biden) managed to win in many of these states with detailed economic visions and plans. We should expect the same from Kamala Harris.
Your comments
And now a few words from our Swamp Notes readers…
In response to: “Regardless of what you think of Carter and Reagan as presidents, when you think about them as people you realize how superior they are or were to Donald Trump. “We need decency regardless of politics, and Trump is a cowardly and disturbed person.” Commentator.
In response to: “Spend time on a family dairy farm in Wisconsin… and what you’re likely to find is a white, septuagenarian farming couple whose adult children left the farm in search of opportunities in the city. This couple hasn’t had a vacation in decades, they have an $800,000 combine that they owe a lot of money on, they employ migrant labor (mostly Hispanic) because no one wants to do the hard, dirty work of taking care of 200 dairy cows. Ask any farming community what they really think of immigrants and the answer will be that their farms cease to exist without this workforce.
“Enter the Democratic Party, which in the recent past has had the gall to accuse this couple of benefiting from undeserved white privilege, and to top it all off, often accuses them of being racist. This farming couple looks around their hard-earned property, despairs over their pile of debt, laments that they have no succession plan other than auctioning off the herd, and squint, they can’t see their privilege. I can’t really blame them for abandoning the Democratic Party…the truth is, the party abandoned them.
“The vice president Kamala Harris would do well to address the Democratic Party’s shortcomings and answer this farming couple’s biggest questions: What did we do wrong? Where is the social contract between the government and citizens? Why do some elements of your party accuse me of inheriting privileges when I am poor and my way of life is disappearing seemingly month by month? Sure, we benefited from having the family farm passed to us, and we weren’t brought to this country as involuntary servitude, but privileges? We are not coastal elites. We go to church. We work hard and follow the rules. And we may not want donald trump like our son-in-law, but at least it doesn’t make us feel less.” Steven C. Wallace.
