Democrats Are Turning Things Around in the Midwest. Here's How to Build on That Momentum

Blog

Mar 6

Donald Trump eked out a narrow victory in 2016 by winning just 80,000 votes spread across three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

That upset happened after years of underinvestment by Democratic donors in states that many had come to take for granted. It also came in the wake of two decades of Democratic leaders embracing neoliberal economic policies, including free trade agreements that ravaged the region. Trump’s victory also came as the party moved left on social issues, fueling backlash among culturally conservative, non-college-educated voters.

We’ll be living with the results of the razor-thin 2016 election — most notably, a right-wing Supreme Court — for decades to come.

Now, though, signs are growing of a major Democratic turnaround in the three states that put Trump in the White House. President Joe Biden won all of them in 2020, and last fall, Democrats flipped the Michigan legislature, won control of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and won all key statewide offices in Wisconsin.

Things are moving in the right direction. But what’s still needed to consolidate and build on these gains? What would it take, for example, not just to lock down closely divided Wisconsin, but also put Ohio and even Iowa back into play? And what’s the role of donors in advancing such work?

New Optimism

Debate has raged since the 2016 election about what clenched Trump’s victory in states that had long been part of the Democrats’ “Blue Wall.” While much evidence points to racial resentment as the biggest driver, it’s also clear that economic disruption and status anxiety has played a role in fueling right-wing populism — especially in areas stricken by lost manufacturing jobs.

A number of new strategy and narrative projects in recent years have looked at how the left should respond to these damaging forces.

Most recently, long-time progressive strategist Mike Lux laid out ideas for how Democrats can do better in “factory towns” across the Midwest. This work is part of a larger project by the American Family Voices to better understand working-class voters and help Democrats rebuild its historic connection to these Americans.

Lux’s paper — based on polling and other data — paints an alarming picture of a Democratic brand in distress. Voters view the party as out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people, too extreme, and generally ineffective. Worst of all, Democrats are “in a hole on the economy.” Many working-class voters embrace GOP framing of economic issues and trust Republicans more in this area. Meanwhile, the right’s culture war messaging can pack a powerful punch — especially given the decline of local news and rising misinformation.

But Democrats can turn things around, says Lux. And the key here is to embrace “kitchen table populism.” What he means by that is combining “populist rhetoric with delivering practical, tangible results.”

Biden is no raging populist, but he’s moved to embrace this formula. He’s signed major legislation to invest in manufacturing and infrastructure, while also ushering in a tough new stance against corporate monopolies. All that makes Lux optimistic. He says Biden is “more focused on reviving America’s working class than any president since the days of FDR and Truman.” In turn, that’s creating a “generational opportunity” for Democrats to reconnect with working-class voters.

Some strategists like Ruy Teixeira worry that even the most powerful economic appeals won’t break through if Democrats are too left on social issues. Unpopular stances on issues like immigration and policing, says Teixeira, are pushing away both white and nonwhite working-class voters.

Lux is more optimistic on this score, writing: “Contrary to conventional wisdom, populist economic messaging works much better than cultural war messaging. Our strongest Democratic message on the economy beats the Republican culture war message easily.”

New Narratives

Voters often tune out policy details and listen instead for cues that politicians share their values. To win back working-class voters in the Midwest and beyond, it won’t be enough for Democrats to push popular economic ideas. They also must connect more viscerally with these voters through well-crafted narratives.

Better connect voters on the economy. One new messaging framework with a lot of potential is the Winning Jobs Narrative. Based on deep polling and focus-group research, it offers several recommendations.
Center working people in their story of American life and explain how they are the engines of economic progress.
Embrace and support the value of work.
Position government in a supporting (not starring) role, so that we respect and center personal agency.
Relate policy to the benefits of broadly shared economic prosperity.

This vision of how Democrats should communicate won’t make everyone happy. Even as many progressives tout big new government programs and redistributive populism (e.g., a wealth tax) as the key to wooing working-class voters, WJN offers a different prescription. What such voters want most of all, it argues, is to be rewarded for their hard work and have control over their lives. That view is echoed by other recent analyses, including Gene Sperling’s 2020 book, “Economic Dignity.” And it tracks research on right-wing populism across developed countries that spotlights how despair over job losses can fuel status anxiety and racial resentment.

If working-class men feel that they’re left behind and useless, watch out. That’s not a problem that you can solve with Medicare for All or a wealth tax. In fact, some redistributive policies can backfire if they smack of “something for nothing” or if they overly center government. Democrats are better off leaning into policies that create jobs and boost paychecks, such as supporting unions and a higher minimum wage. Mike Lux notes that unions are extremely popular in factory towns and are crucial messengers for Democratic economic policies.

New Organizing

New policies and new messages alone won’t be enough to power Democrats to larger electoral success across the Midwest. Major investments are also needed in progressive organizing and Democratic Party infrastructure. “Old-fashioned field organizing, especially door knocking, is still the single most effective way of reaching voters,” Lux writes.

Happily, there’s been a lot of movement on that front.

Since 2016, donors have poured many millions of dollars into progressive groups in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These states were battlegrounds not just in 2020, but also in 2022 — spurring record funding from donors who viewed both election cycles in existential terms. Much of this money came through intermediaries like Movement Voter Project, Way to Win and the State Infrastructure Fund — entities that didn’t exist in the Obama era when the Tea Party was surging to victories across the Midwest. Thanks partly to these investments, Democrats have not only recaptured much of the ground lost to Trump, they’ve also finally begun to reverse losses from the early Tea Party surge — most notably by taking back the House of Representatives in both Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2022 for the first time since 2010.

One question now is whether left-leaning donors will sustain and increase their investments in the Midwest. Another is how new funding might best be spent.

I can’t answer the first question; I can only keep my fingers crossed. But for insights on the second, let’s turn to a report that Kirk Noden wrote last year for the State Power Action Fund last year: “Winning the Midwest: Disrupting Myths and Building Multiracial Governing Coalitions.”

This 60-page paper is probably the best analysis that exists of progressive infrastructure in the region. It offered an unflinching look at the challenges facing Democrats in states rife with cynicism. Noden writes: “The hope and despair of the people of the Midwest is driven by the interlocking forces of deindustrialization, deeply segregated communities, growing precarity, and the failure of our political system to address the destabilization of people’s economic and cultural identity.”

Like other analysts, Norden points to shockingly large drop-offs in Democratic support among small-town and rural voters since 2008, as shown in this graphic from the report.

At the same time, Norden expresses optimism that Democrats can make major electoral gains in the region and offers a four-part strategy.

First, invest in “strategic and independent Black, immigrant and youth organizing.” Many donors have already come to see the value of this approach; now, what we need is more such funding — a lot more. Norden calls for a $50 million, five-year investment across seven states — a sum that is probably way too low.
Second, support work that reaches out to persuadable white voters. Norden advocates year-round organizing efforts that engage whites in rural areas and small towns, and suggests a leading role for faith organizations and groups that do deep canvassing. Blue Tent strongly recommends that donors support the Rural Democracy Initiative, a group at the forefront of this work.
Third, advance a Race Class Narrative. Norden sees enormous potential in this messaging framework, which seeks to neutralize racialized appeals that divide working people and benefit the wealthy. Blue Tent explored this research in a 2021 article on Ian Haney Lopez and also reported on ISAIAH and other groups putting the RCN into action in Midwestern states during the 2020 election cycle.
Fourth, invest in voter mobilization efforts across the Midwest. Many donors are now onboard with such work, which has yielded enormous gains. But there’s still not enough funding going to this area and much of it is deployed triage-like in battleground states, leaving few resources for long-term work to win back the once-blue states of Ohio and Iowa.

****

A key point stressed in “Winning the Midwest” is that this region has a long history of political volatility. And the way that the Democratic Party and its donors have often operated — with episodic bursts of campaign investments at election time — hasn’t helped.

Norden offers a blueprint for a year-round push to build a more stable and progressive political future in the Midwest. But it won’t come cheap. The investments he and others recommend total in the tens of millions of dollars. Those sums, though, need to be put into context in an era when a single expensive Senate race can easily top $200 million.

Democratic donors have plenty of money. The question is whether they’re willing to invest in more strategic and long-term ways — not just in the Midwest, but in other pivotal regions like the South.