Friday, October 27, 2017

Weekend reading- Clueless Coastals head to WIsconsin to figure out the 2016 election

Wanted to tell you about a brilliant article that came out this week in The Atlantic by Molly Ball. It’s titled “On Safari in Trump’s America”, where Ball travels to Western Wisconsin to look in on what locals had to say in the aftermath of the November 2016 elections.

Ball goes along with Nancy Hale and a few other members of Third Way, a DC-based think tank that wants “solutions that are not defined by ideological orthodoxy or narrow interests.” Hale was one of the founders Third Way 12 years ago, and their solutions generally involve the calculated, corporate-friendly centrism that defined Bill and Hillary Clinton’s career with a side order of social liberalism and tolerance.

Hillary’s defeat in 2016 to the divisive, race-baiting and policy-thin Donald Trump was a massive jolt to the Third Way crowd. Few places had more of a shift than Western Wisconsin, which went from giving Barack Obama a sizable advantage in 2012 to giving a majority of their votes to Trump in 2016



Ball said that Third Way’s visit to Wisconsin is part of a $20 million effort to figure out why voters in swing areas of the country backed Trump, and what messages they need to hear in order to keep it from happening again.
Open-mindedness was the sworn commitment of the Third Way team. The researchers were determined to approach rural Wisconsin with humility and respect. After the election, Hale told me, “You heard people saying, ‘These people aren’t smart enough to vote, they’re so stupid, if that’s what they want, they deserve what they get.’ That hit us, on every level, as wrong.” They wanted to open their hearts and their minds and simply listen. They were certain that, in doing so, they would find what they believed was true: a bunch of reasonable, thoughtful, patriotic Americans. A nation of people who really wanted to get along.
If you’ve lived in “divide and conquer” Fitzwalkerstan in the 2010s, I think you know that Hale is in for quite the surprise.

They first come across a number of farmers and other “hard workers” in Pierce County. They complain about “leeches” in bureaucracy, a lack of desire among young people to work certain jobs, lament the effect of women working outside of the home, and general dismay at the dead-end life that exists in towns like Ellsworth.

Hale finds this a bit disturbing, but it’s only her first focus group, She then heads off down I-94 to another focus group of workers.
At the Labor Temple Lounge in Eau Claire, nine gruff, tough-looking union men sat around a table. One had the acronym of his guild, the Laborers International Union of North America, tattooed on a bulging bicep. The men pinned the blame for most of their problems squarely on Republicans, from Trump to Governor Scott Walker. School funding, the minimum wage, college debt, income inequality, gerrymandering, health care, union rights: It was all, in their view, the GOP’s fault. A member of the bricklayers’ union lamented Walker’s cuts to public services: “If we can’t help each other,” he said, “what are we, a pack of wolves—we eat the weakest one? It’s shameful.”

But their negativity toward Republicans didn’t translate to rosy feelings for the Democrats, who, they said, too frequently ignored working-class people. And some of the blame, they said, fell on their fellow workers, many of whom supported Republicans against their own interests. “The membership”—the union rank-and-file—“voted for these Republicans because of them damn guns,” a Laborers Union official said. “You cannot push it out of their head. A lot of ‘em loved it when Walker kicked our ass.”
This type of bluntness and bleak outlook concerns Hale and her associated Third Wayers, who want to believe all Americans are rational, decent human beings that are all striving for the same outcomes, and assumes that America’s problems can be solved by reaching some kind of mushy middle-of-the-road consensus that is “good enough” for all parties involved.

The Third Way mentality might make sense if you were financially comfortable and lived in a high-educated, diverse area on the coasts with the prospect of a better tomorrow. In that circumstance, you have enough of a cushion in your life to worry about deeper issues, and can afford to walk away with half a loaf.

But that is not close to the reality for many in the left-behind parts of the Midwest. What finally sends the well-connected Boomer from Cali over the edge is when a café owner in a Viroqua focus group calls into question the entire political game and the limited outcomes that are being considered these days.
The cafe owner—a bearded man in a North Face fleece—had recently attended a town hall held by the local Democratic congressman, Ron Kind, a Third Way stalwart and former chair of the House’s centrist New Democrat Coalition. “I’m not, like, a jumping-up-and-down Berniecrat,” the man said. “But what you see in these congressional meetings is a refusal to even play ball” with ideas considered too extreme, like single-payer health care. “All these centrist ideals,” he said, “are just perpetuating a broken system.”
Hale ends up telling author Ball that it disturbs her that people aren’t willing to work with people that had a different opinion, and that many of the people involved had a “fuck you” mentality to many of those who opposed them. It’s almost like the small-towners didn’t want to debate the great issues of the day, and had been turned off by what America was offering in economic and political outcomes.

Naturally, Hale hides this reality in her final report for Third Way (admit that neoliberal American policy lets middle America down? No way!). Instead she says that us salt-of-the-earth Wisconsinites are turned off by all of the arguing they see (without mentioning the issues being argued about), and ultimately just want to get along.
According to the report, the community’s “biggest frustrations” are “laggard government and partisan squabbling.” “The idea that such bickering can be tolerated in D.C. is appalling to most,” it states. The good people of western Wisconsin, Third Way found, wanted nothing so much as a society where people could put aside their differences. The report quotes a man who said, “We come together on projects and solve problems together.” It doesn’t quote any of the Wisconsinites we met who expressed partisan sentiments or questioned the prospect of consensus.
Ball knows better than that, and gives you the real truth about what people were saying in the Heartland.
In Wisconsin, I had seen and heard everything the Third Way researchers did—and eaten at the same restaurants, and slept at the same Hampton Inn in Eau Claire, and watched the same landscape roll by the windows of the same SUV. I heard all the optimism they did, but I also heard its opposite: that one side was right and that the other was the enemy; that other Americans, not just the government, were to blame for the country’s problems. There’s plenty of fellow-feeling in the heartland for those who want to see it, but there’s plenty of division, too. And not every problem can be solved in a way that splits the difference.
This final note from Ball in the article is especially concerning, because it seems to indicate that the reality of the “Real America” isn’t seeping in to the Coastal elites that define groups like Third Way.
The researchers I rode with had dived into the heart of America with the best of intentions and the openest of minds. They believed that their only goal was to emerge with a better understanding of their country.

And yet the conclusions they drew from what they heard corresponded only roughly to what I heard. Instead, they seemed to revert to their preconceptions, squeezing their findings into the same old mold. It seems possible, if not likely, that all the other delegations of earnest listeners are returning with similarly comforting, selective lessons. If the aim of such tours is to find new ways to bring the country together, or new political messages for a changed electorate, the chances of success seem remote as long as even the sharpest researchers are only capable of seeing what they want to see.
If the DNC and the DPW are wasting time thinking that the key to electoral victory is to follow what well-connected Coastals in their Bubble want to believe, then they won't break the Bubble of destructive right-wing BS that distracts and fools a lot of Midwestern voters that are dealing with real problems.

And last I checked, voters decide elections, not Coastal insiders and party hacks. So maybe we should recognize the realities that voters face and not try to adjust it to what we wish it was. Just a thought.


Here’s another link to Molly Ball’s great article. Read it, and share with your friends.

13 comments:

  1. And here's a good follow-up article from Michigan's Matthew Walther at The Week. While Walther and The Week seems to lean toward right-wing anti-Hillary BS in places, I think his response to Third Way's "Midwest Tour" is spot-on.

    "...A real "Third Way" between libertarian conservatism and progressive liberalism would be a vision of politics as a prudent exercise in governance grounded in human concerns, expressed in human language, not a cynical marketing ploy.

    People in the "real" America aren't opposed to jobs programs or improvements to the Affordable Care Act. They're opposed to treating these things like the more or less viable conclusion of painstaking data analysis rather than the dictates of justice or the fruit of common sense."

    Exactly. You back policies because THEY ARE THE RIGHT THING TO DO, or at least state it that language. You don't do it because you ran a bunch of data spin your findings through a focus group to figure out the best way to sell it, and then print up a 30-point plan to support it.

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    1. That rings true.

      I've been thinking in the last couple weeks about discussing health care as infrastructure rather than a "right"

      Posing it as a right pushes a lot of people away because it sounds like people just want something for nothing. I don't want something for nothing - I'm very willing to work for it and most people are.

      We don't have a right, per se, to a road or a bridge, but few people would debate that such things, wisely implemented, are tremendous benefits for our nation.

      I think a similar argument could be made for universal or near universal health care. The workforce would operate better if they didn't have to worry about such things. Businesses wouldn't have to negotiate it on their own anymore. Individuals wouldn't be out there on their own with no bargaining power in the insurance market. Maybe do it regionally rather than nationally to avoid some of the anti-federal push back.

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    2. Yes, universal healthcare would help businesses, as businesses would not have to pay for the healthcare of their valued employees. It becomes a tax issue, and business owners should have to pay--based on their ability to pay--for their working moneymakers. After all, those owners would never have the wealth they have without the sweat of their workers.

      This is not difficult to understand, whether you have a college degree or not.

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  2. I'd concur...Voting has long been a choice between the lesser of two evils and neither party really resonates with most decent, hard-working (in all forms) Midwesterners. With 20 years of that etched in, the "fuck it" of DT seemed appealing. Personally, I didn't vote for him -- not because he alone would do that much damage, but with him and Pence as the only gatekeepers of the far-right, there would be much damage. Hillary likely wouldn't have done anything spectacular, but there would've been less rollback of certain gains, so that guided the vote more than anything. Bernie would've been a more apt comparison, but probably still would've lost for many of the same problems -- people too tired of the same old shit to think bigger than now... The Dems need to drop their corpratist ties and go bold "for the people" if they want to win it back in 2018 and beyond.

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    1. Actually, I'd argue that Bernie would have won precisely because some of the "fuck it" crowd would have voted for Sanders, because Bernie was definitely not the "same old shit."

      But I agree with your other point. Playing footsie with corporate America is a loser for Dems. Average voters see through it, leading some to default to GOP on issues like guns (note the interview with the union guys in Eau Claire). And the greedheads will give more to the GOP anyway, so why give any ground to the bad guys?

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  3. Molly Ball is very biased in her opinions--Third Way is not our recipe for recovery. Ball writes for the anglophile Atlantic magazine, the leading publication pushing this whole US warmonger/NATO/London new geopolitical cold war against Russia and anything east of Turkey.

    Ball is a contributer to the big talk shows, going right along with the neo-conservative war-mongers that are featured on shows like Meet The Press.

    Wisconsinites are not as stupid as Ball would try to have you believe. Wisconsin does not need Third Way to recover, or Ball and her pearl necklace to justify it. Ball in no way represents real Dem thinking.

    I wonder if she interviewed Third Way acolyte Ron Kind...had to be a real dull show if it happened.

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  4. You didn't read the article. Ball is ripping on Nancy Hale of Third Way for being clueless and ignoring what the Wisconsinites were telling her.

    In other words, the stupid people in the article are Third Way.

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  5. "exotic Middle American landscape" That's funny.

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    1. Nancy Hale- "Those hay bales look like Shredded Wheat!"

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  6. “People have said stuff I was surprised to hear them say out loud,” Hale told me. This is funny. She asked people what they thought and expected them to answer taking into consideration her sensibilities.

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    1. That's kind of the bottom line of the article- the Third Wayers wanted to find out what "the Heartland" thought.Then when they were given an honest answer, they chose to ignore it because it hurt their fee-fees didn't fit what they wanted to believe, and the "solutions" they were going to offer.

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  7. I noticed Ellsworth in Pierce county was listed as an example and location in the story. It's important to remember that Pierce county today along with St. Croix, Polk, Pepin and Dunn are very much Twin cities metropolitan counties. Ellsworth is definitely not a hole in the wall or dead end place to live. Many residents there have easy access to more jobs than there are employees to fill them on both sides of the border. A few points to consider about these counties is that they are turning more conservative than ever before. Farm fields are turning to housing developments, conservatives are crossing the border from MN to WI attracted to Walkers politics. Liberals attracted to MN policies are moving the other way. In most US cities, far out suburb tiers 5+ are almost always very conservative. Another battle is the new "city liberals" repelling old fashioned liberals who feel rejected causing them to vote conservative as it is closer to them politically. An article covered this phenomenon last year. The quickly growing twin cities area is causing and will cause big changes in Wisconsin quicker than most realize. Modern Wisconsin will be a lot different than the old Wisconsin because of shared population centers in MN. The changes aren't surprising me as I've known this was coming for a long time.

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    1. I agree that Pierce County is quickly becoming a Twin Cities exurb, and that may explain some of the reddening (could the people who used to live in Michelle Bachmann land now choose Wisconsin?).

      But the Molly Ball article doesn't make it sound like it is those exurbans that she and the Third Wayers talk to, but instead the longtime locals and farmers. I just wonder why they accept the 2nd-class status in their state with substandard schools and quality of life that will drive away talent to head onto the other side of the St. Croix.

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