In her article, “How Democrats could win back the House on health care, in 4 polls,” at The Fix, Amber Philips reports some good polling news for Democrats:

We have three polls out this week that tell that story.

In an Oct. 14 Washington Post-ABC News poll, 82 percent of voters said health care is one of the most important issues in their votes for Congress — precisely matching the king of top issues in elections, the economy. That poll finds voters trust Democrats over Republicans to improve their health-care situation.

(Washington Post graphics)

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll out Thursday also finds that voters say health care is the top issue, over the economy. That goes for the all-important independent vote. And it holds true for voters in swing states like Florida and Nevada, both states with competitive governor’s and Senate races.

Perhaps the most devastating find for Republicans comes from a new Fox News poll. Voters who say health care is their most important issue prefer Democrats by 24 percentage points.

Republicans, of course, are fighting back, trying to cover up their assault against Obamacare’s key provision protecting Americans with previous health conditions, but it looks like the damage is done.

Meanwhile, Democrats can gain further ground with high-turnout senior voters by calling attention to a major rip-off in the GOP’s health care bill. “Under the GOP’s health-care bill, insurers would be allowed to charge older adults up to five times more than younger people. Under Obamacare, rates were capped at three times more,” reports Michelle Fox in “Older Americans slapped with ‘age tax’ in GOP health-care bill: AARP” at cnbc.com. Fox adds,

“Right now, health care is barely affordable for those people who are over age 50. Raising it any more is just what we call an ‘age tax’ and would just make it unaffordable for them,” David Certner, legislative counsel and legislative policy director for government affairs at AARP, said in an interview with “Power Lunch.”

And while there are currently tax credits in place to help offset costs, the current bill reduces those tax credits, he noted. “There’s a double whammy here.”

Fox notes that conservative supporter of the GOP bill Jeff Miron, director of economic studies at the Cato Institute, “believes it’s the right policy to make the system work efficiently…It is only current near elderly who are going get particularly penalized by this transitional effect.”

Scant comfort for senior voters. It will be interesting to see how many of the “near elderly” are paying attention at the ballot box on November 6th.

In his New York Times op-ed, “What the Left Misses About Nationalism: The perception of a common national identity is essential to democracies and to the modern welfare state,” John B. Judis warns, “In the United States, Mr. Trump’s nationalist policies have not been without merit. Where his predecessors have feared alienating China, he has boldly challenged its transfer of technology, cybertheft and hidden trade subsidies and barriers.”

However, Judis, author of “The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization,” adds, “But much of what Mr. Trump has done to make America great may eventually make it poorer”:

His corporate tax cut accelerates globalization’s race to the bottom. Much of the savings have already gone to corporate buybacks rather than new investment, and the resulting loss of tax revenues will threaten social spending for the people he claims to represent…His Hobbesian take-no-prisoners approach to trade and foreign policy — sowing conflict with allies as well as rivals and foes — will threaten the underpinnings of global peace and prosperity, which still depends on a grudging acceptance of American economic and military power. There are already foreshadowings of future financial disorder — in discussions by the European Union, Russia and China to defy American sanctions against Iran by creating a new funding authority that would evade the dollar and by Russia and China’s decision to use their own currencies rather than the dollar as the medium of exchange. Mr. Trump’s immigration initiatives, too, have merely reinforced cultural resentments and done little to stem the oversupply of unskilled and easy-to-exploit unauthorized immigrants.

“In all of these areas,” Judis writes, “Mr. Trump has harmed, not strengthened, our nation.” However, Judis adds,

Yet in the United States, the liberal opposition has generally failed to acknowledge what is valid in the today’s nationalist backlash. Many liberal pundits and political scientists continue to echo Hillary Clinton in characterizing Mr. Trump’s supporters in 2016 as deplorables. They denounce Mr. Trump’s tariffs without proposing any plausible means of counterbalancing the huge surpluses from China and Germany. They dismiss as a lost cause the attempt to revive the towns of the Midwest and South by reviving manufacturing. They rightly insist that the United States find a way to integrate and assimilate the country’s 12 million or more unauthorized immigrants, but they ignore the continuing flood of people without papers crossing the border or overstaying their visas and they dismiss attempts to change national priorities toward skilled immigrants.

Here is the simple truth: As long as corporations are free to roam the globe in search of lower wages and taxes, and as long as the United States opens its borders to millions of unskilled immigrants, liberals will not be able to create bountiful, equitable societies, where people are free from basic anxieties about obtaining health care, education and housing…To achieve their historic objectives, liberals and social democrats will have to respond constructively to, rather than dismiss, the nationalist reaction to globalization.

Somewhere in between Trump’s reckless trade policies and the Clinton era’s unbridled globalism there is a sound trade and immigration strategy that can benefit American workers. If the Democrats don’t find it, explain it and own it soon, others will — and win the loyalty of working-class voters needed for an enduring political majority.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Something Is Happening Here But You Don’t Know What It Is–Do You, Mr. Trump?

The news from the Rustbelt continues to be very poor for the GOP–yet this is the region that sent Donald Trump to the White House. What’s going on?

Here’s a snippet from Thomas Edsall’s Times’ column on the Rustbelt:

“Nate Silver, the founder of the political website 538, tweeted:

‘By far the Democrats’ strongest region in Senate + Gov + House polling has been the Midwest, and I don’t think you’d really gather that from the tonality of the reporting, which tends to fixate on demographic change and therefore finds races in the South & the West a lot sexier.’

According to both Democratic and Republican operatives, Republican difficulties in the region stem in part from the trend among many Obama 2012-to-Trump-2016 voters to switch back to the Democrats.

Nick Gourevitch, whose Democratic firm, Global Strategy Group, is polling in the Midwest, wrote in an email: “In general, we are seeing Obama-Trump districts returning to the fold as competitive seats.” He went on:

“Our postelection research on Obama-Trump voters showed that many of them were conflicted voters who had mixed feelings about supporting the president and that not all of them were the die-hard Trump supporters some in the media like to report them to be.”

Huh. So maybe all those Obama-Trump voters aren’t hopeless racists the Democrats are better off ignoring.

Martin Longman adds on the Washington Monthly blog:

“Trump’s victory came about because he surprisingly won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin which were all considered part of an impenetrable blue wall for the Democrats, but the Democrats look extremely strong in both the senate and governor’s races in all three of those states.

This can’t be explained by demographic change and it isn’t based solely on turnout models and assumptions. A lot of Democrats who voted for Trump in the industrial Midwest just have no intention of voting for a Republican in the upcoming midterms…..

It’s the formerly blue element that distinguishes the Midwest from other Trump strongholds. Many midwestern lifelong Democrats were attracted to Trump precisely because he was taking a battle-ax to the Republican establishment and so it’s unsurprising that these voters won’t transfer their loyalty from Trump to down-ticket conservatives. Because of union membership and socioeconomic status and tradition, these voters having been voting against Republicans all their lives. They made an exception for Trump and many still support him. Some will even vote for candidates that promise to help the president or that Trump has explicitly endorsed. But the snapback comes from the fact that most longtime Democrats supported Trump but not the party he leads.”

And a new Politico/AARP poll of Pennsylvania finds:

“Pennsylvania was the linchpin of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, but it could be ground zero of Democrats’ 2018 comeback. Not only are the incumbent Democratic senator and governor prohibitive favorites to win reelection, but Democrats could also pick up as many as a half-dozen congressional seats — roughly a quarter of the seats the party needs nationwide to win back the House.

Fewer than two years after Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Pennsylvania since 1988, a new POLITICO/AARP poll shows both Sen. Bob Casey and Gov. Tom Wolf with double-digit leads over their GOP challengers. And Democrats have a slight edge on the generic congressional ballot — which, combined with a new, court-imposed congressional-district map unwinding GOP gerrymandering, portends major gains in next month‘s elections.”

This is a trend to keep an eye on. Not only will it be key to Democrats’ results in 2018 but sustaining it will be central to defeating Trump in 2020. In fact, you could reasonably say if the Democrats can sustain this momentum in the Midwest/Rustbelt through 2020 their chances of defeating Trump will be very good indeed. Of course, Trump will pull out all the stops to reach voters in this area of the country in the next two years and he will by no means be easy to defeat. But developments this year could make for a very promising beginning for Project Trump One Term President.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Remember the Third Way, that crazy nineties thing? Or maybe you’re trying to forget it. Spearheaded by fearless leaders Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroder, it was supposedly a reinvention of the left to adapt to a new stage of capitalism and channel the benefits of that dynamic system to the middle class and poor. That meant jettisoning many traditional programs of the left and concentrating on unleashing capitalism, rather that criticizing it. The resulting cornucopia of growth would be good for everybody. That was, the Third Wayers said, the only road forward.

That didn’t work out so well. Turns out capitalism, left to its own devices, is still capable of great damage and dramatic underperformance for most of the population. It is therefore of interest to see former proponents of the Third Way admitting it’s time for a rethink–a big rethink. One such is William Galston, who was Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy and one of leading theorists of the whole Third Way movement, especially in its US “New Democrat” form. Galston’s article at the British site, Unherd, “How the Third Way Lost Its Way“, is quite critical of his former movement and says:

“The Third Way’s programme of incremental adjustments to social democracy within a framework of optimism about globalisation, democratisation, and demographic diversity can do little to address today’s much deeper structural problems…

To stem rising economic inequality and geographical divergence, we will need more government intervention and regulation than the creators of the Third Way contemplated, along with much greater investment in the fundamentals of equal opportunity. To sustain a rules-based international order, the rules must pay less attention to economic aggregates – and more to sectors, regions, and economic classes – than the proponents of the WTO imagined. To be sustainable, immigration regimes will have to pay more attention to the economic and cultural effects of entrenched practices. What works in San Francisco will not necessary work in Scranton; the Midlands may reject what London cherishes.

In the international domain, the decision to allow China to enter the World Trade Organisation without committing to the practices of a market economy has produced distortions that the West must address – but from a far weaker position than it enjoyed two decades ago.”

No argument with any of this but I do think the article lets the Third Way off a bit easy in its original incarnation. Galston’s view seem to be that it was right on in the nineties, just times changed so it’s not so good any more. My critique is sterner.

The Third Way, as Galston notes, posited that the structure of capitalist societies was changing and that the traditional working class was becoming less important. But that analysis went little beyond observations on the white collarization of work and the assertion that the left was best-served by leaving capitalism alone to generate riches that could be redistributed and repurposed . The former view showed only a crude understanding of the depth of the social transformation affecting Western industrial societies, while the latter was simply wrong as an assessment of contemporary capitalism’s ability to function well without proper guidance and regulation.

It was not, and is not, unreasonable to argue that fast and equally distributed economic growth is critical to providing adequate levels of economic mobility for the middle class and poor. Third Way advocates, with their starry-eyed view of contemporary capitalism, thought they had found the right approach to producing such growth. They had not.

The left can and must do better. Time for a Fourth Way that deals with actually-existing capitalism instead of the benign version favored by the Third Way movement.

When you go to dnc.org welcome page, you have to scroll down to the bottom to find the 2+ minute video clip the DNC uses to introduce the Democratic Party to the public. Here it is:

It may be too late to improve the video ad a month out from election day. But perhaps the DNC’s video-makers could benefit from some feedback from Democratic rank and file and activists. What’s your take?

Some questions to consider: How important are political ads? Does the Democratic Party need an ad that introduces what the party is all about, or should it just present ads from individual candidates?

Does this ad help Dems present an appealing ‘brand’? Does it speak to all American persuadable voters, or preach to the choir?

Does it reach out to neglected constituencies?  Does it say enough about the pivotal issues? What would be the optimum mix of positive, self-branding videos vs. negative ads attacking opponents?

Should the ad be longer than 2 minutes, or should there also be some longer videos? Is it adequately focused on the midterm elections? Should there be just one intro video on the welcome page, or some more robust, targeted ads on different topics and addressing different constituencies?

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

How Far Left Is the Democratic Party Moving?

I address this question in a new article for the British site, Unherd. I argue that the Democratic party is indeed moving left but not in the fashion envisioned by self-conscious radicals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“The Left in America is on the rise…But how far Left is this surge? And what does it stand for? Can it really be compared with the hard Left radicalism seen elsewhere across the globe?

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

The Washington Post is out with a large poll of the House battleground–the 69 most competitive House districts. The poll covered the period when the Kavanaugh controversy was coming to a head so should capture political movement from those events pretty well.

The topline is quite favorable for the Democrats:

“The survey of 2,672 likely voters by The Post and the Schar School at George Mason University shows that likely voters in these districts favor Democrats by a slight margin: 50 percent prefer the Democratic nominee and 46 percent prefer the Republican. By way of comparison, in 2016 these same districts favored Republican candidates over Democratic ones by 15 percentage points, 56 percent to 41 percent.”

If accurate, that’s quite a sea change in sentiment in these districts.

But I want to draw special attention to a couple of graphics in the story. The first shows some basic demographics of the likely voters in those districts. Note that despite all the talk about educated suburbanites, there are still far more white noncollege than white college voters in these districts (47 percent to 31 percent).

The second shows vote intention by some key demographics. Unsurprisingly, the Democratic advantage among white college women is large (62-37). But also of great significance is that white noncollege women–a more numerous demographic than white college women–are close to even between the parties (a mere 4 point Democratic deficit). If white noncollege women were polling more like their white noncollege male counterparts (a 20 point Democratic deficit), the Democrats’ chances of taking the House would be poor.

Understanding these facts about the House battleground is key to understanding what is going on in 2018 and lessons Democrats should learn for 2020.

The following note by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Rebuilding the Blue Wall in the Rustbelt

Reid Wilson has a good article about this in The Hill. For reference, here are current RCP poll averages for D candidates for Governor and Senator in Rustbelt-ish states (note: not all of these states were typically included in the Blue Wall category).

Governor:

Some excerpts from three Working America e-blasts by executive director Matt Morrison, following up to his New York Times op-ed, “The Best Way for Democrats to Win Working-Class Voters“:

Our view of what’s working

In addition to what messages work with voters, we want to use our experience and analytics to share what’s proving to be most effective this cycle.

The Persuadable Voter: With such a volatile, yet seemingly polarized electorate, identifying the best voters to move from being undecided or opposed to supporting our candidates is essential, but difficult. One way we are solving this problem is by using our store of dozens of clinical persuasion experiments from the last eight years to identify the type of voter who is consistently responsive to canvass contact. This meta-analysis tells us that from Tacoma to Greensboro, and places in between, certain types of voters will consistently be persuadable.

While some of the attributes of this group are unsurprising —no college degree, younger, etc. — it is determining how these demographic and behavioral traits combine that makes the targeting more efficient. Per calculations by the Analyst Institute, this approach can increase our targeting efficiency by 80 percent.

To put these lessons into practice, Working America ran additional experiments earlier this cycle to validate that the model works in different environments (a Midwestern gubernatorial race and a coastal U.S. House contest). We are finding success among both expected and unexpected targets. Segments of our best persuasion targets this year include:

• Republicans and conservative voters under age 50
• Non-college female voters
• Latinx voters, many of whom regularly vote

Our Mobilization Targets: Similar to the meta-analysis of our persuasion experiments, we have combined the statistical power of dozens of turnout experiments to model which voters are most likely to increase their voter participation rates.

Much of the existing of meta-analysis, such as Gerber and Green’s authoritative book Get Out the Vote, points us to target lower-propensity voters (i.e. those with a 30%-50% likelihood to vote). That guidance is especially useful when the election context allows us to focus on these low-propensity voters, accepting that a large share will not vote even after being contacted.

What our new meta-analysis shows us is that there may be opportunities for increased turnout where we haven’t been looking, including among important segments of high-propensity voters (65%-80% vote likelihood). We have found this group can be mobilized as efficiently as lower-propensity voters — meaning we can achieve a similar proportion of vote gain, while spending less time and fewer resources in September and October trying to convince harder-to-reach low-propensity voters to turn out, and more time on the best bets. Examples of these types of voters include:

• Previously contacted voters, usually from earlier in the year or even earlier election cycles
• Those with whom we have the strongest ideological agreement

Importantly, mode of voting matters both in the short term and long term. During our work in 2014 in states with big vote-by-mail and early vote electorates, not only did we see increased turnout gains that cycle, but most of that increased turnout impact remained intact during the 2016 election two years later. As we think about 2018 as an opportunity to win more votes now, we are also looking at it from the perspective of how we realize the vote gain in 2020.

Consistent Engagement: The refrain every election cycle is that we must engage voters year-round, not just the last few months before an election. Yet, quantifying the value of that sustained engagement has proven difficult, leaving many to allocate resources and program to the same narrow window.

Our research shows that sustained organizing and engagement — whether done at the doors or through digital channels, or whether the target is persuasion or mobilization — consistently results in measurable vote gain effects 3-5X larger than late contact alone.

Many of the communities where political engagement has the most potential to increase — those with more voters who are people of color, young and low-income — simply do not receive this type of investment. Yet, our research finds time and again that shifting resources to contact these voters early and again during the last few months of an election is not only cost-neutral, but in most cases, significantly decreases the cost per vote.

——-

Highlights from the field:

I. We Are Growing: 11 states, dozens of campaigns and growing

II. “Minting” Progressive Voters: How we are using analytics to realign the politics of millions of members

III. The Digital Difference: Our high impact Door to Digital GOTV program is coming this Fall.

IV. Final Notes: Fran’s Front Porch, and Jane’s new documentary

I. We are growing. As of this writing, we are running voter contact programs out of a dozen offices across ten states (FL, CT, PA, OH, MI, IL, IA, MN, NM, ND, and CA), and adding more locations each week. By the end of the election cycle, we will have visited over 2.2 million voters and reached 650,000 through face to face conversations in dozens of important races. Some of our most exciting work is in races like PA-17, where Conor Lamb will defend the only House special election victory for Democrats since the Trump election. Another example is in Tallahassee and in Jacksonville, where we are fighting for Andrew Gillum, who would be the first African American governor in Florida history.

Despite the national political environment, most voters are focused on what’s closest to home—affordable healthcare, arguably the top issue this cycle. One story from the Minnesota gubernatorial contest:

One couple who identified as health care voters told us they were voting for conservative GOP nominee Jeff Johnson this election because they are conservative. The went on to say “honestly, we haven’t spent too much time thinking about it yet because our son is in the hospital.” They shared that they were having a rough time because they’re worried about their son’s hospital bills and how to pay for them when he got better, all while hoping the treatments were working. The canvasser responded by saying, “You know, that’s exactly why I’m here. I’m really worried about health insurance for my family too, and that’s why I’m talking to people about Tim Walz. He is pushing for a public option. No one should lose their house for hospital bills.” The couple agreed and promised to reconsider their vote. 

Indeed, when we look at elections across the country, those who are worried about health care back our endorsed candidates by a 25 percentage point margin, even when controlling for the partisan lean of voters.

II. “Minting” Progressive Voters. You may recall seeing our growing body of clinical research showing the multiplier effect on voter behavior derived from being a Working America member. An additional insight is that the impact lasts for years.

We studied the long-term effect of increasing voter turnout in 2014 elections in Iowa and Washington. In 2014, we added 4 votes for every 100 conversations. In a confirmation that voting can be habit forming, 2 of the 4 extra votes turned out in the 2016 contests.

This type of evidence points to the importance of early organizing in shaping long-term voter behavior. In a measurable way, Working America is literally building up a bulwark of votes with every conversation we have right now that will make the difference in the 2020 presidential race.

III. The Working America Digital Difference in 100s of Elections. Digital communications allow us to reach exponentially more voters. Our approach starts by establishing a relationship at the door and is amplified through digital channels. This layered communications combination shows remarkable potential to gain more votes at 1/8th the costs of a typical peer-to-peer text messaging program. We will be sending out a list of races around the country where our digital GOTV program aimed at our 3 million Working America members will add thousands of votes for our candidates.

What It All Means. We are building a set of tools that will win more elections. More importantly, they can be used to change how working people approach political AND economic choices for the long haul. These tools are our building blocks for large-scale engagement to make the economy fairer for working people.

—————

As part of our political program this year, we have revisited a number of Trump voters we canvassed in 2016. In January of that year, we sounded the alarm about Trump’s appeal to Ohio and Pennsylvania swing voters at a time when he was still widely dismissed. We saw that, among Republican voters, Trump had more support than all other GOP candidates combined. But what proved even more consequential were the 1 in 4 Democrats who planned to vote for him.

Here is what we have learned from these recent conversations in central Ohio and southwest Pennsylvania:

1. The defection of these Trump voters from GOP candidates toward Democrats is widespread. Those most likely to defect were:
   1. Mid-partisan and Democratic-leaning voters
   2. Voters with a four-year college degree
   3. Voters aged 50-70
2. Better-known Democratic incumbents were more likely to benefit from these votes than lesser-known challengers.
3. The issues that are driving the most defectors to Democrats are affordable health care and concern about the economy.

It seems that this is about more than just a partisan shift. From our vantage point, these voters reflect the great volatility of American politics over the last decade. These swing voters are people who do not relate to either party, but are yearning for something to change.

To get a sense of what we mean, watch for yourself:

To see the data on these responses, click here.

So what does it all mean?

The progressive challenge is not just how we win 2018, but how we establish a home for voters who are adrift that stabilizes politics for an economically progressive governing majority.

The following article by John Russo, visiting scholar at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and Working Poor at Georgetown University and associate editor of the blog Working-Class Perspectives, is cross-posted from Working-Class Perspectives:

Two years ago, I described the Youngstown area as “crossover ground zero” for Donald Trump and the politics of resentment in working-class and rust belt communities. In local rallies during the 2016 campaign and since he took office, Trump has repeatedly promised an economic renaissance and immigration reform. These issues resonated with local voters.

His success in Youngstown might seem surprising, since Mahoning and Trumbull Counties usually vote by large margins for Democratic Presidential candidates. In 2012, 63.5% of Mahoning County voters supported for Obama, even more than in 2008. But in the 2016 Republican primary, more than 6000 Mahoning County Democrats switched parties, and another 20,000 people who had not been registered voters signed up to vote. Clinton won the Presidential race here by less than 1%, and Trump won in Trumbull County.

When I returned to Youngstown this summer, I wondered whether Trump’s support remained strong. In this highly nationalistic working-class community, the first thing I saw driving into the city were American flags were plastered wall-to-wall on overpasses. No wonder Trump made a “rare Presidential visit” in July 2017 to boost his flagging support and renew his appeal to “Make America Great Again.”

But as the summer went on, I sensed an undercurrent of uneasiness, especially among the area’s much-touted swing voters. While Trump crows about what a “great job” he’s doing, some of his supporters wonder whether local residents will benefit from the tax cuts. The national debt climbs to over one trillion dollars, and rising health care costs and gas prices have eroded any financial gains for most Americans. Yes, unemployment rates have fallen, but underemployment, low wages, reduced pensions, low property values, and increasing precarity in the Mahoning Valley have made it hard to believe in Trump’s economic happy talk. And talk among some in Congress about cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits to offset the deficit is adding to the local anxiety.

The local economic picture clearly does not offer many signs of hope. The GM Lordstown plant has eliminated two shifts, cutting 3000 jobs since Trump took office. According to recently retired UAW Local Vice President Tim O’Hara, about 40% of union members voted for Trump in 2016.  Dave Green, the current union President, has appealed to GM and President Trump to help bring a new car to the plant that currently builds the Chevy Cruze, but Trump has remained silent, and GM will not make a commitment. In fact, the company responded to the President’s trade policy by announcing that it will build a new car at its Ramos, Mexico plant, which also builds the Cruze. The local paper, The Vindicator, offered a blunt “reality check: Donald Trump is not going to intervene to save one of the leading employers in the Mahoning Valley.”

Yet Trump’s trade policy still appeals to many local voters. Youngstowners have long blamed the loss of its steel industry on unfair trade, and many here still support the protectionist ideas of Trump’s Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and local free trade critics like Democrats Sherrod Brown and Tim Ryan. But local steel producers and fabricators have indicated that instead of expanding their labor force here, they may downsize or move facilities to Mexico because of Trump’s trade policies, so more local workers can expect to lose good-paying jobs. As Trump supporter and local steelworker Michael Lang said in an interview with Reuters, “I voted for Trump because I thought he’d straighten things out, not do something like this.”

Few of the  retail, public sector, and healthcare workers I’ve spoken with admitted they had supported Trump. Those who did were evasive and seemed uncomfortable talking about him. It seems likely that workers in these jobs are anxious about the continuing budget cuts, loss of local state funding and government assistance, and more recently the closing one of the two local hospitals, which displaced 400 nurses and other staff. Service workers who supported Trump may be starting to understand the limits of the politics of resentment.

Clearly, neither Trump’s campaign promises nor his policies are making Youngstown great again. The question is, will the community’s continuing economic struggles lead people to turn against Trump and the Republicans? Or bring them back to the Democrats? NPR reporter Asma Khalid, who has tracked Trump’s support in Youngstown for the past two years, is uncertain. Among the “disillusioned” Democrats she spoke with, some still support Trump, though they also  plan vote for Democrats like Brown and Ryan this November.

Mahoning County Democratic Chairperson David Betras also doubts whether the Trump fever has broken in Youngstown. The best he can say is that “the temperature is going down.” His advice to Democrats: follow the lead of Brown and Ryan — stress concrete economic programs, healthcare, education, and building trust. A focus on the economy, Betras believes, will win out, even as Trump and the Republicans try to distract voters with often-racist cultural divides, like whether NFL players should be allowed to kneel.

Yet many in Youngstown are fed-up with both parties. When I asked retired small businessman, Democrat, and Trump enthusiast Sam Carely who he supports in 2018, his response reflects a distinct lack of enthusiasm: “I am not sure if I will vote. But if I do I would probably vote for a Democrat — if I could find a reason.” Carely is tired of interparty fighting, and he is not alone. Many would prefer to vote for Democrats, but they are desperate for an economic plan that isn’t just campaign rhetoric.  For them, as for many voters around the country, the Trump fever will only break when Democrats give them something to believe in.