Watching a political ad for Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, in which he labels himself as a “politically incorrect conservative,” made some things fall into place for me, which I wrote about at New York.

Not that long ago, “political incorrectness” (perhaps most conspicuously identified with abrasive lefty gabber Bill Maher, whose Comedy Central/ABC show Politically Incorrect was on the air from 1993 until 2002) was a politically anodyne (and bipartisan) term connoting a rebellious unwillingness to accept norms of civility in public discourse. A 2010 essay on the term in Psychology Today identified it with Maher, Larry David, and the subversive schoolyard humor of South Park.

But by 2016, “political correctness” had become the target of virtually every conservative politician in America. One pioneer was Dr. Ben Carson, who developed an elaborate conspiracy theory in which “political correctness” (an example he often used was restrictions on torturing terrorist suspects) was a weapon for suppressing free speech and disarming Americans in order to enslave them. But Donald Trump took attacks on the PC devil to a new level, in a one-two combo in which he would say something egregiously offensive and then pose as the brave rebel against political correctness. Trump branded this approach in the first GOP presidential debate in 2015:

“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t, frankly, have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time, either.”

Again and again, Trump deployed this strategy, and by the time he won the GOP presidential nomination, most of the Republican Party had adopted the same evil habit of exulting in “brave” bigotry. By the time President Trump accused the 2017 Charlottesville counter-protesters as being as bad as the white supremacists they were protesting, anti-PC ideology had reached new heights, as I argued at the time:

“[I]n the blink of an eye, the backlash to acts of simple racial decency began. It was not confined to Donald Trump’s campaign, but in many corners of the right, hostility to ‘political correctness’ — defined as sensitivity to the fears and concerns of, well, anyone other than white men — became a hallmark of the “populist” conservatism Trump made fashionable and ultimately ascendent.”

By now being “politically incorrect” among conservative pols has become a totem of ideological orthodoxy as firm and clear as any lefty campus speech code. Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp has provided an especially clear example of its use in the ad he is running on the eve of his tight primary runoff with Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle:

The title of this ad, tellingly, is “Offends.”

Its use by Kemp is particularly interesting because his earlier ads were an orgy of over-the-top right-wing madness, culminating in the proud “politically incorrect” claim.

Indeed, his opponent Casey Cagle, a hard-core conservative by national standards, was caught on tape complaining that the whole gubernatorial nomination process had become a competition to demonstrate “who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck, and who could be the craziest” — a clear reference to Kemp’s ads. But now Kemp just uses the “politically incorrect” tagline, and everyone knows what it means.

If Kemp wins his runoff on July 24 with this strategy, it is going to reinforce the already powerful Trumpian impulse to treat conservative “base” voters as motivated above all by the desire to go back to the wonderful days when a white man could without repercussions tell a racist joke, “tease” women about their physical appearance or sexual morals, and mock people who in some way (say, a disability) differ from one’s own self. At some point we may all come to understand that it’s not (except in some scattered college campuses) the politically correct who are imposing speech norms on the rest of us, but the politically incorrect who won’t be happy until offending the less powerful is again recognized as among the principal Rights of Man.

Now Kemp has been endorsed by Donald Trump. There is a comfortable consistency in that development.

Daniel Marans reports that “Top Liberal Groups Plan Get-Out-The-Vote Blitz On Weekend Before Midterm Election” at HuffPo Politics:

Swing Left and 22 other progressive organizations announced a joint effort Tuesday aimed at mobilizing volunteers to get out the vote for Democratic candidates in the days leading up to the Nov. 6 elections.

The Last Weekend, as the groups are calling the initiative, would serve as a national call to action from Saturday, Nov. 3 until Election Day ― a period when get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts are most effective. Swing Left, a post-2016 upstart that aims to help Democrats retake control of the U.S. House, believes the campaign is unprecedented in its scope and scale.

The goal of The Last Weekend is not only to maximize Democratic turnout in a midterm year, when Democratic turnout has historically been lower, but also to provide a central coordinating arm for veteran party activists and political newcomers who want to take action but are not always sure how.

This comes as welcome news to Democrats, who may be wondering why it took this excellent idea so long. “The weekend blitz’s organizers hope to create a veritable army of volunteers with formal commitments of over 1 million hours from the Saturday before the election until the election itself,” notes Marans. “Volunteers will be able to sign up for shifts at thelastweekend.org, or by texting WEEKEND to 50409.” Marans adds,

The groups behind The Last Weekend vary considerably in terms of their ideology, relationship to the official Democratic Party and area of electoral focus. The participating organizations are Swing Left, March On, MoveOn, Indivisible, Organizing for Action, the Democratic Attorneys General Association, Flippable, the Arena, Center for Popular Democracy Action, National Domestic Workers Alliance, the Latino Victory Fund, the Progressive Turnout Project, NewFounders, Mobilize America, Sister District, Wall of US, Working Families Party, Resist Bot, Stand Up America, Democrats.com, #VoteProChoice, United We Dream and the Collective PAC.

The coalition has “no single message, policy focus or script,” and the component groups have both overlapping and separate agendas. But they are all focused on working together to increase voter turnout for Democatic candidates. “What is uniting a pretty broad swath of America right now is the existential urgency of stopping the Trump agenda and ending the Republican control of Congress and state legislatures,” notes Joe Dinkin of the Working Families Party.

And not a minute too soon, given the critical importance of the 2018 midterm elections for America’s future. It would be even better if the coalition sinks long-term roots — as a permanent force for Democratic success.

Here is the first of an upcomming series of promotional videos for ‘The Last Weekend’:

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

Blue Arizona?

There were actually a few important places in 2016 where Democrats did better than they did in 2012. Arizona was one such place. Obama lost the state by 9 points, Hillary Clinton by only 3.5 points. Democrats improved their margins among Latinos, Asians/others, white noncollege voters and especially white college graduates (the latter group split almost evenly between Trump and Clinton).

Could these trends continue and, combined with the ongoing shift toward a more Latino electorate, finally tip Arizona into blue territory? It is certainly possible. If so, we may the first manifestations of this shift in 2018 election results. Politico magazine has a lengthy article by Ethan Epstein out about this year’s races in Arizona, accompanied by a revealing poll of the state’s voters.

At pbs.org, Meg Dalton reports on President Trump’s full pardon of Dwight and Steven Hammond, “father-and-son ranchers from Oregon who were convicted of intentionally setting fire to federal land two years ago…The Hammonds became central to the debate over public lands in the West when their imprisonment inspired the now-infamous ranching family, the Bundys, and a cadre of anti-federal government militants to occupy the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January 2016.” Trump’s pardon says in essence “no crime ever happened, according to Peter Walker, a professor at the University of Oregon. Whereas a commutation would have meant their release from prison, a pardon brushes off the Hammonds’ conviction entirely and legitimizes the Bundys’ far-right movement…Trump’s pardon could encourage those who want to confront and harass federal employees, according to Walker. “It puts a target on the back on federal employees,” he said. “This declares open season [on them].” It also may signal a new raid on public lands, in which big timber and other extractive industries exploit federal land for corporate and personal gain, later to be punctuated by their increased contributions to the GOP.

Here’s one antidote to the GOP’s environmental destruction agenda: “Nathaniel Stinnett knows he’s preaching to the choir. The problem is, even believers don’t always show up for church. Dismayed by how low environmental concerns like climate change, pollution and pipelines rank on surveys of voter priorities, Stinnett founded the nonpartisan Environmental Voter Project three years ago on the hunch that a substantial number of people care about environmental issues and are registered to vote, but don’t show up on Election Day…The veteran Boston-based campaign strategist developed a formula for identifying these voters. He builds profiles based on consumer, demographic and behavioral data, then runs a series of polls to verify the data and find out how likely voters are to list environmental causes among their top two political priorities. Stinnett and his team of three sift through the survey responses to identify patterns…After that, they run those profiles through a model that scores voters based on how likely they are to be so-called “super environmentalists.” Finally, they cut out people whose public voting records show they turn out for most elections. What’s left is a group of registered voters who don’t need to be sold on the reality of climate change or the dangers of air pollution – they just need to be convinced to get to the polls.” – from “This Man Is Building an ‘Army’ of Environmental Super Voters to Rival the NRA in Turnout” by Alexander C. Kaufman at HuffPo, via The Environmental Voter Project.

A worthy health care talking point for today, from Austin Frakt’s “Hidden From View: The Astonishingly High Administrative Costs of U.S. Health Care” at The Upshot: “A widely cited study published in The New England Journal of Medicine used data from 1999 to estimate that about 30 percent of American health care expenditures were the result of administration, about twice what it is in Canada. If the figures hold today, they mean that out of the average of about $19,000 that U.S. workers and their employers pay for family coverage each year, $5,700 goes toward administrative costs…That New England Journal of Medicine study is still the only one on administrative costs that encompasses the entire health system. Many other more recent studies examine important portions of it, however. The story remains the same: Like the overall cost of the U.S. health system, its administrative cost alone is No. 1 in the world.”

Michael Tomasky has a New York Times op-ed urging Democrats to fight hard against the Kavanaugh nomination. Fight to win, but have a sound strategy ready if you lose. Tomasky argues that Dems should make the nomination fight “a referendum on Judge Kavanaugh’s past actions and on President Trump’s character…Polls usually show that on most issues, in the abstract, majorities support the Democratic position, from preserving Social Security to comprehensive immigration reform. That seems great for Democrats, but in fact it often lulls them into an uncreative passivity: They’re with us on the issues, Democrats think, so all we have to do is discuss the issues and we’re home free.” But issues are not the only, or even, the primary, factor in every campaign.

Democrats, Tomasky adds, “must discuss character — both the president’s and Judge Kavanaugh’s. The nominee worked for Ken Starr in 1998 as Mr. Starr pursued President Bill Clinton. What exactly did he do for Mr. Starr?…Did he leak secret grand jury proceedings, violating Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure?” Tomasky cites the possibility of Trump naming his own future jurors. “The Democrats’ job here is to get Judge Kavanaugh on the record” about whether or not Trump can be prosecuted…The Democrats will probably lose the Kavanaugh battle” writes Tomasky, “But there are two ways to do it. They can lose by appearing to be timid, calculating, fretting too much about the consequences of being aggressive…Or they can lose by showing they understand that millions of Americans are counting on them to protect their rights and, the stakes being what they are, the Constitution itself. If Democrats do the latter, they will manage to have laid the groundwork for some optimism about November and 2020.”

In his article, “Study: Campaigns Falling short on Latino Outreach,” Sean J. Miller writes, “A new report released Monday focused attention on some 25 competitive House districts where Latino voters could make a sizable difference this fall and underscored the need for campaigns and political parties to invest in outreach now as the Latino voting population surges…The report, a collaboration between UnidosUS and the California Civic Engagement Project at the University of Southern California, charts demographic shifts that forecast the Latino population will grow more than 50 percent in the next two decades to 87.5 million — representing nearly a quarter of all Americans…their turnout when they’re on the voter rolls — at least in presidential cycles — “is close to that of registered voters in other groups, or upwards of 80 [percent.]…“Latino share of total votes cast nationwide was very close to the Latino share of the U.S. registered voter population — 9.2 [percent] and 9.7 [percent], respectively.” In addition,  “There are congressional districts where Latino youth actually outperform older Latino voters,” including in Wyoming, Iowa and the Carolinas.

Some ‘key points’ from Rhodes Cook’s data-rich article, “Registering by Party: Where the Democrats and Republicans Are Ahead” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Altogether, there are 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) with party registration; in the others, such as Virginia, voters register without reference to party. In 19 states and the District, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans. In 12 states, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats. In aggregate, 40% of all voters in party registration states are Democrats, 29% are Republicans, and 28% are independents. Nationally, the Democratic advantage in the party registration states approaches 12 million.” Cooks adds that “the Democrats approach this fall’s midterm elections with an advantage in one key aspect of the political process — their strength in states where voters register by party.” However, “Altogether, there are 10 states with more registered independents than either Democrats or Republicans. These states are mainly in the Northeast, with a cluster also in the West. By comparison, there are Democratic pluralities of registered voters in 13 states plus the District of Columbia and eight other states with Republicans ahead of both Democrats and independents. In addition, there are six states where there is an independent plurality but Democrats outnumber Republicans, and four states where independents are on top of the registration totals but Republicans outnumber Democrats. That produces the 19 to 12 state registration advantage for the Democrats mentioned earlier.”

In “Optimizing Your Efforts in 2018: Part I, the House,” Sam Wang writes at The Princeton Election Consortium: “The odds moderately favor a switch in control of the House of Representatives in 2018. But make no mistake, things could go either way. This November will be a battle of inches…For many of you, the battle’s coming to a district near you. We’re renewing a tool that made its debuttwo years ago. Sharon Machlis has very kindly updated her Congressional District finder to display swing districts for 2018. It’s awesome – check it out!..Many of the closest races will be run in the suburbs of America. Here are some high-value areas: Six swing districts are within 100 miles of New York City; Five are within 50 miles of Los Angeles; and Five are within 50 miles of Chicago.”

Republicans are understandably a tad miffed at satirist Sasha Baron Cohen, who just punked three Republican leaders, and got them to support a “Kinderguardian” program, arming pre-schoolers. For an amusing take on the fuss, check out John Quelley’s “Think GOP Lawmakers Not Unhinged Enough to Endorse Program Called “Kinderguardians” That Puts Guns in Hands of 4-Year-Old Kids? Watch Them: Sacha Baron Cohen’s new show is about to drop and exposed nut-job Republicans are not happy about it” at Common Dreams.

A check-in on polling numbers led me to the following cautiously optimistic observations at New York:

[T]oday represented a bit of a landmark in the RealClearPolitics polling averages. The Democratic lead in the generic congressional ballot (asking respondents which party that want to control the U.S. House of Representatives) hit 8 percent for the first time in nearly four months.

Last time RCP showed Democrats up by eight or more points was in mid-March. Since then the lead slowly trended downward, hitting a low of 3.2 percent on the last day of May. But the rebound has been quick. At FiveThirtyEight, where a slightly different mix of polls are weighted for reliability and adjusted for partisan bias, the Democratic lead is up to a similar 8.5 percent. These are numbers considered consistent with pretty sizable net gains in House seats, and according to many analysts, probably enough to flip control, particularly since history usually shows the party not controlling the White House making gains late in the cycle during midterms.

Similarly, what looked earlier in the year like a steadily climbing Trump job-approval rating seems to have leveled off. According to RealClearPolitics averages, Trump’s job-approval percentage is at 42.8 percent. That’s precisely where he was three months ago, on April 12. At FiveThirtyEight, Trump’s average approval rating is at 42.3 percent, down more than a couple of points from his 44.8 percent posting four months ago on March 12. Instead of looking at an outlier 45 percent job-approval rating from Gallup in mid-June — a historic high — it seems more realistic to look at his current 46 percent rating from Rasmussen, the very pro-Republican survey where he hasn’t hit 50 percent since May.

So how does one explain the most recent trends? It’s hard to say, but for the most part it appears that both the generic congressional- and Trump-approval numbers are reverting to the mean after a brief period of pro-GOP and pro-Trump trends, perhaps because of a combination of less unambiguously robust economic news, abatement of high expectations from the North Korea summit, and all those distressing images from the southern border. Perhaps the numbers will turn around again, but at this point the commonly discussed (among Republicans, anyway) idea that 2018 would turn out to be a good GOP year after all seems implausible.

At the level of individual districts, projections unsurprisingly get cloudier. One trend worth watching was identified earlier this week by the Cook Political Report’s House race wizard David Wasserman:

“In the June NBC/WSJ poll, 65 percent of Democratic women and 61 percent of whites with college degrees expressed the highest possible levels of interest in the midterm elections. However, only 43 percent of Latinos and 30 percent of young voters (18 to 29) did.

“This explains why so far, the “blue wave” is gathering more strength in professional, upscale suburban districts where women are mobilized against Trump than in young, diverse districts where Democratic base turnout is less reliable.”

Since Democrats need gains in both kinds of districts, the national averages could be misleading. But on the other hand, the odds are still in the donkey’s favor:

“If the 24 Toss Ups were to split evenly between the parties, Democrats would gain 18 seats, five short of a majority. But that doesn’t take into account that there are 26 GOP-held seats in Lean Republican with strong potential to become Toss Ups, and an additional 28 GOP-held seats in Likely Republican with the potential to become more competitive. In other words, there’s still a lot of upside for Democrats.”

After some anxious weeks for Democrats in the spring and early summer, that’s not a bad characterization of the overall landscape in the House with under four months left to go.

From Neil Irwin’s article, “Two Words That Could Shape the Politics of the Trade War: Loss Aversion — The pain of a loss tends to be greater than the enjoyment of a win. That has big implications for trade, and also helps explain the politics of health care and taxes” at The Upshot:

Even some workers directly helped by globalization have focused on loss. Consider, for example, a worker in a B.M.W. factory in South Carolina who told The Wall Street Journal in 2016 that she was skeptical of international trade because her uncles had lost their jobs at a cotton mill 30 years earlier.

Now, with his willingness to upend trade relationships that have been decades in the making, Mr. Trump faces the risk that he has spun things around. Suddenly, loss aversion may work in a pro-trade direction.

In a trade war, it is the companies, and workers, that benefit the most from globalization that find their incomes at risk. As China, Canada and the European Union retaliate against American tariffs, the winners from trade are the ones at risk of becoming the losers.

The ‘loss aversion’ takeaway effect apparently overshadows benefits of a given policy. As Irwin notes,

If loss aversion holds, the winners of a trade war — domestic producers of steel and aluminum, for example — could turn out to be as complacent about those gains as globalization’s winners have been for decades.

“The evidence says that a loss hurts about twice as much as a gain of the same size, so there is a large asymmetry,” said Patricia Tovar Rodriguez, author of the 2009 paper on loss aversion and trade and now a professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. “Losers may therefore have a much larger incentive to lobby, and to lobby harder, for the removal of those trade barriers.”

And it applies to all kinds of policies, not just trade:

President Obama’s health care law experienced miserable polling numbers in the initial years after its 2010 passage, with more people disapproving of the Affordable Care Act than approving of it, according to the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll. But those lines crossed in late 2016 as Republicans gained more power to repeal the law, and now the A.C.A. is favored by a six-percentage-point margin.

There are many ways to interpret that, but one of them is through the prism of loss avoidance. Perhaps in the rollout of Obamacare, the people who had something to lose — either through higher taxes or the risk of losing a health plan they were happy with — were most engaged.

Then, once the law was fully enacted and there was a president seeking to undermine it, the politics of loss aversion shifted, with people who had gained insurance more likely to be energized. That certainly lines up with the ferocity of the protests against legislative efforts to repeal the A.C.A. in early 2017 — and with the comparison to the energy of anti-Obamacare forces in earlier years.

Ditto, even, for tax policy, argues Irwin, noting the failure of the GOP to get much of a bump from their loudly-trumpeted tax cut, which provided very little for anyone but the wealthy. “The logic of loss aversion would imply that those who are paying more in tax — largely people in high-tax jurisdictions losing out on some deductions they previously enjoyed — might have stronger (negative) opinions about the legislation than the many who benefit.”

Democratic candidates generally do a good job of noting the take-aways of Republican policies. But Irwin’s article and the findings he cites indicate that an even sharper focus on the losses incurred by the middle class as a result of Republican trade policies and undermining the Affordable Care Act could win additional votes for Democratic candidates. Perhaps characterizing the relentless GOP push for deregulation as taking away health and safety protections for American families and children could help Democrats take away some Republican seats in the House, Senate and state legislatures.

Andrew Levison Memo: Modern-day “Class Consciousness” and “Class Resentment”

Warning Democrats: Some Campaign Tactics Actually Lose Votes

Democrats’ Critical Challenge: Seeing the World Through Red State Eyes

Candidates: Start Planning Now For The Day After Elections.

The following article by Christopher R. Martin, author of the forthcoming “The Invisible Worker: How the News Media Lost Sight of the American Working Class” and professor of Communication Studies and Digital Journalism at the University of Northern Iowa, is cross-posted from Working-Class Perspectives:

My home state of Iowa famously gave Barack Obama a convincing victory in the Democratic caucuses in 2008, the first triumph that launched a young U.S. senator from Illinois to become the first African-American president. Obama ultimately won two terms, and each time Iowans favored him by considerable margins. Iowa was also one of several Midwestern states that famously flipped to support Donald Trump in 2016.

Hillary Clinton won just six of Iowa’s 99 counties in 2016. Trump won the remaining 93, including 31 counties that had backed Obama in the two previous elections. Nationwide, 206 counties in 34 states voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012 and then flipped for Trump in 2016. Iowa had more than any other state, with 31 pivot counties out of 99. This makes Iowa a useful microcosm to analyze the nature of Trump’s victory. Did Trump win,  as the New York Times’s Nate Cohn reported, because of  “an enormous wave of support among white working-class voters”? Or were there other factors in play?

Cohn’s claim doesn’t seem to apply for Iowa. Only 17 of Iowa’s 31 pivot counties had higher turnout compared to 2012. In 14, turnout declined.  In addition, most of the increases were small — less than one percentage point. Overall – and this must bring him great angst – Trump won Iowa with fewer statewide votes than Obama had in either of his election victories. So, if there was “an enormous wave of support among white working-class voters,” then the wave was not caused by a mass of new people jumping in the pool. It was more like most of the same people wading from one side of the pool to the other.

But Trump did win support in more working-class rural counties. As in the national election, Clinton did much better than Trump in large metropolitan areas, winning just six counties, all among the state’s most populous. All but one of the pivot counties were rural, with populations of 87,000 or less and not among the top 10 of Iowa’s largest counties. It’s clear that the urban-rural divide was a salient element in the Iowa campaign, a pattern similar to what political scientist Katherine Cramer discovered in the adjacent state of Wisconsin (see  her 2016 book The Politics of Resentment).

The urban-rural divide is also a class divide, reflected in income and education. Iowa’s estimated per capita income in 2016 was $28,872, but per capita income is less than that in 77 counties, and Trump won in 75 of them, 28 of which were pivot counties. Clinton won in four of the six urban Iowa counties with higher per capita income. The pattern is similar for education.  25.7 percent of Iowans have a bachelor’s degree or higher, and only 11 of Iowa’s 99 counties have higher rates of citizens with a bachelor’s degree. Hillary Clinton won five of those counties. Of the 31 pivot counties, 27 have lower rates of higher education. In other words,  Clinton’s only successes in Iowa were in six major metro counties with higher levels of income and education. Trump won every other county in the state.

Considering the urban-rural status, income, and college education rates of the counties that pivoted to Trump in 2016, Cramer’s idea of rural consciousness seems apt, with its “strong identity as a rural resident, resentment toward the cities, and a belief that rural communities are not given their fair share of resources or respect.” Resources and development in Iowa are increasingly unequal, with most affluence located in Iowa’s two large multi-county metropolitan areas. In the center of the state, Polk and Story Counties run along the I-35 corridor, creating a large metro area that stretches from Ames and Iowa State University in the north to Des Moines and its many suburbs in the south. Similarly, in the eastern part of the state, Linn and Johnson Counties along the I-380 corridor form a district that stretches from Cedar Rapids and its suburbs in the north to Iowa City and the University of Iowa in the south. These “corridors” (and they do market themselves that way) are the wealthiest, most populous, and fastest growing regions of the state, with plenty of government-funded institutions and research, headquarters of the largest corporations, excellent hospitals, and the state’s best sports, recreation, and shopping. These are the areas where Clinton won the most support.

Life can be quite different in Iowa’s more rural counties, where population is falling, school districts get consolidated (so towns may no longer have local schools), access to doctors and quality hospitals lags, new investment is rare, and young adults often move to places like Des Moines or Iowa City to find better jobs. Away from the corridors, the lived experience of personal income, higher education, and the long-term hope for opportunity and prosperity for the majority of Iowa’s rural counties is on a much more feeble trajectory.

These areas, where Trump won, were primed to embrace the rhetoric of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements, which  called for drastic change to the economic status quo. If a very unlikely presidential candidate – one made famous by playing the role of super-successful billionaire in a network reality television show and countless movie cameos – shows up and said says to the “forgotten men and women of our country” that “I AM YOUR VOICE,” residents of these areas might well listen to him, despite (or in some cases because) of his lack of experience and subtle racism and misogyny. Trump went all in on the Tea Party discourse and wore the mantle of change.

In comparison,  Clinton’s words about the economy were vague, spare, and unremarkable. In her victory speech late on the night of the Iowa caucus, she said “I know what we are capable of doing, I know we can create more good-paying jobs and raise incomes for hard-working Americans again.” Although Clinton narrowly won the Democratic nomination in 2016, her message of incremental reforms did not give her resounding victories in Iowa and other important states. On caucus night, Bernie Sanders, the change candidate (like Obama before him) spoke directly to those who felt alienated by politics-as-usual: “What Iowa has begun tonight is a political revolution.” Sanders’s rhetoric might have attracted more of Iowa’s rural voters, but he wasn’t on the general election ballot November.

Of course, rhetoric might win elections, but results matter afterward. So far, Trump’s appointment of Supreme Court justices may thrill conservative Iowans, but his trade war is already hurting Iowa’s agricultural exports, and he continues to undermine other things Iowa voters care about, including health care coverage, funding for education, infrastructure development, and well-paying jobs. Iowa may pivot again in 2018 and 2020. Recent Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Polls have found that Iowans favor Democrats for Congress in 2018, and that 68 percent of Iowans will “definitely vote for another candidate” or consider doing so in the 2020 presidential election. To win back the pivot county voters, Democratic candidates will need to connect with issues to rural voters. It is a message already received by the six Democratic candidates for Iowa governor, who made rural outreach a priority. Democratic Congressional and presidential candidates should take note.