Democrats have not solved their problem in the Midwest for 2020

Julie Ponzi:

Regardless of who wins the Democratic nomination for president one year from now, the party’s deep pockets already are prepping the groundwork to make sure that history—or herstory, if you will—does not repeat itself in 2020. The Democratic presidential candidate’s path to the White House doesn’t run along the Acela Corridor or the Pacific Coast Highway, but rather across Interstate 94 in the upper midsection of the country. Democrats learned this the hard way in 2016.

For all her excuses—Russian social media bots, former FBI Director James Comey, traitorous married white women—Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election for one reason: She failed to carry the Midwest, including the crucial states of Michigan and Wisconsin.

Her refusal to shake the weathered hands of working-class whites in those two states, and in Pennsylvania, prior to the election, cost her the presidency. Even though her intentional snub of three must-win states now is a running joke among the political commentariat, it no doubt will haunt Clinton campaign strategists, and the candidate herself, for perpetuity. Her candidacy will be remembered as a cautionary tale rather than an historical event.

But it wasn’t just Clinton’s unbridled hubris and political miscalculation that caused the Midwest’s blue wall to unexpectedly crumble on November 8, 2016. Donald Trump, the brash Manhattan billionaire with no ties to the Heartland, at the same time connected with the voters whom Clinton decided to ignore. Subsequently, he did something in 2016 that no Republican presidential candidate had been able to do since the glory days of Madonna and Michael J. Fox: nearly running the electoral table in the Midwest.

Trump was the first Republican since 1988 to win the state of Michigan; to put that in political context, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the shadow speaker of the House of Representatives, hadn’t even been born yet. The last Republican to win the state of Wisconsin was Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Although Trump’s margin of victory in both states was slim, that doesn’t tell the full story. Barack Obama trounced Mitt Romney in Michigan and Wisconsin, even though Romney’s running mate, the former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, was a popular Badger State native. Trump amassed 160,000 more votes in Michigan than Romney won in 2012. The only Midwestern state that Clinton won comfortably was her home state of Illinois. She scraped by in Minnesota, beating Trump by roughly forty thousand votes, four years after Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney there by nearly one-quarter of a million votes.
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There is more.

The Democrats problems go much deeper now because Trump has kept his promise to factory workers and others by creating jobs and increased wages for blue collar workers.  There is a hint of their problem in the rallies Trump has held in the region in recent months.  Those rallies are huge and they are much more vibrant than that of any Democrat candidate campaigning in the region.