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RAbout 10 days before the 2016 presidential election, one of the largest US unions sent a volunteer bus from Iowa, where Hillary Clinton was in danger of losing, to Michigan, where her leaders learned she was in trouble. difficulty. They called the Clinton team to tell them what they were doing only to receive a severe reprimand. Turn over the bus, we told them. Michigan is safe.
Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes, or 0.23%.
The 2016 presidential election tore down the old rules on how the US elections are fought and won. Now, three weeks before the mid-term elections, when all the seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate seats are disputed, we still do not know what the new rules look like. In normal circumstances, voters have the opportunity to express their remorse at mid-session. Two years after voting for a president, they are either disappointed that he did not do enough of what they wanted, or angry because he did too much of what they did not want. So they take it to his party.
Democrats should press for the House. Four of the five largest events in the history of the United States have occurred in the past two years. They all opposed Donald Trump's presidency or key elements of his program. Voter enthusiasm is at its highest level on the left. In September 2006, before Democrats took over both House and Senate in George W Bush's second term, 42% of Democrats said they were more enthusiastic than usual to vote – this year, they were 67%.
One year after #MeToo and a month after a bitter Supreme Court appointment, focused on sexual assaults perpetrated by a president who claimed to have been sexually assaulted, Democrats present a record number of women candidates in the House and in the Senate. In addition, one-fifth of the candidates in the House are under 40 years old and one-third are women of color.
But these are not normal times.
I spent the 2016 elections in Muncie, Indiana. When I returned in January, all the Liberals I knew were politically engaged, as never before. Beth Hawke, 57, who went to Washington DC with her daughters for the women's march, made calls to defend the Affordable Care Act. "When Trump won, I thought," I really need to do something. I have always been active in my community, especially in schools, but the last election I actively participated in was Gary Hart. [in 1984]. The march was cathartic. I had not really done this kind of thing since my school years.
But it was also clear that if almost all the Republicans I spoke to felt that Trump was a terrible person, they also thought he was doing a good job. They cited the economy, his first Supreme Court nominee, tax cuts and deregulation, as proof that he was doing the job. "He has completely embarrassed the United States more than a handful of times. He's like your stuffed uncle at a party, "said Jamie Walsh. "[But] we are in a year. I would like people to stand up, examine their life and see what is so different. Why have you been screaming for a year? I struggle to find something wrong that has happened to ordinary Americans and their lives. "
The question in this election is which of these two moods will prevail in November. On the one hand, to what extent will the growing militancy and anguish of progressives translate into votes for a party that has not yet a clearly defined leader or agenda? . On the other side, the senseless coalition of discontent and self-interest that includes Trump's basic voter turnout to a party that never wanted him at a time when he worried everyone but not the ballot.
In 2016, Bill Clinton used to tell Hillary's campaigners what he was hearing on the ground, but he was systematically ignored. "[The] The answer has always been a variation of the same analysis: the data goes against your anecdotes, "wrote Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in Shattered: Inside Doomed Campaign. "Bill liked the data, but he thought it was insufficient … He felt that it was important to talk to the voters and to have a real idea of what they were feeling . "
To get an idea of what voters are feeling this time around, I came to cover the countryside of Racine, Wisconsin, a small post-industrial town of 80,000 on the west coast of Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee. I chose Racine for three reasons.
First of all, it is in a swing county. Since 1992, Racine County has voted for whoever wins the presidency, supporting Clinton twice, Bush twice, Obama twice, and Trump. In 2016, the county reflected in many ways many other areas of the rust belt. The participation rate decreased by about 9%. Trump narrowly won, garnering 5% less votes than Republican Mitt Romney, four years ago, when Romney had lost, while the Democrats' vote collapsed by 20%. The question of who traded his vote is important. The question of who did not vote, why and if it is motivated this time is crucial.
Secondly, he sits in Republican House District, Paul Ryan, who is leaving. The district is favored by Republicans – Trump won by 10 points – but remains competitive and is the kind of seat that Democrats must win to take the House. A New York Times / Siena College poll last month gave the Republicans a six-point lead here. But it's precisely the poll that Clinton averaged in Wisconsin a week before the 2016 election – and she lost.
Which brings us to the last reason: Wisconsin. Like Michigan, the Democrats thought it had in the bag and made only very little effort to lose it – the first time that Wisconsin had supported a Republican for more than three decades. But the recent political history of Wisconsin resonates with this moment. In 2010, he elected Scott Walker, a Republican governor pursuing a radical conservative agenda. His plan to end the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions and reduce the health benefits and pension rights of local government workers to balance the budget has sparked huge protests. Before occupying Wall Street, tens of thousands of Wisconsinans occupied the state capital to protest against austerity – that was the resistance before the resistance had a name. Collecting more than 900,000 signatures, they forced Walker to be called back – in other words, for a new vote on his governorship.
In my report on this election, the progressives claimed that Walker won under false pretenses and that people did not know what they were getting. Now it was clear that they would reject it.
A week before the elections, I met with the Democratic State Representative for Racine, Cory Mason. "When I meet people now, I feel that there was a sense of urgency and a real intensity that I have never seen," he said at the time. But a little over a week later, Walker is reelected with an increased majority. Walker is still the governor and this year the challenge is daunting. Mason is now the mayor of Racine.
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