This Is the Reason Why the Rust Belt States Don't Like Democrats

I rarely, if ever, go after an op-ed writer. If I disagree with something they've written, I may mention it in passing in one of my own pieces, but with the exception of an op-ed that Thomas Friedman wrote several years ago about how the U.S. needed a strong third party to challenge the political establishment - an argument I found totally nonsensical to the point of calling it an "obsession" - my philosophy has always been to respectfully disagree and move on. That's my way of saying, go with God. After all, that's why they're called op-ed writers and not reporters, right?

But an op-ed written by Jill Filipovic for The New York Times called, "Does Anyone Actually Want Joe Biden To Be President?" made me so upset, I simply couldn't let the opportunity pass without taking her to task.

Let's start with the title of the piece, which I assume is a question since Ms. Filipovic ended it with a question mark. Though, given the sarcasm implied, I'm fairly certain it wasn't. But I'll answer it nonetheless: Yes, there are people who actually want Joe Biden to be president, at least that's according to the polling which shows him with a considerable lead over Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination and a single-digit lead over Trump in the general election. The last time I checked, pollsters contact actual people on these things. But I could be wrong; maybe they're contacting aliens from another planet. By the way, Jill, nice picture of Biden with his head down. Where'd you get it from, Fox News?

In her opening paragraph, she throws down the gauntlet on the issue of electability.

The most important requirement for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee? Electability. It matters more, we keep hearing, than nominating a candidate who has good policies. It matters more than nominating a candidate with a track record of passing progressive legislation. It certainly matters more than nominating a candidate who could be the first female president.

Wow, so much to unpack. First off, she assumes that "electability" and "good policies" are somehow mutually exclusive. They aren't. Case in point, Trump's policies have been terrible and yet he somehow got elected. On the other hand, Barack Obama won two consecutive presidential elections espousing some pretty good policies. One should never conflate these two terms. As for the importance of nominating a candidate with a track record of passing progressive legislation, the last truly progressive piece of legislation that passed Congress was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. For your edification, Jill, Lyndon Johnson, the president who signed that legislation into law, was this country's last real progressive to reside in the Oval Office, not Jimmy Carter, nor Bill Clinton, nor Obama. The Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law by Obama, was viewed by many progressives as a sellout to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Oh, and by the way, the first female president could've been Hillary Clinton, but four years ago, I suppose she would've been one of those  "electable" candidates that nobody wanted to be president; that is if I follow your logic.

Let's jump to paragraph four,

Mr. Biden, whose campaign officially kicks off this Saturday in Philadelphia, is the kind of guy you could see sitting behind a big desk, acting as a wise custodian of our democracy without posing any threat of changing much. He is from one of those scrappy Rust Belt cities fetishized by so many pundits — people who believe that the imaginary working-class white voter who is going to deliver the White House to the Democrats wants Joe Biden, which is what, in turn, makes Joe Biden electable.

"He is from one of the scrappy Rust Belt cities fetishized by so many pundits - people who believe that the imaginary working-class white voter who is going to deliver the White House to the Democrats wants Joe Biden." This in a nutshell is how Trump became president. The sheer arrogance of that statement is why Democrats are so despised in that region of the country. Can you imagine Obama making such an asinine statement? Me neither. Know who else wouldn't make that statement? That's right, Biden, old Mr. Gaffe himself. Maybe that's why he's up by 11 over Trump in Pennsylvania, you know, that state with all those scrappy working-class voters that people like Filipovic shit all over.

Now down to paragraph eight,

The Democratic Party of 2019 does not look much like Joe Biden. Women, African-American, Latino and Asian voters are all much more likely to say they support Democratic candidates than Republican ones. White voters, male voters and especially white male voters generally support Republicans.

There are two huge assumptions made in this paragraph, and both are vastly misunderstood and, I might add, a tad bit overrated by many pundits. Yes, it's true that today's Democratic Party doesn't look like Joe Biden, but that apparently hasn't hurt him, especially with respect to African American voters, who don't appear to be enamored of progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. This was one of the reasons why Hillary ran away with the nomination in 2016. With respect to white, male voters, perhaps the majority of them do support Republicans, but that's still no excuse to ignore them the way so many Democratic candidates are doing this year, or take them for granted, which is what the party as a whole did in 2016.

Paragraphs eleven and twelve should be taken together,

But what about those Obama-to-Trump swing voters who will reportedly make or break this election, as they did the last one? The Democratic Party shouldn’t leave anyone behind, but working-class white men are declining as a share of the Democratic base, while whites generally are declining as a share of the general population. The entire premise that white men without college degrees are the only possible swing voters is a faulty one. 

There’s also little evidence that most voters pick a candidate based on policies and that a moderate candidate who wrote campaign talking points to appeal to a broad swath of voters would do significantly better than a more visionary and progressive one. Instead of trying to win back a waning electoral and demographic force, Democrats would be better served to consider what will get voters to the polls. Hillary Clinton’s loss can only be explained by a long list of factors, but surely one of them was apathy: The certainty that she had the election in the bag probably depressed voter turnout.

I'll cut to the chase: the Obama-to-Trump swing voter was THE reason Trump won. Just take a look at the results in Ohio. Obama won the state by 166 thousand votes in 2012; Trump won it by 455 thousand in 2016. That's a difference of over 620 thousand votes. Across the entire Rust Belt region, the results were similar: Obama voters abandoning the Democratic Party in droves for Trump. And while I agree in principle that most voters don't pick a candidate based solely on policies, they do tend to vote for the candidate that they feel best represents their interests and who shows at least a modicum of empathy. Hillary's main problem had little to do with apathy; it had everything to do with arrogance. The belief that she "had the election in the bag" didn't so much depress voter turnout as it motivated people to go out and vote against her.

It took a while for Filipovic to get around to the 2018 midterms, but in paragraphs fourteen thru sixteen she finally does,

Women made record numbers of political contributions in 2018 and, at least anecdotally, dominated campaigns behind the scenes. Mr. Trump’s white working-class base still voted Republican, although in lower numbers than when he triumphed. Women of color, and particularly black women, continued their trend of staunchly supporting Democrats, and turnout among racial minorities hit a highat 28 percent of voters, and 38 percent of voters under 30. A majority of white women with college degrees voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but it was this group that gave Democratic candidates a new advantage in 2018, increasing its support for Democrats over Republicans by 13 percentage points from two years earlier.

In several key states, including Ohio and Florida, white women with college degrees flipped: A majority voted Republican in 2016 and Democratic in 2018. White men, regardless of education, did not. It’s white women, not working-class white men, who are the most promising swing voters for Democrats in 2020, and who could wind up as loyal lifelong Democrats.

Strong turnout among voters of color, a Democratic shift among white voters, and significant flips by college-educated white women all reaped dividends for the women who ran in 2018. Female candidates in the midterms outperformed male ones by a significant margin, on both the left and the right (and the gap was larger with Democratic candidates than Republican ones). In other words, if the 2018 election is any indication, women are more electable than men are — especially, but not only, with Democrats.

There's no other way to put this: the vast majority of House pickups for the Democratic Party in last year's midterms came in suburban districts that went for Trump in 2016. While many of those candidates may have been women, some of them black, they were hardly progressive; if anything most of them were centrists. Given that Trump's base will turnout in greater numbers in 2020 than they did in 2018, the margin of error for Dems is smaller than you think. White women with college degrees voting blue last year did NOT prevent Republicans from retaining the governor's mansion in Ohio or flipping Senate seats in Florida, Indiana and Missouri. If, as Filipovic states, women are more electable than men, especially with Democrats, it appears as though the majority of Democratic voters haven't gotten the memo. So far, Biden and Sanders - two men - are collectively polling over 50 percent, while Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar - three women - are collectively polling at just over 17 percent.

And, finally, there's this,

Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, no force has been greater, bolder, louder and hungrier than women. . . It is baffling, then, to know all of this and conclude that the most electable candidate is Joe Biden, an older white man tightly associated with sexual harassment and racism, even if he is polling ahead more than a year before the election.

Sexual harassment and racism? Please! Look, the man has a history of being a little too, shall we say, handsy, and his support for the 1994 crime bill is a black mark that will plague him throughout the campaign, I get it, but neither makes him a sexual predator or a racist. Whatever else you might think of Biden, he's hardly Harvey Weinstein or David Duke. This moral equivalence crap that people like Filipovic keep peddling is why some people can't stand progressives.

Look, as I've said on several occasions, it's still early, and no one can predict who will emerge as the Democratic nominee. It may well be Biden, or perhaps Sanders, or Harris, or Warren, or Pete Buttigieg, or Johnny Galecki - I hear he recently lost his job and is looking for a new career path. We just don't know. But what is certain is this: the conclusions that Filipovic draws in her op-ed piece run counter to the available data, and no amount of wishful thinking or personal grievances on her part is going to change a reality she can't bring herself to accept.

In 2016, the so-called fly-over states sent a message loud and clear to the country. If Democrats don't stop listening to writers like Jill Filipovic, they'll send the same one again in 2020.