Arguing that “anyinvestment made in terminal elevators . . . would be a waste of the people’s money as well as a humiliatingdisappointment to the people of the state,” the committee came out “strongly against the expenditure by thestate of any money for the erection of new terminal elevators.”

Townley grew up on a farm.

he wasn’t like the city socialists. He saw more from thefarmer’s standpoint.

All this threatened agrarians’ already tenuousmiddle-class status

Economic divisions within the ruralmiddle class—between townspeople and farmers—emerged

A handful of village elitesand itinerant wage laborers represented the apex and the nadir of economic and social possibilities.

If you want Congress to protect farm owners, it may be wiseto elect more farm owners. And if you want Congress to stop pro-tecting farmers, it may be wise to stop electing them.

but the relationships areconsiderably noisier.

an increase in a district’s poverty rate is associated with adecrease in the likelihood that a legislator will support agriculture

Note, however, that the fact that thecoefficient on PAC contributions does not change much with theinclusion of other variables suggest that lobbying has an effect allof its own, i.e., that very little of what it captures is captured by law-maker preferences for agriculture or by electoral incentives

on agricultural policy.

awmakers who received more money from farmgroups were more likely to support agriculture in each of the rollcall votes

both parties when we examined whichmembers were designated Friends of the Farm Bureau, our mostcomprehensive measure of support for agriculture.

0.689

The first is the score given to eachlegislator by the American Farm Bureau Federation (

x is a vector of otherlegislator- or district-specific attributes, d s is an indicator variablecapturing whether a legislator is a senator, dj is a vector of statefixed effects, dt is a vector of Congress fixed effects,

measure ofelectoral incentives,

is a measure oflegislator preference for agricultural protection

whose constituents are indifferentor rationally ignorant about the groups’ preferred policies.

Or perhaps the institutional environmenthas somehow stacked the deck in agriculture’s favor.

conference

passage

whose members are often advocates ofagricultural protection,

energypolicy

Labor became ever scarcer in ruralareas and, as a result, the agricultural sector developed severallabor-saving technologies that allowed for increasing returns toscale in agriculture. Farms became bigger and fewer in number

which added a host of agricultural protection measures.The most important were price supports, which set the prices ofselected agricultural commodities equal to purchasing power par-ity for the period 1910–1914, which had seen high commodityprices and farm incomes

‘‘Inconclusive evidence of correlation between moneyand favorable legislative behavior.’’

Because many membersappear to have electoral incentives to—and because many of thosewho don’t seem to have other personal or strategic interests at stake.

endogeneity

is important to know what determines support for a set of mea-sures which most academic economists decry as wasteful

a leading agricultural advocacy organiza-tion

In this article, we explore how preferences, electoral incentives,and lobbying can influence legislative action on agricultural policyin the United States Congress

Interest groups representing agricultural producerslobby policy makers and contribute to the re-election campaignsof those who support agriculture

Voters prefer agricultural protection, andre-election-oriented policy makers follow their lead

In developing countries, the answer seems tobe that urban elites pressure governments to subsidize foodconsumption, often via the threat of social unrest

legislatorpreferences, (ii) electoral incentives, or (iii) lobbying.

the broad array of subsidies to farmers and taxesand quotas imposed on agricultural imports—in developed countries

It included the iron triangle, local governance arrangements, civic associa-tions, and most importantly unions.

The layering of multiple dimensions of decline andmarginalization is distinct to the region and has produced cultural distancebetween it and the rest of the country.

Trump has already ‘made America great again’ becausehe has conclusively demonstrated that the white privilege of denigrating minor-ities without consequence is alive and well

autarky

presidential politics, a capacity that had previ-ously been grounded on their unions, civic associations and their party

Itwas also rooted in expectations that are a legacy of white supremacy

ignores the role of lost working-class power and voicein the Democratic Party

If we interpret Trump’s ability tosecure votes as his ability to channel white revanchism against a morediverse society then it is possible to see the loss of relative status in theRust Belt as an important explanatory factor.

withholding their vote

the Democratic Party does not appear to be particularly con-cerned with the well-being of either

newly won and briefly held material afflu-ence

polemical

The opposition between the credentialled and the uncreden-tialled had its purest partisan expression in 2016

myopia

After getting sent to jail nearly 20 years later forracketeering, bribery and tax evasion, he ran for Congress again

Bill Clinton’s tradepolicy was widely understood as both a betrayal and an existential threat tomany communities in the Midwest

Theability of unions to anchor white workers in the Democratic coalition is gone.

because people of colour and the educated are likely to vote Demo-crat regardless of union membership

In 1964,unionization rates were well over 30 per cent in the Rust Belt, now they arearound 10 per cent

labour unions and political institutions unravel long after deindustrializa-tion itself

civic associations, theDemocratic Party itself, local growth-oriented elites, and social policies thatreflected the worldview of industrial workers.

More generally, as partisan conflict was reorganized aroundrace, issues of economic equity declined in importance.

enthusiastically supporting the political parties that oversaw and facilitated thedestruction of their communities

dynamics disorganizing them and capturing theiraccumulated wealth

From scrapyards in theupper Midwest, material was loaded on otherwise empty trains and ships forthe return trip to China.

Midwest were being sucked into a new urban vortex in China

Much less commented upon is theeffects of extreme devalorization on the physical structure of the region’s neigh-bourhoods and communities.

Thegeographic dynamics of this growing inequality are often overlooked.

unions were still hamstrung, a freetrade regime in international commerce was being established, and disinvest-ment was continuing unchecked in the upper Midwest

Clinton left office welfare was tied to‘character

Rather than beingthe ‘universal class’ associated with America, the industrial working class wasreclassified as a ‘special interest’ that was scuttling the American economy withits greed.

incentivize a shift ofinvestment from manufacturing to finance, tech and services, and ensure theinvestment would pay off due to lower risk and higher profits than other invest-ments

radical reorganization of geo-graphic privilege over the last forty years

While it is notthe most important inter-group tension in American society, it is one of themost clearly evident ones

peripheraliza-tion in economic and political terms.

Indeed, looking atvoting behaviour in this election it would appear that the poor and workingclass of the region are unified in their growing hostility to the Democratic Partyeven if they are not unified in their attraction to Trump.

White post-industrial communitieshave benefited from racial privilege, but this has not conferred any immunity.

it merely exacerbated regionalracial inequality

“Fordism”–that was distinc-tive to the mid-twentieth century upper Midwest, but which was widely mim-icked around the world (Gramsci 1989).

butdue to disconnection between communities and their party representatives

More importantly, the inevitable transformation and decline of place will shapethe values of those living there, just as the initial development of industrial soci-ety once did

kleptocracy

Organizations, institutions, networks and associations, in turn, poten-tially shape these into political subjectivities and moral values which can beinstrumentalized and expressed in politics, development strategies, and culture,which we can summarize as a ‘communal ethos’

Americans and from mostAmerican communities.

not the economic protections that would facilitatebroader social inclusion.

In Detroit alone the decline in black voter turnout wasseveral times the margin of Clinton’s loss in Michigan.

thefew rural counties that were not already solidly Republican and (2) post-industrial counties (see Figure II)

. For the first time in the history of thetwo parties, Republicans did better among poor white voters than among afflu-ent whites

this is a notable contrast to the ethnona-tionalist and protectionist candidates who preceded him

Today, the Democratic Party is a party of professionals, minoritiesand the New Economy

The counties Trump won – over 2,000 more in number –accounted for a much smaller share of GDP

but what is more recent isthe collapse of the institutions that had been built to incorporate industrialworkers and their communities into the mainstream political life of the country,including governance arrangements, work and consumption arrangements, civicassociations, social policies, party organizations, and labour unions

to explain the largely enthusiastic support for Obama in thesesame counties

This way of thinkinghas set up an unproductive discussion of the relative explanatory power ofrace and class.

But the collapse of the regional economy has alsoresulted in the collapse of the institutions and organizations that provided thoseconnections.

with the plight ofthe industrial Midwes

Clinton lost the election because of radicaldeclines in support from within the Democratic coalitio

Due to this, the party pursued poli-cies that would magnify the region’s difficulties rather than alleviate its cir-cumstances

From thisperspective we can see that the active dismantling of the Fordist social orderset the region on a divergent path from the rest of the country

revanchism

This paper argues that the election of Donald Trump is the product of a con-fluence of historical factors rather than the distinctive appeal of the victorhimself. B

pers and magazines the “Trump Democrats” narrative and its historicalantecedent—stories about Ronald Reagan’s capture of the industrial Mid-west—will return with a vengeance once campaigning for the 2020 presi-dential election begins in earnest

Yet, as compelling as these critiquesmight be, they have had little effect on the broader narratives. Indeed, thepublication of articles on “Trump Democrats” continued without sign ofabatement.

politics was often shaped or driven moreby a desire to resolve problems that seemed to imperil the whole commu-nity than by deeply held ideological principles

challenges narratives that depict the 1980s as a de-cade of growing antitax, antigovernment conservatism.

As aresult, neither of the constitutional amendments was approved when thequestion was put before Ohio’s voters

At a state level, tax rises were even more commonplace. Much as withCleveland and Detroit, it was often fear of default and fiscal emergencydriving these decisions.

64 percent of voters supported the taxincrease

It is the revenue side of the budget whichmust be increased.

the political centerof gravity in the industrial Midwest did not shift decidedly to the rightduring the Reagan years. Perhaps most importantly, it also demonstratesthat though national politicians may have rediscovered the market andembraced a politics of antistatist individualism, this was not a develop-ment that inevitably led (or trickled down) to state and municipal politics

Cleveland’s Republican mayor George Voinovich described cuts infederal government urban programs as being carried out with “a meatax” rather than a “scalpel.

Young and his diverse coalition of public and private sector supportersembraced the Ford administration’s offer of funding for the constructionof a major new mass transit network.

Sincemost US cities depended on property and income tax revenues to providemunicipal services and maintain infrastructure, this eroded municipalrevenues

The economic shockwaves created by these events helped producetwo recessions and the worst economic downturn since the Great De-pression.

the demise of the New Deal order and rise of anew conservative/neoliberal order.1

Despite this national and Missouri trendtoward conservatism,

he opposed the Nixon administration’sattempt to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and voted to approve astrengthened extension of the law. He supported labor and Missouri agri-culture by advocating for federal subsidies for cotton producers.*”

a Republican won the state—by a mere 20,488 votes over Democratic presidential challenger HubertHumphrey.

landslide by earn-ing the votes of more than one million Missourians.*

his views opposing the nation’s en-try into NATO and the Marshall Plan.

The destruction of this social philosophy is the aim of the conservativesand reactionaries of both parties.

if the State would be willing to have two Senatorsfrom Saint Louis at the same time.

Long cast his vote infavor of the Civil Right Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Actof 1965. In 1966 Long published the book The Intruders: The Invasion ofPrivacy by Government and Industry,

must be noted that Hennings made singular contributions toMcCarthy’s ultimate fall

federal anti-lynching law.”

internalsecurity createdanewadministrativecriminallawapparatus,inviolationoftheBill ofRights.

civillibertiesandcivilrights

New Deal liberalism with their support of civil rightsand voting rights measures during their respective terms in office,

the1946midtermelectionsreturnedRepublicancontroltobothhousesofCongressforthefirsttimesince 1930.

Midwest in twenty-sevenof thirty-one presidential

Indiana appears far gone for Demo-crats, but it has been right of center for a very long time; Illinois, a one-time swing state, now seems likely to stay Democratic for the foreseeablefuture.

but the trends inside these states are not all favorable to the GOP,although some of those changes are, and many of those trends emergedbefore Trump (although his candidacy, and Clinton’s, exacerbated thosechanges)

he Democratic nomineewon no Minnesota counties west of the Twin Cities. And yet, Clinton stillcarried the state.

but white voters without a four-year college de-gree were embracing it (or, at the very least, recoiling from Clinton)

stiff former managementconsultant

all provided Demo-cratic landslides and had roughly the same presidential deviations as theyhad four years prior

downstate Democratic decline.

all seven states discussed in this chapter, becoming only thethird Democrat to accomplish that feat: Franklin Roosevelt (1932, 1936)and Lyndon Johnson (1964) also did

Illinois senator Barack Obama waswell-positioned to reclaim the White House in what was a classic chang-ing of the guard–style election.

A “wall” constructed on such shaky foundations isn’t much of a wallat all.

Still, while the so-called blue wall held up for Democrats in much ofthe Midwest, the red tide in 2000 came fairly close to breaching the wallin several places

collar counties

but the trade-off between incremental improvement in one county and a falloff every-where else caused the Democratic deficit in the state to balloon

Similar shifts happened in other parts of the Midwest. In Michigan’sFirst Congressional District, which covered the Upper Peninsula andnorthern Michigan, a Clinton margin of seven points in 1996 turned intoa ten-point Bush win. In northwest Wisconsin’s Seventh District, Gorewon by two, down from Clinton’s fourteen.

This came at a time whenvoter choice was aligning on support or opposition to abortion rights,with the former increasingly becoming Democratic and the latter increas-ingly becoming Republican.

transplanted Yankee parents

a party that over time would do increasingly wellnot just in cities but also in suburbs, while falling off in some rural areas,small cities, and other places.

com-munity

imprimatur

run as a moderate

Bush beat Massachusetts governor MichaelDukakis by eight points. And yet some of the countervailing trends in theMidwest that emerged against Reagan in 1984 became more apparent in1988

Reagan Democrat

and Ohio swung against Carter,each giving Reagan double-digit margins

But even in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, the Carter-Mondale ticket’s decline was obvious

Carter, like Kennedy in 1960 and Roosevelt in 1944,won the election despite losing a majority of these Midwest states

This would be the last time that Illinois had a Republi-can-leaning presidential deviation.

southern

Jimmy Carter did something thatDemocrats routinely did before him but have not done since: he nearlyswept the South

It was around this time that big midwestern industrial/urbancounties such as Cook (Chicago), Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Milwaukee, andWayne (Detroit) began to consistently vote much more Democratic thanthe nation as a whole

were collectively likelier to voteRepublican than not

Presidential Deviation in the Midwest,

Illinois

The Midwest was crucial to both

nationalism

esident Donald Trump will write somethingsimilar, but unlike Fallows’s description, it will be hard to take such anobservation seriously.

That trend could help explain what has been to datean asymmetry in polarization, where congressional Republicans have moved right fasterthan liberals have moved left

The set of people who turn out to vote in Republican primaries are now moreconservative than before, and the set of people who turn out to vote in Democratic pri-maries are more liberal.

As theDemocratic and Republican parties became more homogenous, they sent clearer signals tovoters in the rest of the country.

conservatives in the non-South sorted more thoroughlyinto the Republican Party

mirroring thedivergence starting in the South a decade earlier.

Polarization

Fig. 6

Sorting only

Until 1978, conservatives were more likelyto vote in Democratic primaries than in Republican primaries

0.0

towards the conservative sid

looks very similar to the pattern of polarization in Congress.

This figure establishes that the distribution of ideology in the public asa whole has not become more polarized over this segment of time.

tion of one kind or the other in 12 surveys from 1958 to 2012.

This pattern is consistent withour argument that increasingly relevant Republican primary elections changed the brandsof the parties in the South.

which supports the notion that participation in theseRepublican primaries had a lasting effect on individual Southern voter behavior

his prompted segregationistSenator Strom Thurmond to switch from Democrat to Republican, and coincided withRepublican Barry Goldwater’s presidential bid in 1964 on a platform that opposed federalintervention in civil rights.

Voters with extreme views are more likely to participate inprimaries today, and primaries today are more ideologically homogenous than in the past.

primaries across the country

when the Democratic primary electorateshifted to the left as conservatives became Republicans in greater numbers

This is consistent with recentresearch showing that primaries with more open rules of participation do not have moremoderate primary electorate

which drew the most conservative voters into newly relevant SouthernRepublican primaries and left behind a less conservative Southern Democratic primaryelectorate.

eterogeneous congres-sional parties to the present era of more homogeneous parties.

polarization partially stems from polarized pri-mary electorates nominating more polarized candidates for office

The Democratic party prohibited Negroes from participating in its pri-mary

They sought to do this by purging theparty of Negro influence and a Negro share in the spoils of victory and byattracting the new South's businessmen.

they have a disproportionate influence in national politics.

still regarded as a threat of "black domination."

Practicallynone voted in the primary.

Politics isdecentralized.

But Southern liberalism has generally not reached even this preliminarystage of organization.

the future of Southernliberalism might become great.

It gets its power from outsidethe South.