With the mid-term elections a week away, some thoughts on the state of politics in the Midwest seem timely. This blog, like its sponsor, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, is non-partisan, so don't look for any endorsements. But I'm a journalist by trade and I spend a lot of time driving around the Midwest, so it might be useful to contribute some impressions from all this traveling and listening.
The Midwest, for the first time in years, went solidly Democratic for Barack Obama two years ago. Now the conventional wisdom, in the Midwest as elsewhere, predicts sharp swings back to the Republicans, perhaps even a landslide that would contribute to a GOP capture of both houses of Congress.
Well, maybe so. But put me down as a skeptic. It seems certain that the Republicans will make gains but possibly not as many as they expect. Polls throughout the Midwest are tightening. There remains a strong sense of independence, almost an ornery refusal to make up one's mind too soon. The results could be much closer than anyone expects.
There are several reasons why.
First, Midwesterners, sufferers in the worst economy in the nation, have plenty to be angry about. But as far as I can tell, that anger seems to be non-partisan, free-floating, not necessarily allied to any party, including the Tea Party.
Everywhere I go, I ask about local Tea Party activities. Invariably, I get the same answer, along of lines of, "Oh, there's some of those folks here. They had a little rally a couple of months ago. But they're no big deal."
I hear plenty of Tea Party rhetoric and unbridled anger as I drive around, but most of it comes from Glenn Beck and other radio pundits. Beck & Co. have their Midwestern fans, but it's a mystery how many of them are ready to rise up and smite the Democrats, as ordered.
Instead, most of the anger tends to aimed at incumbents of either party. There does seem to be a feeling that anybody working in Washington or state capitals is a crook or an idiot and has to be thrown out. Relatively speaking, this is good news for Republicans because the Democrats hold more offices just now: of the eight upper Midwest states, only two have Republican governors and neither are running for re-election. But some Republicans are incumbents, too, and are not immune from this free-swinging voter anger.
This itself begs the question: just how angry are Midwesterners? The answer is that they're truly angry -- but they've been angry for years. I've heard earfuls of this in the past five years, from factory workers whose jobs had gone to China, from mayors and economic development directors watching their cities decay, from parents and teachers seeing their best young people leave town, from white Midwesterners outraged by illegal immigrants, from folks baffled by globalization, from good people who felt their lives changing for the worse.
But I heard most of this before the Recession began. In truth, much of the Midwest has been in recession for years. Sure, the same people are angry now, but this is an anger aimed at global forces, NAFTA, free trade, corporate executives and the unfairness of life. As mentioned above, this can't be good for incumbents, especially Democrats, but it's too tidy to say that it all lands on the GOP side of the scales.
I do sense a heightened backlash against immigrants, which can't help a Democratic party that is seen as a more pro-immigration party. People who are suffering are looking for scapegoats, and in the traditional all-white societies of the upper Midwest, dark-skinned newcomers who arrive to take jobs and challenge old certainties make easy targets.
There's some racism here, especially among the older generation in smaller and more isolated communities. These people, mostly men, are more likely to be outspokenly racist, against President Obama as well as immigrants. They fit the stereotype of the aging white males so visible at the Tea Party rallies we see on television.
But much of the anger against immigrants is more complicated than this. Too many Midwesterners have see too much disappear -- jobs, economies, the futures of towns, their children. All they have left is their identity, linked to race, religion, language, national background. Immigrants, by their very presence, challenge this last fortress.
All this is a poison chalice for the party that grasps it to win next week's election. Pandering to anti-immigration sentiment risks alienating the region's growing Hispanic vote. In much of the Midwest, the economy may not be much better two years from now, even once the Recession ends, which means that this year's electees will be the incumbents of 2012. Demographic reality guarantees that those who play to the anger of older voters are recruiting a shrinking electorate. It's possible that some states -- Illinois, say, or Ohio -- are ungovernable: Republicans who unseat incumbents like Pat Quinn or Ted Strickland may wish soon enough that they had lost.
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