Democrats’ plan in small, rural swing state counties: Lose by less
MONTFORT, WIS.— JerryVolenec felt betrayed.
Sold on Donald Trump’s pledge tohelp strugglingWisconsin dairy farmers, Volenec voted for the Republican. But within two years, Trump’s trade pact withCanadahadblockedtheexportof a good bit of Volenec’s milk.
“It was a line in the sand. It said to me I was expendable,” Volenec said, as his Holsteins feasted onheaps of corn silage at his southwest Wisconsin farm. “As much as he says he loves the farmers, he loves us in so much aswhatwe can do for him.”
Democrats are hoping to find just enough voters like Volenec to shave Trump’s margins in rural areaswhile they rack up larger numbers in cities and suburbs. They have put inmoneyinthe millions and staff in the dozens to try to make it happen.
Their unorthodox strategy: win by losing by less.
“The general theory of the case goes like this: We’re trying not to lose as bad,” veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said of the rural and small- town counties Trump swung to his side in 2016. “Because when you don’t lose as bad at one thing, you can win everything.”
Carville has helped raise millions of dollars for Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21stCentury’s $30million advertising effort aimed at picking off voters in rural and working-class counties across Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Trump carried all three states by about 77,000 votes out of 13.5 million cast. But in doing so, he peeled off 37 counties carried in 2012 by Barack Obama.
Trump likely must again win all three of the states,
which the Democratic nomineehadcarried in six consecutive elections before 2016, if he is to get a second term.
Trumpmade a quick campaign stop Monday in Oshkosh, a hub in swing-voting east central Wisconsin, while Democratswere holding parts of their national convention in Milwaukee.
But American Bridge’s effort is focusing more on the economically challenged Mississippi River Valley, 150 miles west.
TrumpwonGrantCounty, a fertile expanse of pastureland where Volenec works his fifth- generation farm and which went for Barack Obama in 2012. It’s part of a swath of westernWisconsin, similar to central Michigan and parts of rural and working-class Pennsylvania, where Democrats see Joe Biden simply losing by fewer votes thanHillary Clintondid in 2016 as a way to increase pressure on Trump in the swing regions and suburbs.
“The swing from 2012 to 2016, more than half of it, camefromcommunities that cast 1,000 votes or fewer,” WisconsinDemocratic Party Chair BenWikler said. That meant a shift of roughly 91,000 votes from Democrat to Republican in Wisconsin and about 123,000
in Michigan.
In all, American Bridge’s maphas grownover the summer to include 84 counties, more than half of the three states’ total territory.
Pecking away at these less populous regions is only one part of the fight for these three states that delivered the presidency for Trump. Trump’s team isworking to raise concerns about protests over racial injustice in GOP- leaning suburbs, while Biden is counting on a more energized urban outpouring as he also chips into Trump’s support in typically GOP-leaning suburbs.
Democrats, whohavemade gains in suburbs, including Republican-leaning suburbs aroundMilwaukee, must also continuemakinginroadswith theyoungerandmoreracially and ethnically diverse families that have begun incrementally changing the profile of once vastlywhite suburbs and exurbs, especially around Milwaukee.
In 2 0 1 8 , Democrat Gretchen Whitmer took the Michigan governorship in part by picking up nine counties carriedbyTrumpin 2016, including Bay County. In Wisconsin, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin won reelection carrying 17 that Trump carried.