BUTLER, Pennsylvania — On Oct. 4, several weeks after being shot at the Butler Farm Show Complex here in Western Pennsylvania, then-candidate Donald Trump came back to the very spot he stood when disturbed loner Thomas Matthew Crooks fired several shots at him, almost ending Trump’s life and taking the life of a Western Pennsylvania father.
For anyone paying attention that day, it was clear the race was over. If we are all being honest, it was likely over even before the first rally began on July 13. I’ve argued in my reporting that Trump’s inevitability began 18 months earlier, when he showed up 42 miles from here in East Palestine, Ohio, when nobody in the White House could be bothered.
But back to the assassination attempt: Never mind that President Joe Biden had had a disastrous debate a few weeks before, never mind that the likelihood would be that Vice President Kamala Harris would step in and take his place, which Democrats and the media since last November had been whispering should happen. None of what happened a week later, when Biden took himself out of the mix and purposely put Harris in his place, was really that much of a shock.
And despite the inevitability of that happening, and the shot in the arm it would give the Democrats who were despondent, the die was cast had only people, pollsters, and the media taken the time to listen to just enough people between Butler and the village of East Palestine and heard what they had on their mind.
I reported in July that the people who live in places in the middle of somewhere in America, in 42-mile stretches of back roads, suburbs, and rural areas in every battleground state in the country, as well as on the outskirts of cities in New York and New Jersey, were voting in unison for a better way.
Pollsters, experts, Democrats, and even some Republicans didn’t see them. They didn’t understand that the middle class in this country, black, white, Asian, and Hispanic people, were all voting shoulder to shoulder, not because they were angry, bitter, or resentful but because they were hopeful that things could be better.
Our experts in polling, politics, institutions, corporations, media, Hollywood, and academia wrongly cast it as anger and resentment. Billionaire Mark Cuban, a Pittsburgh native who should know better, cast the women who associate with Trump as stupid. Actress Julia Roberts hinted that women in the middle of somewhere were so subservient to their husbands that she had to give them permission to vote behind their backs, and former President Barack Obama scolded black men. So did his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama. Indeed, she scolded everybody.
For every wealthy and powerful person who the Democrats trotted out to persuade, bully, demean, and demoralize this coalition, their scolding expanded the coalition rather than broke it.
The political realignment came along the fault lines of East Palestine, where Trump got his groove back, and here in Butler. No matter how inartful you find his message, it remained a message of someone having their backs, promising that things will be better, and showing a willingness to take on all of the institutions that have failed the middle class. That’s how Trump leap-frogged past a weak and feeble Biden.
It also had him leap-frog over Harris, explained Paul Sracic, a Youngstown State University political science professor.
“Because Harris was also a weak opponent who was largely unvetted, voters didn’t trust that Harris had really abandoned the progressive ideas that she championed only four years ago,” he said.
More importantly, though, Trump is heading back to the Oval Office because he both led and benefited from a realignment in politics that he did not cause but instead resulted from. If anything, it was caused by the Democrats abandoning with glee the very people who placed them in office since the New Deal in the 1930s.
Sracic, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, said that for years, Republicans talked about a “big tent” party that would reach out to historically Democratic voters, especially socially conservative minority voters. Trump orchestrated that shift not by poring over data but on instinct: He understood these voters were up for grabs and needed a message of hope.
“The Republican Party is now the party of the working class, with the qualifier ‘white’ slowly fading away, alongside traditionally Republican small-business owners and, increasingly, some Silicon Valley billionaires,” Sracic said. “That is a majority of the country, and it is reflected in the popular vote.”
The glue that cements this new coalition together is that these are all people who make things. Whether you’re a blue-collar worker in a factory or the owner of that factory, you make things that people need, and you expect the government to get out of the way and let you do your work. Interestingly, some of the new, 21st-century creators, such as billionaire Elon Musk, have joyfully joined this group led by a New York City builder.
In fact, it is people you see almost daily in your lives who are at the very heart of this coalition: waitresses, cosmetologists, welders, plumbers, small-business owners, the taco truck driver, the pizza shop owner, your children’s little league coach, the usher at church, and your barber — people who all make your lives better in a small way every day.
And the election data showed these voters don’t just live in out-of-the-way places in rural America. They are your neighbors in very blue states. They’ve likely cut your hair, taught your children, or fixed the engine of your car. They are of every race and background, and nowhere was this more evident than in this city that is just a stone’s throw from the Mahoning Valley of Ohio, where labor and Democrats ruled for over a century.
Sracic said this political realignment can be starkly illustrated by the shift in voting over the past eight years in Mahoning County, where Youngstown is the county seat:
“For years, Youngstown symbolized the steel that built the U.S. Mahoning County was ‘deep blue’ for election after election, voting for Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama twice. Even in 2016, the voters remained somewhat loyal to the Democrats, giving slightly more votes to Hillary Clinton.”
This year, Trump won Mahoning County by a stunning 10 points. Even legacy Democrats, such as Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who had counted on blue-collar Mahoning County voters for decades, narrowly lost the county by a few hundred votes this time.
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What that Ohio U.S. Senate race shows, as well as the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania in which Republican Dave McCormick defeated Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-PA), is this realignment is not just a Trump phenomenon and is not going away any time soon.
No one got this election more wrong than those in my trade of journalism. They don’t know how to cover people who don’t share their values, their educational achievements, and their ZIP codes. And, based on some of the things I’ve read on social media or seen on cable news, it appears they are very reluctant even to try. They just want everyone in the new coalition to go away.