For most of this conversation, we’ve been talking about the “white working class” as a single demographic category. But the white working class is fairly diverse. White working-class voters in Appalachia, for instance, have behaved very differently from those across the Northern tier in recent cycles (Obama lost a lot of ground in Appalachia, but did better than John Kerry or Al Gore in a place like Wisconsin). There was a fairly similar split with Trump in the primary. He did really well with white working-class voters in Appalachia and the industrial Midwest, but really struggled in places like Iowa and Wisconsin, or Vermont and Minnesota. So I wouldn’t be very surprised if it turned out that Trump made gains among white working-class voters nationally, but didn’t pick up much or anything in a state like Wisconsin.
.. I guess all I would say is that if Trump can’t be competitive in Ohio, he’s not going to even come close nationally, or in states like Virginia and Colorado.
.. Can Mr. Trump really win 40 percent of the Hispanic vote there again, especially after he went after home-state favorites like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio? Then factor in the rapid pace of demographic change and the extent that Obama already lost a ton of ground among older, white working-class voters in the state. Suddenly it’s really hard to figure out how Trump is going to win the closest battleground state from the last election, even if he fixes his problem with well-educated white voters nationally.
I think there’s a real case that Florida could save Democrats in a close election
.. Mitch Stewart, who served as battleground states director for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, said that Michigan was the state Democrats should worry most about being flipped.
.. I think a quick Hillary Clinton-Sanders unity tour through New Hampshire, Boulder, Ann Arbor and Madison wouldn’t be too surprising. I think Bill Clinton is probably at his best in Ohio and Pennsylvania, which is also where the Obama campaign tended to use him.
.. the Democratic advantage in the Electoral College would start to look pretty flimsy if the Republicans started to make further gains in the Upper Midwest instead of Appalachia.