Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
I think many pundits would agree, but I'm skeptical. This assumes that exurban and rural voters base their vote on concern for urban areas, when all other indications are that they absolutely loathe urban areas. They love when Trump calls Chicago worse than Mogadishu or when he claims NYC and Seattle are "outlaw jurisdictions" or whatever the hell he calls them. They worship the "troll the urbanites and elitists" candidate.
So if a random rural voter in Wisconsin was worried about unrest in Kenosha, I'm not clear why that would make them more apt to vote for the "cities suck and get what they deserve" candidate. Kenosha is a working class small Rust Belt city and those turned more Trump in 2020, IMO not because they were worried about urban America but because they're Trumpist to the core.
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Yeah, I don't really see the evidence that Trump's law and order message was successful. If anything the evidence suggests that it was out of touch. The "Democrats want to defund police" narrative was pushed by Republicans and aimed directly at white suburban moderates. Since that message did not result in an increase of support in the suburbs, it was categorically a failure, even if people want to spin it otherwise. I'm also not even that convinced that it actually cost Democrats down ballot races that they would've otherwise won (Max Rose was always going to lose).
I guess you could argue that Trump would've done even worse in the suburbs in the absence of the civil unrest, but that just means he never had any path to re-election.