What’s the matter with swing states?

What’s the matter with swing states?

Paul Waldman — Read time: 4 minutes

Columnist

Michigan is about as closely divided as a swing state gets. At the moment, it is represented in the House by seven Democrats and seven Republicans; the governor and both senators are Democrats, while the state legislature is controlled by Republicans; and Joe Biden won the state narrowly in 2020, while Donald Trump squeaked out a victory there in 2016.

Given all that, you’d think that both parties would try to cast the widest net possible, performing the delicate maneuver of keeping their base energized while not alienating independent voters and attempting to win at least some support from the other side. But you’d be only half right.

There’s a curious dynamic at play there, one that is repeating itself in one swing state after another. On one hand, Democrats seeking office in these states offer both a standard set of center-left policies and a political style meant to have wide appeal. On the other hand, the state’s Republicans present a radical face, seemingly meant to court only the party’s Trumpiest and most conservative voters.

Democrats may be tempted to say, “Good — let them show how extreme they are. Voters will recoil in disgust.” Which might happen. But it’s anything but a sure bet, especially in a midterm election year when the opposition is likely to make gains no matter how crazy its candidates are.

Consider some colorful stories out of Michigan in the past few days, where Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — who got elected in 2018 on a pledge to “fix the damn roads” — is up for reelection this year.

One GOP candidate opposing her, Ryan D. Kelley, was recently recorded telling prospective poll workers, “If you see something you don’t like happening with the machines, you see something going on, unplug it from the wall.”

Kelley also stood by nodding while a state Senate candidate told the audience to “show up armed” to the polls, and that while peaceful change is preferable, if things don’t go the way they want, “we need to be prepared to lock and load.”

Another gubernatorial candidate, Garrett Soldano, told an interviewer that rape victims who become pregnant should be told they’re “heroic” and that “God put them in this moment” to carry their rapist’s child.

Look around closely divided states, whether it’s Michigan or Wisconsin or Georgia or Arizona, and you see something similar: Democrats who place themselves squarely in the middle of their party or in some cases even on its conservative side, facing Republicans taking extreme positions, especially when it comes to voting and elections.

In some swing states, there’s an ongoing conflict within the GOP — not between moderates and conservatives, but between extremely conservative Republicans who are less than wholly committed to Trump’s war on democracy, and extremely conservative Republicans who will do whatever Trump tells them, including running against those in the former group. That’s the situation in Georgia, where there is no such thing as a moderate Republican, only those who are for or against Trump’s election lies.

Or Arizona, a state trending blue that Biden won in 2020 and now has two Democratic senators. Gov. Doug Ducey — another conservative Republican — has been declared persona non grata by Trump for saying the state’s 2020 election was fair.

The most likely Republican candidate to succeed Ducey (he’s term-limited) is Kari Lake. Her campaign is based almost entirely on Trump’s lies; she wants to imprison her likely Democratic opponent, the current secretary of state, for presiding over a fair election.

We learned some time ago that a “swing state” isn’t usually one with lots of moderates. More often it means there are roughly equal numbers of strong Republicans and strong Democrats. And of course every state is unique; Michigan, for instance, has a long and disturbing history of violent right-wing militia activity.

But here’s a clue as to the difference between the parties. The leading Republican candidate for governor in Michigan, former Detroit police chief James Craig, announced his candidacy on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, home of covid misinformation, conspiracy theories and constant race-baiting.

Craig did that because it was a good way to get attention, and because all politics is national now — for both parties, but particularly for Republicans.

You can find all kinds of voters and subgroups in every state; there are at least a few neo-Nazis in Massachusetts and anarcho-syndicalists in Mississippi. But to find a state Democratic Party that is strongly progressive in both its policy ideas and its approach to politics, you have to go to states such as California or Maryland where they have comfortable majorities that Republicans have little or no chance of overcoming. In closely divided states, Democrats tend to be far more cautious and conciliatory.

But on the other side, with only a few exceptions, Republicans in deep-red states and Republicans in purple states have become almost indistinguishable. They all agree that base voters are all that matter, and energizing them is the path to victory.

And in a midterm year when the opposition’s voters are already more likely to get to the polls, we could see some truly frightening people elected in states where you might not have expected it.