The JD Vance Pick Highlights the Central Importance of the Fight Over Factory Towns

Donald Trump’s pick of phony populist JD Vance shows that the Republican political strategy is focused like a laser beam on Factory Towns, the small and midsized working-class towns outside of big metro areas which have been most affected by deindustrialization. 

Trump could have picked a Black guy like Tim Scott to make a play for the Black voters that, according to some polling, seem more open to voting for a Republican this year. He could have picked Marco Rubio to appeal to Hispanic voters. He could have picked a woman loyalist like Elise Stefanik or Kristi Noem to make an overt play to women voters.

Instead, Trump is making a big bet that playing hard in Factory Towns is the one that will pay off. He is smart to make this bet, because Factory Towns delivered for him in 2016, broke open the Blue Wall in that election, and upended the political playing field. Democrats lost a net total of almost 1.8 million votes in net vote margin in those kinds of counties in Pennsylvania and the Midwest between 2012 and 2016, including in many counties that Obama won in 2012. 

Factory Towns are key to winning in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The Republicans know that their gains are not permanent or immutable. Democrats won some of those votes back in the 2018 elections; we had enough of a net gain to allow Biden to win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan in 2020; and we won several competitive congressional upset races in those kinds of districts in 2022, which would have allowed us to keep the House if California and New York had not under-performed. 

The candidate who wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin will win the presidency, and Factory Town voters -- close to 50% of the electorate in those states -- will be the biggest factor in who wins those states. (Caveat to that statement: this assumes the Democrats run an equally strong GOTV operation among Democratic base voters in the big cities. If they don’t, doing well in the Factory Towns won’t save them, but I am confident that Democrats, labor unions, and progressive groups know how to turn out this vote.)

This is why Trump picked Vance: he comes from one of those Factory Towns and sounds like a populist. But instead of becoming a teacher in one of those towns, or a small businessman investing back into those communities, Vance went off to work for one of the sleaziest billionaires in Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel. Vance’s work did nothing to help Middletown or Appalachia, but did get him in good with Thiel, who gave $15 million to help buy Vance a Senate seat.

A strategy for Factory Towns

My organization, American Family Voices, through our Factory Towns project, has been doing a deep dive studying these communities and voters -- you can find the series of reports we’ve done here and our most recent political analysis memo, co-authored with In Union, here. Factory Towns voters are definitely persuadable -- they are focused on economic issues and are deeply populist, against greedy corporations, and pro-union. They know that the Republicans are in bed with Big Business, but aren’t sure what the Democrats stand for on the economic issues that matter the most to them.

Democrats and progressives should develop a strategy based on building local, trusted communities on social media that talk about the local and kitchen table issues that matter to working families. They can contrast the Biden administration's accomplishments and agenda for the future -- lower drug prices, building new roads and bridges, rebuilding American manufacturing, higher wages and stronger unions -- with the phony populism of Trump and Vance. These are the guys who blame poor and blue-collar people for all their problems, who want to give massive tax cuts to billionaires and wealthy corporations, who want to empower corporate monopolies to price gouge and crush their unions.

The battle lines are drawn.

The path to winning the presidency, the Senate, and the House is squarely through working-class neighborhoods and towns. Republicans are going all-in on their appeal to them, and Democrats need to engage that fight in a big way. We know how to win Factory Towns voters over, but we have to start now and invest serious resources to make it happen.