Republicans have no answers. The Midwest has become a blue-burning prairie fire, but Trump and his party have no resources to douse the flames. Trusting Republicans would be like trusting the arsonist who set your house ablaze to put out the flames.
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Republican strategists say that they don’t understand where all of the support for Democrats is coming from in the Midwest. They can’t see who is putting Ohio, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska in play.
The problems of rural America are in many respects not new. Large swaths of rural America have been struggling economically for decades and dealing with declining populations.
Rural America has been a Republican stronghold because traditional small government and individual rights appealed philosophically to many of these voters.
The heartland of America never expected Trump and Republicans to return to power and take away from them to give to the billionaires, but that is what happened.
What rural Americans didn’t vote for was Trump making things worse for them, but that is what happened.
Senate Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown of Ohio explained why the Midwest is in play on MS NOW’s Morning Joe, “I think the reason that Iowa and Kansas are in play, as Ohio is better than in play, we're winning and gonna win, is because of the pain inflicted on rural voters. , I remember it might have been five years ago, But I remember a long time ago, you said these rural hospitals wouldn't exist without Medicaid. That's not really hyperbole. I think that's right, and they are really, really, really under the gun.”
The healthcare crisis in rural America is vast, but there is even more to this dynamic that's driving change.