In the long-ago of my carefree bachelorhood, I spent a fair amount of time in Minneapolis's Warehouse District, where I was impressed with the evident wide learning of a bartender I knew. He talked fluently on almost any topic, including arcane ones, but then one day he started in on something I knew about and, though he talked just as easily and authoritatively, he was all wrong, and I began to consider the possibility that he was full of shit about everything. I had a similar sensation when reading this Politico story on Trump's recent visit to Duluth. It's all about Trump's prospects in Minnesota, especially in the 8th congressional district, which is anchored by Duluth. The authors, Christopher Cadelago and David Siders, write:
If Trump can flip Minnesota in 2020, he will need to sustain large majorities on northeastern Minnesota's Iron Range, including in the 8th Congressional District, which presents a rare pickup opportunity for the GOP this year . . . .
I'm a pretty avid consumer of political journalism, and I look at Politico almost every day. If nothing else, it seems as if it's a decent source for "conventional wisdom," but the above snippet displays innocence of Minnesota geography and politics. For one thing, it assumes that the 8th Congressional District is all within the Iron Range when of course the opposite is true. Further, Duluth and the Iron Range towns are the population centers of St. Louis County, which Hillary Clinton carried by a double-digit margin. So it makes little sense to speak of Trump sustainirng large majorities in northeastern Minnesota: he lost northeastern Minnesota, and not just by a little. He did, however, carry the 8th Congressional District, which includes St. Louis County, by about 15 points. He was able to do that because the district stretches southerly to the northern exurbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as westward to encompass a bulbous swatch of central Minnesota--the state's geographic center is in the southwesterly part of the district, near Brainerd--and it's these areas that are home to the Republican voters who went overwhelmingly for Trump.
A map of the district (from the Wikipedia article) is shown above. If you divide its area into equal thirds with two east-west lines, the most southerly sector--hardly "northeastern Minnesota"--is overwhelmingly Republican. It abuts the 6th Congressional District, which was for years represented by the execrable Michele Bachmann, and is continuous with the 6th in culture and politics. Lots of snowmobiles, 4-wheelers, and guns per capita. Not very many dental offices, Caribou shops, or institutions of higher education. It's this area that makes the district a candidate for a Republican pickup, and where Trump, to flip Minnesota, would "need to sustain large majorities."
Comments