Which Value Will Capture Middle America?

Aug. 18, 2024

The two candidates for vice president were selected in part because they represent, and are hoped to attract, Middle America.

On the surface, this would seem a gross miscalculation on someone’s part.  How could two men who are so different in their worldviews and their politics be considered worthy of consideration by the same basic constituency?

The answer is they can be, albeit in contrasting ways.  How this plays out in the next few months not only could have a major bearing on the election but will serve as still another litmus test of where we are as a nation.

Democrat Tim Walz and Republican J.D. Vance wasted no time in trading barbs over whom is more authentic.  Their posturing about “camo-hats” and the like is good fun but, beyond the fact that neither Walz or Vance hail from New York or California, their backgrounds really aren’t that comparable.

Walz is drawing plenty of attention for growing up in remote farming communities of northern Nebraska.  To Democrats, who long ago wrote off the heartland, he is the best thing going.  Vance, who well chronicled his troubled upbringing in Hillbilly Elegy, grew up in the shadow of a struggling steel mill in a densely populated corridor between Cincinnati and Dayton.

Of much more significance, they place differing emphasis on two values that are core to Middle America.

While I don’t pretend to speak for the heartland, my conversations five years ago with community leaders of another Nebraska farming community contributed greatly to Our Common Purpose’s 10 core principles for America.

Many topics were covered in those lengthy discussions in Superior, Neb., located just 225 miles to the south of where Walz grew up, but two overriding impressions endure:

• Hard-working townspeople willingly contribute to their communities every way they can. This is the blessing, and the curse, of living in a small town.  When there are only so many to do it all, everyone has to do their share.
• Correspondingly, they have little patience for able-bodied individuals who aren’t pulling their weight. Small towns offer no place to hide for those they see as living off the system.  Complaints about locals they believe abuse the food stamp program quickly turn into disparaging references to welfare queens in New York City.  They expect people to take responsibility for themselves.

The two vice presidential candidates are different manifestations of that culture.

Walz likely would place the accent on the first of the values, beginning probably from boyhood.  While much has been made of his football background, small schools can field a team only if every kid turns out to play.  Teacher, coach, National Guardsman, all that stuff, Walz seems to have been a contributor to his local community.  I haven’t heard him express himself on those who don’t but he likely takes a gentler position than his opponent.

The second value is a long-standing viewpoint of conservatives, and Vance eagerly takes it up.  He has been hammering the “lazy poor” ever since Hillbilly Elegy.  On the other hand, given the dysfunction of his childhood, I don’t know he would have been exposed to much of a community-minded commitment in his youth.

The two men offer a choice between honoring the way people have tried to live their own lives versus the impatience they feel toward those who don’t work so hard.  I suspect many Middle America voters identify to varying degrees with each of those perspectives. Which will speak loudest to them over the next couple of months is yet to be determined.

Either way, Middle America has been given a boost.

The political theorist Isaiah Berlin, about whom you will be hearing a lot more from me in the coming months, has conjectured that large groups are just like individuals.  They hanker for status and recognition.

Middle America obviously is an amalgam of many such groups.  Between small towns and big cities, there is as much diversity as one would find anywhere else.   At the core, however, they all identify themselves as being part and parcel of flyover country, which to them is long overdue for a little recognition and respect.  Now with the brain trusts of both political parties reaching into their midst for VP candidates, they find themselves in an enviable position.  But what will they choose to do with that?

The answer to the question “who shall govern me?” is, according to Berlin, somebody or something who “I can represent as ‘my own’, as something which belongs to me, or to whom I belong.”

Many of these are red states, and that isn’t about to change, but which vice president candidate would these voters choose if that were a separate ballot question?  Who are they going to feel most comfortable in representing as their own?  Walz or Vance?

This is a true test of how midwestern sensibilities fit today’s political landscape.  In flyover country, I’d guess it’s very much up in the air at the moment where they will land.

— Richard Gilman