In a televised special for MSNBC, Bernie Sanders paid a visit to “Trump Country” Monday night, taking part in a town hall with residents of McDowell County, W.Va.
Before Trump won 75 percent of the vote in McDowell County last November, Sanders easily defeated Hillary Clinton in the county’s Democratic presidential primary in May. Given the widely-accepted theory that Trump’s populist message resonated with rural voters in a way that Mitt Romney and John McCain did not, the town hall set out to explore whether, perhaps, Sanders’ populist message could do the same.
Populism, after all, transcends party lines.
And so it did in McDowell County. The audience cheered Sanders’ repeated declarations that healthcare is a human right and residents, several of whom cast their ballots for Trump, offered impassioned defenses of various provisions of the Affordable Care Act. That’s not surprising. Or at least it shouldn’t be.
The majority of Americans are not ideologues zealously dedicated to philosophies about the proper role of government. They pay taxes and they want the government to work for them. One voter in the MSNBC special said they pulled the lever for Trump precisely because he said he was going to help them out, not take away their Medicare or other benefits.
In the same way that liberals made too much of Obama’s electoral sweep in 2008, conservatives need to be cautious in their evaluations of the GOP’s recent takeover of government. Populist messages from “Hope and Change” to “Make America Great Again” go a longer way towards lifting politicians to victory than do ideological arguments about the role of government.
Republicans believe that loosening government control of health care markets will benefit McDowell County by freeing the economy, creating growth and lowering costs over time. That’s not a satisfying argument to struggling Americans facing the prospect of losing benefits they came to rely on over the past seven years.
Sanders’ town hall should serve as a reminder to Republicans that the Left almost always has the advantage in messaging their policies: it’s all too easy for people to believe that they give and we take away. Trump promised to take away Obamacare, but also to “take care of everyone,” just as Sanders does. He did not traffic in the ideological rhetoric most conservatives use, explaining how greater prosperity is unleashed when individuals are empowered to make their own choices.
We like to think that language works, and it might, but most Americans just don’t care.
In an interview last July, “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance told “Morning Joe” that Trump was “just another opioid” to many rural voters who believe he’s “going to take the pain away” and “make people feel better for a little while.”
If that is the case, Republicans now face the prospect of nurturing his voters through their painful withdrawals.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
