America’s divided middle

THE BEST explanation of how Donald Trump took the Midwest, and so the White House, came in a book published eight months before he did it. Kathy Cramer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison spent years interviewing small-town voters, such as retired farmers in rural petrol stations chatting over bad coffee. She asked how Wisconsin, a once-placid sort of place, had become bitterly confrontational. Her book, “The Politics of Resentment”, tracked how Scott Walker, the two-term Republican governor who left office in 2019, inspired fury from half the population and adoration from the other half. In every election of the past decade, voters were herded into rival camps. Democrats in populous cities, notably Madison and Milwaukee, were enraged as Republicans weakened unions and cut education funding. Their opponents in small towns in the north, centre and west were more resentful of urban folk and their overly liberal ways.