Heartland Inferno (part 2): Of hope and rage in Wisconsin

Welcome, readers.

I will offer only modest apologies for my absence, as campaign life has been consuming a lot of my energy as of late. I have been canvassing all over the state of Wisconsin - from Cedarburg to Eau Claire to Black River Falls. Each of these communities represents a particular slice of Wisconsin life: Cedarburg, upscale Milwaukee suburbia, Black River Falls, a rural working class town with a strong Native American presence in the politically purple Driftless Area, and Eau Claire - a progressive university city with a population that is fairly numerous by Wisconsin standards.

I've had many conversations with voters, most of them wholesome and productive, even if I didn't always agree with the person or they with me (yes, I have canvassed several Trump supporters). I always wonder when I'm telling canvassing war stories: how much should I focus on the absurd or negative stories? For every 1 story of these, you have 10 that are wonderful, or at least fairly prosaic.

Yet we are in the final stretch of campaign. We are descending into the inferno. What shall become of us?

Let's find out.

When you're in Black River Falls, a small town of 3,500 people, you're on Ho-Chunk land. During the 1830s and 1840s, the Ho-Chunk people fought hard to resist the policy known as Indian Removal that would have removed them from their ancestral land in what is today western Wisconsin. Indian Removal was the name for a mass ethnic cleansing effort by the national government to remove all indigenous tribes to territories beyond the Mississippi River. The nascent nation of the United States was expanding westward; the peoples who had lived on this land for eons were in the way of white civilization, and needed to be swept aside.

But almost 200 years later, the Ho-Chunk remain.

I wanted to make sure I was showing up in a rural community for this election, and honestly, I also have long found Black River Falls a fascinating place. I've mentioned this in a previous piece, but it's the town that's at the center of the distinctly offbeat documentary Wisconsin Death Trip (and the book by historian Michael Lesy which inspired it). The community itself is also gorgeous - steep hills undulate throughout the community, with trees in fiery fall bloom aplenty on practically every street.

I met lots of wonderful people there - and a handful who weren't happy to see me. That's pretty much the norm when you knock doors for political campaigns anywhere. Most people will at least be cordial, some will even be electrified by your presence. And a handful will look at you is if you've just shown up at their doorstep, announced you're a traveling dentist, and that you are offering free in-home root canals. With no anesthetic.

Black River Falls is a fairly politically divided community: while both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden won it in 2016 and 2020, respectively, their margins were hardly commanding. I created a table below of recent results in the community for president and governor.

Joe Biden actually did slightly worse in Black River Falls than Hillary Clinton did in terms of margin, though the margins weren't too different. And as now-Governor Tony Evers has shown, the Democratic brand is not totally dead yet in the town. While I was cruising through the town as I exited off I-94 and headed toward Main Street, I noticed plenty of signs for both Republican and Democratic candidates - yet it seemed clear to me that the Democrats had a modest advantage in the sign war in this small community. I am not the type of guy to interpret sign displays as if they are bespeaking oracular political truths, but take it for what it's worth. They're an intriguing tidbit of anecdata.

Overall, I've knocked just shy of 60 doors in Black River Falls so far, about a third of the total number of doors I've knocked for 2024 as of writing in late October. In general, the enthusiasm for Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democratic candidates was pretty strong, and I had some good conversations with voters of all political leanings.

Writing this now, I think of voters like Paul, who was deeply concerned about the state of democracy in America - and indeed, the lack of regard for factual reality we see from Donald Trump in his 2024 campaign (as we also saw in his previous campaigns for president.) He found this whole situation we find ourselves in this year embarrassing. He was a good guy to commiserate with, and we are both deeply concerned about the outcome of this election.

But I also had voters like J. (full name redacted), where he was completely over the election and didn't see things the same way as Paul and I did. He told me that while he hadn't voted for Trump in previous elections, he admitted that he regarded both Harris and Trump as idiots, though his wife was a strong supporter of Harris's. I got the vibe that if he did vote for Harris - a big if - he wouldn't do it happily. "I'm so sick of politics," he told me.

But when people tell me things like this, I actually offer my own commiseration, because the truth is: I am also sort of sick of politics as it stands in this country. Perhaps not for the same reason that they are, but because I am tired of people being sent death threats just for criticizing Donald Trump, I am tired of extremists feeling emboldened to spread lies and fear about other groups of people like the Republicans do to trans people, and I am tired of lies being propagated by an entire political party about the integrity of our electoral process.

It's a hard sell to some people who are convinced that both sides bear roughly equal blame for this state of affairs, but the truth is, we are here because of Donald Trump's Republican Party and its constant lying. Whether it's about immigration, about trans kids, or about whether they lost fairly in 2020 (they did, and the vast majority of their elected officials know it) - it's just a firehose of lies, with some fear thrown in.

I believe canvassing is one way to break through this impasse. It's not a perfect solution - I wasn't kidding when I quipped that some people really don't want you at their doorstep - but it does help slice through the bullshit. A searing knife of truth through the lukewarm butter of lies, if you will. And for every one dour or passive aggressive person you get, there's many more kind-hearted people who are willing to at least hear you out. I have talked to several Trump supporters - most of the conversations were civil, a handful not so much - and while I would be surprised if I persuaded any of them to reconsider their vote, we did indeed speak to each other like people.

This isn't a particularly muscular sentiment, perhaps, but I do think we enter choppy political waters when we decide we can no longer talk to people. I do believe former President Donald Trump is a thoroughly wretched man, and would gladly explain why to anyone who asked earnestly why I thought that. I had one voter tell me off the bat at the doors in Black River that he thought Donald Trump was a "horrible human being." And that while he considered himself to be somewhat conservative on issues of the economy, he did not view the modern Republican Party as stewards of a positive vision for the economy or anything else. Rather, he told me, they are simply the party of obstruction and "no." This is how I see the GOP of 2024 too - a party that offers grievances, anger, and fear - but little in way of actual solutions. They will offer you a heavy dose of Donald Trump, though - a man who has never actually won the popular vote in this country (and seems likely to lose it a third time).

It is clear that the most militant portions of the Trump movement are motivated by racism and a broader resentment toward others different from them - that is indisputable, and the last decade has produced an abundance of evidence of this. Some Trump supporters desire authoritarian government in the United States, even if they would not describe their positions that way, knowing that this makes them sound villainous. If it quacks like a dictator, walks like a dictator, and talks like a dictator...

After all, it was recently revealed by John Kelly, Trump's longest-serving Chief of Staff, that Trump had praised Adolf Hitler's generals. And that in Kelly's opinion, Trump meets the definition of a fascist, saying specifically,

Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.

John Kelly is a very conservative man. He is not exactly a guy people would associate with the nebulous and much-villified concept of "wokeness." For him to be saying this is quite remarkable - the man served in one of the closest capacities to President Donald Trump as his Chief of Staff.

Kelly's statement corroborates a sentiment expressed recently by General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Trump is "fascist to the core." This has also caused the Harris-Walz campaign to lose their reluctance to call him a fascist - at a CNN town hall just the other day, Kamala Harris said she agreed with these assessments by officials who had served beside Trump when he was president.

Familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt. It's notable how many high level Trump officials have come out against him returning to the Oval Office. Why, again, did Trump need to select a new vice presidential running mate? Could it be that some of his own supporters tried to kill his former VP on January 6th, 2021, with cries of "hang Mike Pence!"

January 6th is an event the Republican Party wants us to forget, because the Republicans who aren't completely punch drunk on the Trumpist Kool-Aid know that it's indefensible. And while cynics from many political angles - I have even seen people on the far-left say this! - that J6 doesn't matter to voters, candidates associated with the election denialism that fueled J6 underperformed other Republican candidates in 2022. As it turns out, bear-hugging conspiracies that led to several deaths and a mob attacking the Capitol is perhaps not the way to endear voters to you.

I suppose my hot take with all of this being said is that I do not think all Trump supporters are bad people. I do think they all empower a bad man when they vote for him, and that is something worth sitting with. Yet there can be nuance in the noise - some Trump supporters will be voting Democratic downballot this election cycle, for example. Like Larry, a farmer near the Menomonie area who will be voting to return Donald Trump to the White House... and voting for daughter-of-dairy-farmers and waitress Rebecca Cooke, who is running as a Democrat. Larry, and Rebecca Cooke, are profiled more extensively here in a 10 minute feature done by the labor reporting organization More Perfect Union.

I talked in a previous article about Rebecca Cooke, the Democratic candidate for Wisconsin's Third Congressional District. Cooke grew up on a dairy farm outside Eau Claire, and currently works as a waitress part-time while campaigning for Congress. Like I said in that article, I've had a lengthy discussion with her before about the politics of this district, including the fact that it supported Donald Trump in both his campaigns. She struck me as keenly aware of this political reality - and has made her campaign in part about rejecting political extremism, regardless of the angle it comes from. Some may poopoo this as drawing equivalencies where none exist. But the fact is, if the Democrats want to win this district back, that's a message that sells. Pragmatism is a breath of much-hungered-for fresh air to many voters who are tired of culture wars and the culture warriors of the right who so shamelessly engage in them (think: obsessing over the genitalia of transgender kids).

I also really cannot emphasize enough how rejuvenating it is for some voters to have an actual human talking to them about what concerns them. The constant bombardment of political texts, emails, and ads gets to be utterly exhausting, especially when you live in a competitive state or district. The data is pretty clear that negative advertising can be effective in defining others politically, which is why campaigns use it so aggressively.

Yet at a certain juncture, many people simply stop paying attention. They tune out, mute the ads, roll their eyes, doing what they can to stem the roaring political deluge into their lives. But someone showing up at their doorstep presents an opportunity for authentic conversation - and of course, an airing of frustrations, even grievances.

I had a voter a few weeks ago in the bucolic Milwaukee suburb of Cedarburg tell me how glad he was that I had showed up to his door, so he could actually speak to a real, living person. He expressed alarm about the political climate in the country and state and about our increasingly fractious, fiery politics. One thing I brought up to him that he agreed heartily with was this erosion that we are seeing of a shared sense of basic reality - as exemplified by Hurricane Helene and the conspiracies spread about it (weather machines, really?). When a fire chief has to go on social media to plead with people to stop spreading bullshit about FEMA and the response to the hurricane, we are in a very bad place. Especially so when it means that the hard-working emergency response workers who have been working long hours in arduous circumstances are being threatened by far-right militias. This cannot be allowed to stand.

I didn't get a strong sense of who he'd vote for, though I could make a guess, but the point was this: amid the sound and fury that encompasses autumnal electioneering, our conversation was a bright spot for a frustrated voter.

At its heart, canvassing is not debate club. If you're out there door-knocking to tell people who disagree with you that they're stark raving idiots, then you're fundamentally making the exercise about you. To me, the purpose of this is to learn things about communities, about the people who live in them, and to drum up votes for candidates who I believe will best advance the issues I care about.

But I am not naive. Sometimes, a conversation can be more like talking to a brick wall. I had one particularly combative voter around my age who I spoke with for about 5 minutes, and during that time it was an unrelenting flurry of swears and Fox News talking points. Among other things, he insisted that "Obamacare did way more to fucking hurt women's rights than anything Trump did." Paraphrased slightly, swearing very much accurate. He also asked me several times why the Democrats put "lies and bullshit" into their ads. A favorite refrain of his throughout this was that "I know the truth!" as he basically quoted Trump and Fox word-for-word to me. Truth is lies, freedom is slavery, war is peace.

This man was truly lost in the sauce. But it also drives home this obvious point: lots of voters like Trump. It's not that they're being misled so much as they're clearly seeing what he does and agreeing with it. If their capacity for independent thought goes by the wayside, that's fine - the leader will take care of it.

Like I said, though: canvassing is not debate club. If you're asking what sick burns I lobbed out in order to smite him into (proverbial) dust, you're fundamentally asking the wrong question for this kind of activity. So as far as pushback, it was mostly just me pointing out that 1. Trump appointed 3 of the 6 justices who overturned Roe v. Wade (a fact he told me had little relevance to the state of women's rights in the US) and 2. Noting that voting by mail in the state of Wisconsin does in fact require a photo ID, contrary to his raving about how people are voting without IDs. I told him that I knew this in part because I had just recently voted by mail, and that required me to submit proof of ID. He reluctantly acknowledged this. Take the wins where you can get 'em, folks.

So I mostly just let the guy talk - and then exited at the earliest possible opportunity after I said several times that it was clear we didn't see things the same way. I will smack talk him in one way though: when I said "have a good evening," he said nothing in reply. How rude, dude! You live in the small town Midwest, aren't you required by law to be nice? My positive spin on this whole interaction would be this: at least I got this man off of the Democratic data lists so the friendly elderly ladies who make up the backbone of Democratic volunteering efforts didn't have the pleasure of meeting this guy.

Afterward, I had a wry elderly man in his 80s who I recounted some of my interaction with this fiery Trump-loving neighbor of his to. We both had a laugh, though I could tell the gentleman was angry about what was going on in the United States - he expressed particular outrage at the threats to FEMA workers that had been made in North Carolina by a far-right militia, causing them to be needed to be evacuated temporarily.

There was a bit of irony to all of this: The 29 year old youngin' was burning up with Trumpish fury; the eightysomething was firmly behind the cause of democracy. You know what they say about assumptions.

My final note on that interaction with that Trump voter would be this: Trump's most militant, committed supporters are riled up - that much has been made clear to me over the last 6 weeks I've been campaigning. They are ready to burn it all down. They want the inferno.

We are at a perilous moment in this country. As Trump's racist, fascistic Madison Square Rally Garden shows, the Trump campaign's closing message to the voters of America is one focused on darkness and decline. Trump and his hangers-on want to foster fear and paranoia about those perceived as different - whether they be immigrants from Latin America, or trans kids just trying to be who they are. They are stoking the darkest impulses in people in hopes of political gain. An essential element of fascist politics is emphasizing decline - Trump constantly says we are a nation in decline, and has recently even referred to the US as a "garbage can for the world." What can remedy the decline? A muscular leader, who directs the rage of the public to groups he hates to further cement his own power.

What happened this weekend echoes back to the rally held in 1939 at the very same spot by the German-American Bund, the largest pro-Hitler group in the United States. 20,000 people attended - but a whopping 100,000 counterprotested outside. When we organize together, fascism, with all its leering cruelty, seems a lot less mighty.

Ascendant authoritarianism in this country cannot be combated with door-to-door conversations alone, and I hope I haven't created the impression that I think that's all it takes. But it's absolutely critical to realize that political nihilism creates a gaping maw for fascism to step right into. Cynicism is not defiance. A cynical, alienated voter is just as likely to vote for a fascist candidate than they are to latch onto any sort of hopeful, empowering message. I believe one reason why Republicans work so hard to break government institutions by defunding and deregulating is to destroy peoples' trust in government to do anything right. This done, they can step into the void they themselves have created, and use it to push an agenda of tax cuts for the rich and large corporations - and pennies for everyone else.

It's why I have, in my own way, tried so hard to push back against nihilism in the present political moment. I often find it is the precursor to a much darker form of politics. None of us can change everything on our own, but change ultimately starts with people deciding to do something, rather than wallowing. Fascists seek to latch onto peoples' fears and grievances, and to direct them toward a despised outgroup - whether they're Jews, trans people, or immigrants. It's an old trick, and one that unfortunately sometimes works.

But it's important to remember that Donald Trump has never actually won a majority of the vote in a general election in this country. For all the ballyhooing about a supposed "silent majority," of Trump-loving Americans, we see time and time again that legions of Americans choose to reject the cruelty and spite of Trump-style fascism. People are, in so many senses, tired of the Trump era of politics. Tired of the lying. Tired of the spitefulness of his most angry supporters. Tired of his assaults on democracy.

I want to recall one final interaction with a voter. It was one of my final doors of my most recent canvass in Black River Falls, and dusky fall twilight was enveloping me rapidly. I walked up to a nice home with several large, prominent Democratic signs on display - and had the honor of meeting Dennis, an older Native American gentleman. Rarely have I gotten a reception that was so kind-hearted and earnestly enthusiastic. Dennis thanked me profusely for the work I was doing, and opened up to me quickly about his worries for America.

Dennis explicitly mentioned his alarm about the state of democracy in the United States to me - that people didn't fully appreciate just how deeply authoritarian Trump's rhetoric had become. He noted the echoes of 1930s Germany we were seeing unfold before us. We both agreed that it was up to pro-democracy forces in this country to make sure that we do not tread down this treacherous, well-trodden path. His love and care for people in this country was obvious in our conversation. I can safely say it was one of the best interactions I've ever had in politics. I felt his solidarity - and I also felt a visceral sense of hope.

I close by harkening back to Abraham Lincoln's presicent Lyceum speech. It was given when he was not quite 30 years old all the way back in 1838. Lincoln was speaking in a very different time - yet one that has disturbing parallels to today, such as mob and vigilante violence akin to what we saw on J6. Lincoln was inspired to give this speech in part by the murder of Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist newspaper editor, by a pro-slavery mob. Its most quoted passage is this:

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

He goes on to note the imposing threat to the young republic represented by men of ferocious, power-hungry ambition - an American Napoleon or Caesar. Yet through vigilance among the people, through reverence and respect for democracy and the rule of law, the republic would persevere in the face of such men. He closed his astounding speech with this quote, whose closing line came to me in a flash of inspiration as I finished writing this article:

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.