For decades at least until the early days of the current century a saying attributed to a19th century vaudeville troupe was often used to assess the prevailing political mood in an imaginary “average America”: See how it plays in Peoria!
I first heard the phrase in 1974 from Thomas Philip (Tip) O’Neil, the 47th Speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington DC. In answer to questions about likely policies the US might pursue on various issues he said: “We’ve to see how it plays in Peoria!”
The subtext was that Peoria, a featureless small town in Illinois, represents the mood in America.
In reality, however, Peoria has almost always been a pro-Democrat town, a blue dot in an ocean of Republican red.
The present presidential campaign ending next Tuesday has shown that the very concept of a “middle America” may be as much of a fiction as the hero in an Isaac Asimov’s short-story who is supposed to represent the typical American a synthesis of the many different identities and aspirations that together form that great nation.
That, however, has not stopped the search for the ideal Aristotelian middle ground where conflicts are resolved, contradictions reconciled and common aspirations emphasized.
In fact there are cities called “Middletown” in New York States, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
The idealized “Middle Town” became the subject of an early sociological study in the 1930s by Helen and Robert Lynd who tried to identify the key ingredients of the famous “melting pot”. It coincided with the first nationwide opinion polls organized by the magazine Literary Digest.
The book then inspired a film with James Stewart and Jane Wyman called “Magic Town”.
This was the ideal “middle America” in which everyone believed in apple pie and motherhood, went to church on Sunday, worked hard, lived frugally and contributed to the common good. The town was home to an equal number of Democrats and Republicans.
Women were actively present but always in the shadow of men. Behind every great man there was a woman.
If we narrow down American-ness to voting patterns one could say, broadly speaking, that there are three Americas.
The first consists of states bordering on the two oceans and the great lakes while the second covers hinterland states plus Texas and Florida. The third chunk belongs to the six or seven so-called swing states.
Vice President Kamala Harris is the standard-bearer of the first chunk while former President Donald Trump speaks for the second.
The close-to-water America looks at hinterland America with something close to disdain.
Ms. Harris says “this is not who we are!”
More than a dozen books published in the past decade or so, among them Thomas Frank’s “What Is The Matter with Kansas?” or Robert Wuthon’s “Left Behind: Decline and Race in Small Town America”, put Ms. Harris case by offering a grim portrayal of the US hinterland with adjectives such as “marginal”” or “forgotten” spread as confetti.
The authors imply that “left behind” Americans have somehow missed the bus of human progress.
The “left behind” do not share the concerns of urban progressives such as turning climate change into a pseudo-religious dogma, beating the drums of identity politics with double-barrel descriptions, wokeism, transgenderism and fear of mass illegal immigration.
Rather than acknowledging the legitimacy of such concerns without necessarily justifying them, the “progressives” cite “irrational white hysteria” xenophobia, ignorance, racism and, thanks to Ms. Harris’ final outburst, “fascism” as the causes, as if genuine concerns could be wished away with labels.
Donald Trump is kept lurking in the background as a diabolical figure that has woven many disconnected fears together to create a narrative that resonates with those who missed the bus of human intellectual progress.
The kinder authors use the label “conservative” against those left behind as if that were an insult. But one conserves only what one regards as precious and worth preserving. Advocates of wokeism never bother to ask why do so many Americans don’t wish to board that bus and try to cling to their American way of life as portrayed in the old family album of “Magic Town”.
The Trump camp has retaliated by throwing labels at the “other America”.
Thus Ms. Harris is a closet communist just as Barack Obama was a secret admirer of the Muslim Brotherhood. In this election a large number of Republican Party grandees changed sides to push the Trump train off the rail, thus unwittingly redrawing the contours of the culture war beyond skin color, religious backgrounds and ideological penchant- something that may have actually helped Trump.
The current election reminds some observers of the fact that the United States is more of a republic rather than a democracy in which, theoretically at least, all votes are of equal value and the largest number of votes sets the agenda. In theory, the US has a multiparty system. In practice, however, for the past few decades at least, it has appeared as 43 effectively one party states with the remaining seven swinging between two parties.
The strength of the American system lies in the fact that the structures of the republic set limits to democratic waywardness caused by momentary changes of public mood and cultural-ideological fashions such as wokeism.
Regardless of who wins next Tuesday, Rip Smith’s old family album may prove more resilient than “progressives” hope and imagine.
