Matthew Yglesias: What if Harris and Trump could ignore Pennsylvania?

The 2024 election will almost certainly come down to Pennsylvania. But nothing is certain in life, and it’s not too soon — forgive me — to look forward to the 2028 election, when warmer, faster-growing, less-unionized states are key Electoral College battlegrounds.

In fact, according to Nate Silver’s forecasts, the state that is second most likely to tip the scales this year is North Carolina. After that comes Michigan, then Georgia, then Wisconsin, then Arizona. This represents an interesting reshuffling of the deck after two elections when the focus was on the Great Lakes trio of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. It’s a shift that could have wide-ranging and welcome consequences for US politics.

Not only are the Rust Belt and Sun Belt swing states different from each other, but politicians have different relationships to them.

Both presidential candidates put a lot of stock in pandering to the sensibilities of the northern three. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump oppose the idea of Nippon Steel purchasing US Steel, for example, following the lead of the United Steelworkers union and the vast majority of Pennsylvania elected officials. More broadly, the nexus of steel and auto manufacturing in the Midwest has a kind of perennial electoral salience.

North Carolina also has various economic quirks. But nobody is proposing that America bring back smoking to benefit the tobacco industry, or somehow reconfigure bank regulation to advantage Charlotte-based Bank of America over the financial institutions located in New York.

Some of this is that North Carolina snuck up on people as a swing state. But the biggest difference is that it’s a much more dynamic state than Pennsylvania. North Carolina’s population has doubled since 1970, and Arizona’s has increased four-fold. Pennsylvania’s and Michigan’s have grown by about 10%, and are both shrinking since the 2020 census.

This slow growth parallels a decline in relative economic stature. These days the “Big 3” automobile manufacturers aren’t in Detroit — they’re Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai. US Steel, meanwhile, isn’t even close to being the top steel manufacturer in the U.S., and the U.S. is no longer a major steelmaker.

These circumstances encourage political entrepreneurship around preserving jobs and companies that already exist. By contrast, appealing to voters in states with fast-growing economies tends toward broader considerations.

But beyond specific policy details, high-growth and slow-growth states also lend themselves to different kinds of political vibes. Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign certainly featured Rust Belt appeals, touting the auto rescue plan and slamming Mitt Romney’s complicity in outsourcing. But the tipping-point state that year — the state that put him over the top in the Electoral College — was Colorado, and Obama’s broad message was optimistic and upbeat.

Trump-era elections have hinged on the Great Lakes states in a way that has encouraged Democrats to imitate his dark, nostalgia-inflected brand of politics. Trump and Biden disagree, profoundly, about a wide range of policy issues. But they share a rhetorical focus on some notion of “bringing back” the good old days.

It's simply not true, in any state, that middle-class workers were better off a generation ago than they are now. But in the slow-growing states of the Midwest, declinist narratives make a certain emotional sense. Pennsylvanians are not poorer than their parents or grandparents, but the relative fortunes of the entire region have slipped both compared to the fast-growing South and to superstar cities such as New York, Boston, Seattle and San Francisco. Under the circumstances, a rhetorical pitch that emphasizes a sense of turning back the clock is a natural — as well as a fit for the inclinations of both Trump and Biden.

Harris seems more comfortable with a sunnier, more Obama-like politics that’s probably better-suited to swing states such as Georgia, Arizona or North Carolina than Pennsylvania. And four years from now, they may very well be the battleground states. Even Biden’s signature clean-technology investments are primarily flowing to the Sun Belt — with Georgia beating Michigan as the No. 1 recipient followed by a passel of southern states.

A Sun Belt strategy could pair a sunny account of the Biden-Harris economic growth record with the optimistic account of social and cultural change that Democrats would clearly like to offer. That would be in many ways a simpler pitch than the current awkward blend of telling people they should welcome the past generation’s worth of demographic change and shifting values while regretting post-1970s economic developments.

On the other hand, losing the Rust Belt as an economic focus might upset the Democrats’ coalitional equilibrium. When environmentalists demand a fracking ban or an electric-car mandate, the party can resist by citing the electoral imperative to cater to Pennsylvania or Michigan. Industrial unions can also pull Democrats toward policies that are hard to defend on the merits, but they can also serve as an interest-group counterweight to the excesses of the environmental movement.

Appealing to a Sun Belt constituency in right-to-work states will require Democrats to exercise self-discipline and balance environmental considerations against economic ones. At the same time, less of an emphasis on the 20th century concerns of the Rust Belt could move Republicans off their nostalgia politics and force them to engage with a more diverse set of voters.

It may be too late for this election. But the forecast for 2028, politically and in swing states, is looking sunnier.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Matthew Yglesias is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A co-founder of and former columnist for Vox, he writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. He is author of “One Billion Americans.”