A reader asked us on this week’s Debrief how the blue wave missed Upstate New York.
I don’t think the region missed the trend. Republicans winning a race doesn’t mean nothing changed. Look at how competitive the North Country congressional race became. These are places where Democrats have further to go, and getting to the point where they’re consistently competitive takes several cycles.
But there’s another piece of this that I kept coming back to over the last couple nights.
For years, I’ve heard people make comparisons between rural parts of the Finger Lakes, Southern Tier, and North Country and heavily conservative communities in the Deep South. Sort of like the stereotype of what it is to be a conservative Republican being rooted in these places.
So what happens when voters who, on paper, look a lot alike respond differently to the same administration?
I think, in a lot of ways, Upstate New Yorkers have been sheltered from some of the worst effects of Trump administration policy because of New York State. That buffer may have prevented the worst-case scenario for people who otherwise would’ve felt those policies much more directly.
Healthcare gets more expensive. Social safety nets are reduced. Residents feel the impact, and they respond. But if your state takes a more active role in intervening, you may not experience the same thing as someone living in a state that doesn’t.
We saw New York try to do that during last fall’s federal shutdown, when Hochul committed another $65 million to emergency food assistance. Food banks and pantries needed help because people still needed to eat. The state couldn’t replace SNAP, and acknowledged that. But it put resources into helping people through the disruption.
The Essential Plan is another example. New York secured approval for changes intended to preserve coverage for 1.3 million people, even as approximately 450,000 others faced moving to marketplace plans where they could pay more.
Obviously, that second group matters. I’m certainly not saying being sheltered was the experience of everyone. There were people who suffered a great deal over the last two years because of the policies that came out of Washington.
But if we’re simply asking why more people didn’t vote blue in this most recent election cycle, it’s at least a plausible explanation. We’re talking about small batches of voters who could’ve made a difference. I don’t think the election results alone can tell us how many people this applies to, but I think it’s worth considering.
The problem is, I don’t think anyone notices when the intervention works. If we don’t have the crisis someone else experienced, the policies coming out of Washington seem less harmful. It gives people a way to put it out of sight, out of mind.
For someone who thinks Albany makes everything worse, I’d ask what their community would look like if the services people depend on were scaled back or eliminated.
Eliminating those services for vulnerable populations doesn’t mean the tide shifts and suddenly those groups are off starting businesses, working at the local manufacturing shop, or becoming plumbers or electricians. There has to be some understanding of what actually happens to people when the help goes away.
The easiest example is healthcare. You can take healthcare coverage away from people, but if they have a medical emergency, they will still require healthcare. And we’ll all pay for it.
I think Democrats need to do a better job explaining that. Connect the dots. Explain what Washington did, what New York did in response, and what that meant for someone living here. They also need to do a better job connecting with rural voters in general.
But they were operating from behind the eight ball.
It’s easy to say the party should’ve been better organized and ready, but the political calendar is drawn out. When did most people realize Democrats had this kind of momentum? September? October? Maybe literally November 3? Election Night was a shock even to experienced political watchers.
I think people need to give them some grace and realize that getting back in the game takes multiple cycles. Explaining issues better, connecting the dots, finding candidates, and building an organization that can support them all take time.
That’s especially true in rural communities where the party infrastructure is underfunded and, in a lot of cases, pretty much a holdover from the ’80s and ’90s. You don’t turn that around in the last few weeks of a campaign.
I was listening to someone describe the broad, national strategy Democrats deployed during this cycle—the 50-state approach, I think—and that’s the same kind of thing that needs to happen here.
You can’t just copy and paste messaging and expect it to land. You need different candidates for different communities. You need different approaches to communicating and governing, too. If you want people to understand what these policies mean for their community, you have to know the community well enough to explain it.
So if you feel like your county was missed, or you’re frustrated with the direction of your local party, get involved. Show up to the committee meetings. Tell your party leaders what you want to see. Figure out what local office you can run for.
You might get a little pushback. Maybe everybody needs to experience that back and forth. But I think, in most cases, more people just need to be involved.
That’s what I want to get into in my next column. Because if getting back in the game takes multiple cycles, the work has to continue after this one.
Josh is a columnist and host of the In Focus podcast. He’s also the vice president of FingerLakes1.com, Inc. Have a question or want to get in touch? Send it to josh@fingerlakes1.com.