Let’s Not Forget to Blame the Electoral College for this Shit

There's a cost to letting one region pick the president

Built from photos by Tina Dawson and loops7 via Getty.

What’s happening now is unlike anything I’ve seen or heard about. I’ve never seen one man cause a global financial panic, nor have I seen an American president talk like the evil sensei from The Karate Kid. The only thing this sort of reminds me of — stick with me here — is the “Toonces the Driving Cat” sketch from SNL.

That seems about right; Toonces is Trump, and we’re the idiots who let him drive. I understand why SNL writers¹ thought that “humans let cat drive” was a good comedy premise — what I don’t understand is why America did basically the same thing with our economy in real life. And actually, what we did is worse, because the cat didn’t tell us repeatedly that he can’t drive, only for us to say “haha you don’t mean that.”

Tariffs are bad economic policy for almost everyone. But they’re not bad for literally everyone — if you work for a company that faces foreign competition and your inputs are made domestically and you’re not dependent on exports and the cost of more expensive goods doesn’t offset the economic benefit you get from reduced competition, then you might benefit from tariffs. Probably very few people who meet those conditions exist, but the ones that do disproportionately live in Rust Belt states, which punch way above their weight in the Electoral College.

The experience of a presidential election when you’re living in a swing state is totally different from the experience in a non-swing state. If you live in one of the 43 non-swing states, you’re as likely to lay eyes on a candidate as you are to see your dad if your dad is Elon Musk. If you write to a campaign with a policy concern, they’ll respond with a glossy, full-color pamphlet instructing you how to go fuck yourself. A non-swing state voter is one of the most inconsequential beings in existence; we are Mormons at Mardi Gras, we are goths at Disneyland, a small chunk of ice floating in the Ort Cloud has as much impact on a presidential election as we do.

But if you live in a swing state, candidates will be all over you like geezers on a discount buffet. Every time you watch TV, you’ll be inundated with ads designed to appeal to the ten dumbest voters in your state — you’ll yearn for the quiet dignity of a Go Daddy commercial. The campaigns will blow up your phone like Israel paging Hezbollah, and the campaigns will enlist friends you haven’t talked to in years to send you text that say “Hey I just thought I’d drop you a line and try to bully you into voting for my preferred candidate!!! 🤪🤪🤪”. They’ll even send fucking college kids to your door, which is why I’m surprised that no candidate ever proposed making it legal to murder anyone who knocks on your door after Halloween in an election year — I’d think that would be wildly popular in battleground states.

Swing state voters get pandered to, and swing states — both now and in the recent past — are disproportionately in the Rust Belt. And it’s become an article of faith in the Rust Belt that they have been “hollowed out” by trade (and “hollowed out” is the phrase that’s always used — there’s incredible message discipline around the phrase “hollowed out”). Of course, the story is not so simple; automation is driving change in the Rust Belt far more than NAFTA or the WTO, and unemployment in Michigan and Ohio were higher before NAFTA and China’s entry to the WTO than after. Plus, any honest assessment of the effects of trade should factor in downward pressure on prices, which helps workers. Of course, it’s also probably true that the negative effects of trade hit the Midwest more than other regions, and it’s definitely true that Midwesterners think the effects of trade have hit them harder than other regions. After all: Didn’t you hear that the Midwest has been HOLLOWED OUT by trade? I heard it had been hollowed out. And sure, Michigan and Ohio very recently had sub-four unemployment rates, and Wisconsin has been below four for almost a decade except for Covid, but that must be wrong because everyone agrees that the Midwest has been completely hollowed out. Hollowed out!

Midwesterners think that they’ve been hit hard by trade, and presidential candidates are loathe to tell them that it’s not that simple — as a rule, “here’s why you’re talking out of your ass” is not a winning political message. So, candidates muse about rolling back trade; here’s Obama in 2007 saying that he wants to “amend” NAFTA, here’s Hillary distancing herself from the Trans Pacific Partnership, and here’s Vivek Ramaswamy doing the mini-Trump routine that earned him whole half-day in the new administration. Obviously, much of this was empty pandering — that’s probably one reason why it was easy to believe that Trump wouldn’t back up his crazy talk with crazy action. And now that Trump’s trade war is blowing up in his face, Democrats have an opportunity draw a contrast between themselves and Republicans: Both parties say that they’re going to roll back trade, but only Democrats have the good sense to be lying about it.

National parties don’t contradict the messages that their candidates adopt while trying to win Midwestern swing states, because the candidates are doing what they need to do to win. I was watching the Obama clip from 2007 that I linked to above; I just rolled my eyes at it and then voted for the guy. It’s bad politics to ask your preferred candidate to take stances that will hurt them in the states they need to win, and as a result, the “trade has hollowed out the Rust Belt” narrative has gone largely unchallenged. It’s become deeply ingrained; even right now, as saying “I support tariffs” is quickly becoming like saying “I support a Jeffrey Epstein commemorative stamp,” some Rust Belt politicians aren’t changing their tune. And Rust Belt politics are national politics because the Rust Belt dominates the Electoral College.

It’s not the case that the world economy is being brought down to serve the parochial interests of the United States; the world economy is being brought down to serve the parochial interests of part of the United States. Or, more accurately: It’s being brought down to serve what are thought to be the interests of part of the United States (but probably aren’t). If Hawaii was a swing state, every candidate would agree that pineapples are essential to national security; if Massachusetts was a swing state, Derek Jeter would be rotting in an El Salvadorian prison. There’s plenty of blame to dole out for this disaster, and most of it goes to Trump and to Republicans who would rather watch us get dragged into a recession than stand up to their Dear Leader. But let’s reserve some blame for the back-asswards system that has given these terrible policy choices a huge boost.

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1. This was a Jack Handey sketch, though I would have bet a large amount of money that it was a Robert Smigel — Smigel loves the “real animals fake paws” gag (and so do I!)! But it turns out that Smigel loves the real animals fake paws gag because of this sketch.