“On the Holmes Front,” with Frank Holmes
Once upon a time the media took a poll of Minnesota voters, where Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump in a hypothetical matchup by 12 points.
That was last October.
The Gopher State hasn’t been polled since – Joe Biden doesn’t fare so well anymore.
All the signs show that President Trump may be on the verge of doing something nobody has done in a generation: He could turn Minnesota Republican.
A former Clinton insider, Paul Begala, says the state’s division between rural voters interested in jobs and urban Democrats obsessed with upscale causes like transgender issues is “accelerating.”
And if Trump succeeds in reaching out to the voters alienated by Democrats, he would be making history.
Analysts say Minnesota is the most Democratic state of the Upper Midwest. Its politicians read like a who’s who of liberalism: Rep. Ilhan Omar, former congressman Al Franken, former Vice President Walter Mondale, and the list goes on.
The last time the state backed a Republican in a presidential race was 1972, when Richard Nixon won one of the biggest landslides in history.
Since then, only two members of the GOP have come close to winning the state: Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Trump lost Minnesota in 2016 by 44,765 votes — out of 2.7 million votes cast.
For the last four years, Trump has made the state one of his regular campaign stops, and voters like what they see.
He’s hitting on themes important to the working class voters, like supporting miners, keeping factories open, and getting people to buy American products, goods and services.
“It’s hope. People want hope for a better future,” said Chuck Novak, the mayor of the small town of Ely. “This is the old method of politics. You take care of your economy and your people.” Novak is a liberal Democrat—but he won his second term saying he supports President Trump.
And CNN found out, there are plenty more where Novak came from.
In a townhall last year, Mayor Robert Vlaisavljevich of Eveleth said he usually backs Democrats … but he’s all-in for President Trump.
“He’s our guy,” he said. “He supports mining.”
Another Minnesota Democrat told CNN that these days “conservative candidates seem to be more for the working person.”
Of course, the Democrats have done everything they can to confirm that belief.
The head of a local steelworkers union said he sat down with Omar, the ally of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and she practically laughed him out of the room.
She told him, “Look you guys are going to have to learn a different industry,” according to Chris Johnson, who leads United Steelworkers Local 2705.
Johnson estimates that about 75% of his membership supports Trump.
“I’ve voted Democrat my whole life,” another union leader told Politico.com. “It’s getting tougher.”
It’s getting tougher for Democrats to win enough Electoral College votes to take back the White House. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin voted for Trump in 2016, and Minnesota could be the next domino to fall.
Working class whites in the Rust Belt, who used to be the heart of the Democratic coalition, feel like the party has abandoned them.
If Trump can flip Minnesota in 2020, it could give him a huge victory in the Electoral College.
Democrats worry that the state is slipping right through their fingers. In 2008, Barack Obama won 42 of the state’s 87 counties. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won just nine.
There’s an even bigger problem: Democrats aren’t just losing counties. They’re losing voters.
“From 2008 through the 2012 and then into the 2016 presidential elections, the actual number of votes and the percentage of votes received by the Democratic candidate declined in Minnesota,” wrote David Schultz, a professor of political science at Hamline University.
“If we don’t figure out how to speak to voters, some of us might be the last Democrats to represent” rural parts of the state like Koochiching County, said Democratic Rep. Rob Eklund.
Donald Trump has been drawing tens of thousands of voters, supporting their side of the issues, and defending them against elites inside their own party.
Minnesota is going to be a battleground in 2020. It will come as no surprise if Trump has a stunner waiting for Democrats come November.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”