The Suburbs Will Set Us Free

Rural is red,

Urban is blue;

The key to the midterms

Is the suburbs, it’s true!

When you say the word ‘suburbs’ to me, my first thought is Levittown on Long Island, where 17,000 tract houses were built in 1947 and sold to returning GI’s (all White…the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act were still 20 years off in the future). Builders received low-interest construction loans from the Federal government, and buyers purchased them with newly conceived FHA-backed mortgages.

In less than a decade, suburbs would grow from 13% to 28% of the American population and keep growing strong. Today’s suburbs are much larger, much more diverse, and much more important to political fortunes than ever before. They are also enjoying a new growth spurt thanks to Covid-19.

While suburbs have been growing, the number of truly competitive Senate races has been shrinking. Here’s where some fascinating and important work by Doug Sosnik, former political advisor to Bill Clinton, comes into play. (See the Sosnik memo here, and the Politico Playbook reporting on it here.)

Sosnik cites the Cook Political Report’s assessment that control of the Senate this cycle comes down to just six races: three Democratic incumbents (AZ-Kelly, GA-Warnock, NV-Cortez Masto), one [particularly awful] R incumbent (WI-Johnson), and open seats in PA and NC.

Levittown, NY, in 1959

(Photo in public domain from Wikipedia)

All of these races will be tight, and all of them will be decided in the suburbs. This is where Sosnik’s work becomes so important. He sorts areas into six groups based on population density, from pure urban to pure rural. The action comes in the middle: denser closer-in suburbs that trend blue, and more sparsely populated outer suburbs that trend red.

Here’s the kicker. He understands what these voters want and what they don’t want. The starting point is understanding that suburbs have become more diverse than the cities they surround with large populations of Asians and Latinos in addition to Blacks.

Suburban swing voters hate the Big Lie about the 2020 election, defending the January 6th insurrectionists, and the intolerance of Republicans, particularly about abortion and guns. They also have little patience for the identity politics of the Democrats, are concerned about crime, and worry about the Federal government becoming too expansive or intrusive.

Put it all together, a winning strategy looks like this: (1) speak more about economic opportunities and controlling inflation and forget huge omnibus spending programs no one understands; (2) be tough on crime and supportive of funding and improving policing; (3) support common-sense gun safety measures; (4) protect a women’s right to choose; and (5) paint a very clear picture of the sh*t-show that will result if Republicans take over Congress.

This last point may be the most important. Paul Waldman sums it up best in his Plum Line column for WaPo. He writes, “[It will resemble] the past two times Republicans took the House, after the 1994 and 2010 elections — except even worse. Hearings more akin to Soviet show trials, phony investigations, insane conspiracy theories, more shutdowns and crises and havoc — that’s what awaits.” David A. Graham at The Atlantic calls it the Wackadoodle Wave.

No matter how angry or disappointed suburban voters may be at President Biden and the Dems, everyone is afraid of the serious Republican overreach on abortion and social issues, and no one has the stomach for the never-ending nonsense, lies, and bizarre showboating that inevitably will come from this generation of the GOP. It’s not too late to turn this around.