Q: What Lessons Does the Midwest Offer for 2024?

• Position: ONE QUESTION

JIM GOODMAN

Retired dairy farmer and longtime farm activist

Wisconsin--especially rural Wisconsin, and by extension, the Midwest--can be a strange animal. One still sees campaign signs for the former President and hears disparaging remarks about the "China virus" and liberal elites. Granted, there are still Democrats in rural Wisconsin, but not as many as there used to be. They, like most rural residents, feel abandoned by the Democratic Party, a party that always did well when they identified with people who have less.

Republicans, realizing that rural America feels ignored and marginalized, control the message. Although they have no plans to actually improve lives in rural America, they do a damn fine job of getting everyone to believe they do. Democrats have, at a minimum, lost their ability to communicate progressive values--and until they remember how to do that, and put those values into law, they will not have rural support. It is as simple as that. The pretense of caring, it seems, is still better than not caring at all.

MANDELA BARNES

Wisconsin's forty-fifth lieutenant governor and 2022 candidate for the U.S. Senate

As I traveled across Wisconsin during my campaign for the U.S. Senate, I heard something similar over and over again from people in every corner of the state: They told me they knew I was in their comer because they could relate to my family's story, our working class values, and the foundation that good-paying union jobs created for us. I had the same conversations in Superior and Milwaukee that I did in Green Bay and Madison, because working class values unite Wisconsinites across our great state. They should also unite the Democratic Party.

This year, a coalition united in our working class values came within a percentage point of defeating a two-term...