‘Factory Towns‘ and Their Political Importance

The Leslie Marshall Show

The guest host for today's show is Brad Bannon. Brad runs Bannon Communications Research, a polling, message development and media firm which helps labor unions, progressive issue groups and Democratic candidates win public affairs and political campaigns. His show, 'Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon,' airs every Monday from 3-4pm ET.

Brad is first joined by Democratic Strategist Mike Lux to break down a report that Mike co-authored, called "Factory Towns."

As Demlist's Kimberly Scott puts it, the report "reveals how the political parties, and most particularly Democrats, have missed "the biggest electoral earthquake of the last decade" in discounting the significance of a key demographic -- manufacturing-heavy, working-class towns.

The study, produced by American Family Voices and 21st Century Democrats, debunks, in-depth, the conventional premise that there are only three kinds of political turf that matter: the big cities, which are Democratic; rural America, which is Republican; and the suburbs, which is where most of the swing voters are, and therefore where the parties should spend most of their time.

That approach neglects a newly defined, yet long overlooked subset of the American electorate: the Factory Towns. They are the manufacturing-heavy, working-class towns that are not part of huge urban areas, but are not farming-dominated rural counties either.

The Factory Towns Report looks at 853 counties in 10 different Midwest and Great Lakes states, which have lost 1.3 million manufacturing jobs since the beginning of this century -- a decline that has been most damaging to Democrats."

During the second half of the show, Brad leads a political roundtable with Edwith Theogene and Mark Grimaldi. The roundtable discusses Senator Joe Manchin's demands that a key climate provision be dropped from the Senate Democrats infrastructure reconciliation package in order to gain his support for the bill. They also analyze new Gallup polling that shows how involved Americans want the government to be in solving the nation's problems.

Edwith Theogene is the director of advocacy for Generation Progress, the youth engagement arm of American Progress. In this role, Theogene works to develop and lead efforts that translate the experiences of young adults into concrete actions that advance progressive policies and increase voter turnout. Edwith's Twitter handle is @WhoIsEdwith.

Mark Grimaldi has been a progressive political activist for the past 13 years. He volunteered for the campaigns of President Obama (2008 and 2012), Senator Bernie Sanders (2016), Secretary Hillary Clinton (2016), and President Joe Biden (2020). Mark is also involved in campaign finance reform efforts around the country, and philanthropic efforts for Cancer research. His Twitter handle is @MarkJGrimaldi.

Brad writes a political column every Sunday for 'The Hill.' He's on the National Journal's panel of political insiders and is a national political analyst for WGN TV and Radio in Chicago and KNX Radio in Los Angeles.
You can read Brad's columns at www.MuckRack.com/Brad-Bannon. His Twitter handle is @BradBannon.

You can also watch this episode here on Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1mrGmaqMAAwGy

Or here on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeadlineDCWithBradBannon/videos/688790425858712