Occasioned by COVID-19, my wife and I drove recently from Boston to Montana, mostly on state highways rather than the interstates. From West Virginia through Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and into Montana we saw a lot of beautiful country — and only a single Biden-Harris sign. Trump-Pence signs and flags were everywhere.
The Economist magazine has published a map displaying, in various shades of red and blue, its predictions for the upcoming presidential election. The dominance of support for President Trump that we witnessed in so-called “flyover country” is confirmed by The Economist predictions. The three West Coast states and the entire Northeast, except for New Hampshire, appear as dark blue. In between is dark red, except for a few light blue states and dark blue Illinois. The Economist gives Joe Biden a 97 percent chance of winning the popular vote and an 85 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.
If elected, Biden faces a huge challenge if, as he proclaimed in Tuesday’s debate, he is to be president of the entire country. Like blue-state voters who never have accepted Donald Trump as their president, red-state voters will require more than words to convince them that Biden is their president. The stark divide made clear on our drive from Back Bay to Big Sky is deep — and growing deeper with every new progressive proposal born in the liberal bastions that bookend flyover country.
We saw Trump banners in the poorest towns of West Virginia, the bucolic horse country of Kentucky, the small towns of southern Missouri, the wheat fields of Kansas, the cornfields of Nebraska and the coalfields of Wyoming. No doubt we would have seen a few more Biden signs had we ventured into the college towns along the way, but it’s not that Trump supporters are uneducated, rural bumpkins who don’t know what’s good for them. The vast majority of the people behind all of those Trump signs are good, honest, hard-working Americans. It seems unlikely that most of them admire Trump as a person, but supporting him politically is a way of expressing their belief that the West and East Coast progressives don’t really care about, or understand, the vast middle of the country.
And it’s not just the folks in flyover country who feel alienated. Color The Economist’s dark blue states red and blue by county and you’ll see that even the blue states are mostly red. Trump has made no effort to bridge the chasm between red and blue and is unlikely to do so in a second term. A President Biden could reverse the downward spiral of escalating partisanship if he is willing to put country ahead of party.
He will have to be willing to work with Republicans and stand up to Democrats. It is against all odds that every Democrat in the Senate or the House agrees on everything; yet, like Republicans, they move in lockstep as if the other party hasn’t a single idea worth considering. If he becomes president, Biden will have to be willing to say no to members of his own party and yes to Republicans. He will have to be willing to defend the nation’s history as a beacon of freedom and deny that racism pervades every American institution, organization and business. We know he knows how to do it from his long history of bipartisanship in the Senate, but in the era of “we won, you lost, so get over it” politics it won’t be easy. But if he has the backbone, Biden could begin the arduous work of reuniting our country.
In 1957, my family drove from Montana to New York to Arkansas and back to Montana. We saw a country far more culturally heterogeneous than America is today. We Montanans were like foreigners in New York City and Little Rock, Ark. The Supreme Court had, three years before, decided Brown v. Board of Education. During our visit to Little Rock, nine black students were blocked from attending Little Rock Central High School. Yet the Senate approved the Civil Rights Act of 1957 with 29 Democratic and 43 Republican votes, and the House approved it with 119 Democratic and 167 Republican votes.
In today’s Congress, members seldom break party ranks. That will have to change if the people of flyover country are to be reunited with their fellow citizens in blue states. If he has the determination and intestinal fortitude, a President Biden could begin the renewal of our more than two-century pursuit of e pluribus unum.
If he gets elected, as The Economist and others predict he will, the first thing Joe Biden should do is take a slow drive across the country.
James L. Huffman is a professor of law and the former dean of Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore. He was the Republican nominee in the 2010 U.S. Senate election in Oregon. Follow him on Twitter @JamesHu41086899.