Michael Moore was right to call Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania the “Brexit States” in 2016. This was the region largely left behind by the American economic model ushered in by giving China Most Favored Nation status. It was the region that, like the old Labour heartlands that went for Brexit in 2016, was moving from left to right as the Left increasingly identified itself with the upwardly mobile metropoles. The fact that every successful candidate from George W. Bush onward has at least tried to placate these voters on the economy is suggestive. So too the fact that Trump broke through all four states in 2016 with an openly American-System campaign of tariffs and internal improvements, then suffered a setback after his economic agenda turned out to be a Ryan tax cut and asking the Chinese to buy more soybeans.
So to sharpen the question. Will those Obama–Trump voters in those states look at Ron DeSantis as the tanned version of Mitt Romney, as a man who is in the position he is because he fundamentally benefits from the very economic model they have come to detest? Or do they see his willingness to stand up on Covid and a number of culture-war issues as an indication that he will stand up against the economic orthodoxy that they believe works against them?
Further, if the Republican Party does end up with a Trump–DeSantis race, does Trump effectively push DeSantis to distinguish himself from the former president by re-embracing the Bush–Clinton economic model?