I spent the past week in Wisconsin and have seldom had the opportunity to see more vividly the red/blue divide in America. The urban areas are predominantly hard left while the rural areas are defiantly conservative. 

My trip began in a suburb of Madison, Wisconsin. Because I was still working for part of my trip, I was hunting up appropriate YouTube videos while on a local server. Unlike the situation here in South Carolina, where I almost never see political ads on YouTube (and, no, I don’t know why not), my Wisconsin YouTube feed was overrun with political ads.

It became apparent very quickly what arguments the campaigns were using to sway voters. Without exception, every single Democrat ad I saw attacked the opposing candidate for wanting to ban abortions. That was it. As far as urban and suburban Democrats in Wisconsin are concerned, that is the only winning issue they have.

Meanwhile, the Republican ads hit two themes: The economy and violence. They had a lot of material to work with, too. I did a poll of one (my hostess), asking her which issue she felt was more important. She said that, without a doubt, it was the economy and violence. Abortion, she said, was a non-issue compared to these overwhelming problems.

Out on the streets, many cars had Biden-Harris” bumper stickers still clinging to them. One car I managed to photograph even had a car version of the leftists’ beloved “in this house we believe” yard sign, ending with “kindness is everything.” Somehow that seemed at odds with the sticker showing the Marxist raised fist over an image of Africa. Cognitive dissonance never seems to bother the left.

At a local coffee shop, the barista was a very skinny man clocking in at about 6’4”. He had straggly, shoulder-length hair, and a mask, and spoke in a cracked, reedy voice. He was pleasant and helpful. A bit of an odd bird, I thought. It surprised me, although it probably shouldn’t have, to learn a short time later that this manifest man goes by “she/her” pronouns. 

Things were different the moment my trip took me out of the big city. There were billboards everywhere with two themes: Jesus saves you and abortion is evil. Houses and businesses were festooned with American flags. Gun stores showed up in every small town. People had trucks and other sturdy cars, many with Trump bumper stickers.

In other words, Wisconsin is yet another red state with blue cities. We all know that already because we’ve seen the county-by-county maps following the last two presidential elections. In Wisconsin, out of a population of roughly 5.81 million, the five biggest cities account for 1,132,259 of the state’s total. The smaller cities account for four times that big urban population. And yet Wisconsin’s outcome affected the 2020 election. Either there’s massive urban voting fraud or small-town America is not turning out to vote.

I don’t know what to do about the voter fraud but, if this is a failure to show up on election day, I’d like to suggest that small-town voters show up in numbers equaling 100% of their eligible population. Otherwise, as bad as things are now under almost two years of Joe Biden’s administration, you can count on them getting significantly worse if Biden and the Democrats are given another two years. 

By the way, Wisconsin in the fall is breathtaking.

Image: Door County, Wisconsin, by Leif and Evonne. CC BY 2.0.