This isn't going to surprise any Richard Florida followers but Brookings' Mark Muro observed, soon after the election, that "[t]he less-than-500 counties that Hillary Clinton carried nationwide encompassed a massive 64 percent of America’s economic activity as measured by total output in 2015. By contrast, the more-than-2,600 counties that Donald Trump won generated just 36 percent of the country’s output-- just a little more than one-third of the nation’s economic activity." It's also completely unprecedented for a losing presidential candidate to have won so large a share of the nation's productive base. No election in decades has revealed as sharp a political divide between the densest economic centers and the rest of the country-- "high-output" and "low-output" America.
[W]ith the exceptions of the Phoenix and Fort Worth areas and a big chunk of Long Island, Clinton won every large-sized county economy in the country. Her base of 493 counties was heavily metropolitan. By contrast, Trumpland consists of hundreds and hundreds of tiny low-output locations that comprise the non-metropolitan hinterland of America, along with some suburban and exurban metro counties.
Not exactly: Clinton lost Maricopa County (49-46%) but won Phoenix, lost Tarrant County (52-44%) but won Fort Worth and won more urbanized Nassau County on Long Island, 51-46%, while losing more rural Suffolk County 52-44%. But why quibble. Muro makes the point that there are multiple problems suggested by all of this: "Most broadly," he wrote, "the stark political divide underscores the likelihood of the two parties talking entirely past each other on the most important issues of economic policy. Given the election map we revealed, the Trump administration will likely feel pressure to respond most to the desires and frustrations of the nation’s struggling hinterland, and discount the priorities and needs of the nation’s high-output economic base."He's wrong there. Well, maybe they'll feel pressure, but they have no intention of responding to that pressure, other than in completely hollow speeches. As we mentioned yesterday, moments after Trumpanzee read Bannon's inaugural speech asserting, falsely, that "every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families," he signed an executive order that, in effect, raised the mortgage payments for every low-income and first-time homebuyer in the country. Bannon and Trump apparently plan to create Fake News as the main function of POTUS... while Pence, Ryan and McConnell pass a standard, garden variety GOP policy agenda that screws the life out of the working class voters who backed Trumpanzee's election. But Moro is naively hopeful.
On one hand, more attention to the economic and health challenges of rural and small-city Rustbelt America could be welcome, especially if it focuses on the right things: realism about current economic trends, adjustment to change, improving rural education and skills training, and enhancing linkages to nearby metropolitan centers. However, Trump’s promises to “bring back” the coal economy and “bring back” millions of manufacturing jobs (that now don’t exist thanks to automation) don’t speak wisely to real-world trends in low-output America. They look backwards and speak instead to local frustrations.On the other hand... [there are] doubts that the nation’s core metropolitan economic base will easily secure the investments it needs-- investments that has been shown to drive broader prosperity that benefits the entire nation. Without a doubt, the mostly metropolitan counties of high-output America will need now to make more of their own arrangements, by establishing their own applied R&D centers, developing their own industry-relevant skills pipelines, and deepening local industry clusters. “Bottom up” will now be mandatory. Yet with that said, big issues loom given the fact that no county can flourish entirely on its own. How, for example, will high-output America secure the critical, historically federal innovation investments it requires to fuel the dynamism of its local advanced industries and the long supply chains that they support? How will the heavily federal safety net be maintained? And will necessary federal infrastructure investments be made in a targeted, efficient way that maximizes return on investment?...[M]etropolitan areas are going to need to demand what they need, while taking matters into their own hands as best they can.In the end, our data makes plain that while cultural resentments played a huge role in this month’s election, so too did a massive economic divide between relatively prosperous high-output counties and struggling lower-out rural ones. Hashing out a serviceable politics and policy mix to serve that bifurcated reality is going to be a huge challenge.
This was reflected in the marches today. From Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, there were massive turnouts for anti-Trump demonstrations, dwarfing his thinly-attended Mourning in American Inauguration celebration Friday (despite Sean Spicer's laughable lie today that more people were at the Trumpanzee inauguration than at any other inauguration, blah, blah, blah... false, false, false. It's the White House Fake News Machine). This was an aerial view of Chicago, where over 250,000 people were marching against Trumpism:Turnout's outpaced all estimates. At the main march in DC, over half a million people turned out, more than double what the organizers had been predicting all week. Hundreds of "sister rallies" took place over the country. Between 2 and 3 million people turned out to protest Trump worldwide today. Here were a few of them:
• NYC- 500,000• Los Angeles- 750,000• Cincinnati- 10,000• St. Paul- 60,000• Denver- 100,000• Philadelphia- 50,000• Boston- 175,000• Cleveland- 15,000• St. Louis- 20,000• San Francisco- 150,000• Seattle- 170,000• Nashville- 20,000• Indianapolis- 15,000• Austin- 40,000• Charlotte- 10,000• Ashville- 10,000• Little Rock- 7,000• Memphis- 9,000• Atlanta- 60,000• Montpellier- 20,000• Lexington- 5,000• Portland, ME- 10,000• Portland, OR- 100,000• Miami- 10,000• Ithaca- 10,000• Oklahoma City- 12,000• El Paso- 1,000• Houston- 22,000• Dallas- 8,000• Detroit- 4,000• Lansing- 9,000• Phoenix- 20,000• Trenton- 3,000• Orlando- 3,000• Pittsburgh- 25,000• Boise- 5,000• Helena, MT- 10,000• Des Moines- 26,000• Oakland- 100,000• Kansas City- 10,000• Omaha- 14,000• Tallahassee- 18,000• Albuquerque- 20,000• Hartford- 10,000• Madison- 100,000• Birmingham, AL- 10,000• Raleigh- 20,000• Las Vegas- 15,000• San Diego- 40,000• Moscow (the one in Idaho)- 2,500• Honolulu- 8,000
Pat Benatar, with co-writer Linda Perry, created a new song, "Shine," as a tribute to today's massive marches and rallies. Here's the video of the recording session:There were also anti-Trump marches in London (100,000 people), Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, Budapest, Toronto (60,000), Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, in New Zealand, Bangkok, Yangon, Seoul, Tokyo, Beirut, Belgrade, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Athens, Capetown, Singapore, Warsaw, Shanghai, Delhi, Ottawa, Rome, Reykjavik, Madrid, Barcelona, Stockholm, Oslo, Dublin, Buenos Aires, Accra, Lima, Bogota and Mexico City. And in Antarctica.