The Electoral Foreshadowing of the "Roseanne" Reboot

When the original "Roseanne" premiered on ABC in the fall of 1988, it was a fresh take on the situation comedy from the perspective of a decidedly unglamorous blue-collar family in a small Midwestern industrial city living paycheck to paycheck.  When the recession of the early 1990s hit, the show really found its voice, dealing with the family and the community's struggles with joblessness and fading hope with a rawness that hit home for downscale Americans.  The show was rarely overtly political, but there was little room for doubt that the Conners were a Democratic household in an era when class-based political fault lines were considerably less complicated than they are today.

Fast forward to 2018 and, despite the unhinged real-life nature of series star Roseanne Barr, the Trump era is a savvy time to revive the Conner household from Lanford, Illinois, and redefine them as part of the Trump coalition of "deplorables".  You'd be hard-pressed to find a fictional household from the past generation that would better embody the prototypical Obama-Trump voters that swung the 2016 election than the Conners.  But whatever the merits or demerits of the series' revival may be generally, I think the most frightening foreshadowing of the sitcom is that, more than a year into the controversial Trump Presidency, the fictional Conners are still with Trump.  And I suspect most of their real-world neighbors are as well, or at least will be when all is said and done.

There have been dozens of special elections since November 2016 that have telegraphed some demographic trendlines of voter preferences, and just about all have been in Democrats' favor.  But when you break down the data to the precinct level, the clearest takeaway has been that upscale suburbanites really do not like Donald Trump and are taking it out on his party.  Upscale suburbanites, of course, are not historically part of the Democratic constituency and will be a very odd fit as they become one, forcing Democratic officeholders to choose between a policy agenda that requires enlarging the size of the government or a policy agenda that takes it easy on the cost-conscious upper-income voters who would have to pay for enlarging the size of government.

There has been less indication based on special election results that downscale whites who used to be the backbone of the Democratic coalition (i.e. the Conners) have abandoned Trump in any real way.  This is important because winning the states that cost Hillary Clinton the election--Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, among other states--requires winning back some of those downscale whites.  And for all of his foolishness, Trump is savvy when it comes to catering to this key swing constituency.  He was savvy when he spent the first 15 minutes of the first 2016 Presidential debate hanging trade agreements signed by Hillary's husband around her neck, and then drawing a straight line to the industrial wreckage that has occurred in those swing Midwestern states in the generation since.  And he was savvy just this past week bragging about the strong ratings of the "Roseanne" revival and insisting that it's "our people" watching it.

Trump is sagely attaching himself to the hip to a constituency that already feels economically and culturally persecuted, and keeping his foot on the gas in reminding them of this attachment.  Doing so won him the last election and sets him up nicely to win the next one as well.  The timing of the "Roseanne" revival should serve as a stark reminder to Democrats that as go the Conners likely goes the nation.