I love how for the Times southern Ohio and western Nebraska are both (waves hand) “the Midwest.” How can two politicians offer such radically different “views” of (waves hand) the Midwest?
@ayjay No reasonable person extends the Midwest beyond Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri. Maybe not even that far.
@ayjay Also, the values of where JD grew up and where Tim grew up are no more the same socially than they are geographically so it's a straw-man premise anyway.
For the record, Minnesota is not the Midwest. It's the North. I contend that only people not from Minnesota or the Midwest consider Minnesota the midwest. I further contend that the values that Tim Walz now champions were certainly forged in his youth but have evolved even further in his time in politics here. What he has now, politically, are closer to Minnesota values than anything else.
@ayjay For many in media there are only five regions—east coast, west coast, the south, Texas, and the Midwest.
@ayjay We lived in SE OH for years. Appalachia is very much its own thing, neither north nor south (Eastern TN and KY were union hotbeds during the civil war: small farmers/hunters, not plantation slavers. One confederate general referred to the area as "Traitordom".). No one from anywhere around there would think of themselves as being in the Midwest.
@JohnBrady That's a good point about SE OH. I was thinking something similar earlier today about my part of southern Indiana. If the Midwest constellates around industrial centers (which is one way of thinking about it), then I'm in a borderland. There's some of that here but there's also a strong Kentucky ancestry. So if we don't thinking about the Midwest as defined solely by state borders, then I'm probably Midwesternish. Northern Indiana is very different from southern.
@jabel When we lived in RIchmond IN there was a local saying, "Kentucky begins at the National Road." The National road (more or less US 40) runs right through Richmond. An up-to-date translation might be "Kentucky begins at I-70." Welcome to Kentucky!
@patrickrhone As a N. Illinoisan (but not Chicagoland, so unimpeachable midwestern credentials), I wonder how much of this “Midwest creep” is normcore cache, like everyone being “middle class.” A Jan 19 WSJ article quoted people in Idaho and W. Montana claiming to be “Midwest.” It’s out of hand.