Salena Zito wanders the old rust belt - states like Ohio and Pennsylvania - and tells the stories of people who aren’t famous, aren’t elite, aren’t glitterati. Her columns show up in the Washington Examiner and are some of the best Americana being written today.
People talk about journalists needing to understand the so-called “grassroots.” Zito documents the grassroots in the interior northeast, and does it better than anybody. She is a storyteller and an observer, and she draws very smart conclusions from that milieu, for example:
Ask any suburban parent (mother or father) who has spent hours driving back and forth to swim meets and soccer practices for their daughters how they feel about women’s sports today that have biological males crushing females in meets and tournaments.
If you think that hasn’t pushed them center-right, you haven’t listened to them.
If you think the violent crime epidemic in our cities hasn’t pushed people center-right, then you haven’t paid attention to the diversity of new gun owners who purchased their first guns in the past two years to protect their homes and their families — or have moved out of those cities.
By the way, this is not about Republicans getting things perfect or even semiperfect or even partially perfect — this is about Democrats overreaching so wide and so far that they can't see the forest for the trees.
People will calculate that the midterm elections this year will be about a lot of things: Trump, racism, and not getting Build Back Better passed. They will be wrong — it is the culture, and had they just spent some time listening to people, they would have known.
Zito has her finger on the wrist of America. She feels our pulse and describes it, combining the skills of a Garrison Keillor and a David Broder.
