I continue to have what I guess I would call a mild confidence that not just the Trump campaign but some amount of the political press is missing the political valence of the situation in Springfield, Ohio — the point I alluded to in this post from yesterday. But I want to zoom in on one aspect of the story. Trump and Vance are obviously telling a really lurid and ugly story about half-savage outsiders being foisted on a town of hard-working Americans from the Heartland. But even a lot of the non-far-right coverage has operated on the assumption that either the federal government or some outside entity has essentially resettled a large community of refugees in this one city. But that’s not really what happened here at all. The influx of immigrants into the city is actually a direct result of economic redevelopment plans devised by local leaders, most of whom are Republicans.
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