{"text":[[{"start":6.96,"text":"The geography of class is visible from the sky. Flying into Indiana, my home state in the heart of the American Midwest, on a sweltering summer day in August, I can see the political history of the region from several thousand feet up. There are huge, four-mile squares of black dirt from which spring lush corn and soybeans, each evenly divided into the “country miles” that make up some of the world’s richest farmland. North of Indianapolis, the thriving state capital that is home to pharma giants like Eli Lilly, McMansions bordered by pools and lush landscaping appear. As we near the city, there are the factories and manufactured housing developments, dubbed “trailer parks” in less politically correct days. Some of my high-school friends lived in them, particularly as the farm business consolidated and the factories began closing."}],[{"start":56.42,"text":"I was long gone by 2016, when the small-c conservatism of my youth, which was defined by thrift, industry and local communitarianism (farmers ploughed snow-covered roads, churches ran food pantries) gave way to the rise of the insurgent wing of the American right, which became Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” politics. Thanks to an ambitious mother, I’d left Frankfort — where the German immigrants who settled here must have made that “o” their concession to the New World — for the Ivy League. But recently my home state has again emerged as a litmus test for where the Maga crowd, and the country in general, may be going."}],[{"start":93.62,"text":"The question posed by pundits and political analysts ahead of the US midterm elections in November is whether the Midwest is starting to turn against Trumpism. There have been signs this year, including the rise of rightwing alternatives to Trump, including Senator Josh Hawley in Missouri, who is planning a 2028 presidential run and has been willing to challenge the president on everything from the abuse of executive power to abortion rights and support for Big Tech."}],[{"start":119.08,"text":"Indiana, too, is pushing back against Maga. In December, 21 Republican state senators joined all 10 Indiana Democrats in standing up to Trump’s efforts to redistrict in advance of the midterms. The gerrymandering would have given the GOP a further advantage in Indiana, but was nonetheless antithetical to traditional conservative sentiment, which privileges states’ rights over federal intervention. Thanks to moderate Republicans’ refusal to cave to Trump’s pressure, the proposal was voted down in the state senate."}],[{"start":149.56,"text":"Retribution was swift. Railing against the Republicans who had voted against gerrymandering, the president declared: “Every one of these people should be ‘primaried’ and I will be there to help.” In due course, Maga Super Pacs poured millions of dollars into state senate races. The money in the primary season reached $13.5mn, compared with less than $300,000 two years earlier. Six out of eight conservative incumbents who had stood up to the president lost their primary. As one of them, state senator Travis Holdman, put it, “Welcome to DC politics in Indiana because this means that’s what’s coming.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":186.16,"text":"There was polling showing some of those districts might have gone Maga anyway. But it seems clear that big money and gerrymandering at the national level, along with the Republican leadership’s cult-like focus on Trump, has become a hugely distorting force in politics. “I’m a glass-half-full guy,” says former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith, a moderate Republican who now teaches at Harvard. “But I think the combination of out-of-state big finance and gerrymandering is making it very hard for average people’s voices to be heard.”"}],[{"start":214.7,"text":"What do folk from Indiana, we Hoosiers who are constitutionally suspicious of power and independently minded, think about this? Are they angry? Are an affordability crisis, an unpopular war in Iran and a sense that Republican Super Pacs bought out local senate races going to help the Democrats running on an anti-corruption message in the midterm? Are people even paying attention? This summer there was one very obvious place to take the temperature of this political moment: the Indiana State Fair."}],[{"start":241,"text":"State fairs are iconic in the Midwest. They are huge, month-long extravaganzas of commerce and culture. I get a taste of it immediately upon entering the fairgrounds in downtown Indianapolis. I arrive on the opening day, August 7, and the big event is the cheerleading competition, a fan favourite. I pass the carnival rides, the barns where prized sheep, goats and pigs are displayed, a group of middle-aged cloggers (performing a modernised version of Yorkshire clog dances that made their way to the US over the past 200 years) huffing it to an unexpected mix of hip-hop music, as well as something called the “dog dunk”, which involves canines jumping 20ft or more into a giant swimming pool, and a display of pioneer culture."}],[{"start":284.86,"text":"Eventually, I reach the grandstand in the centre of the fairgrounds. Squads of teenage girls in ribbons and colour-coordinated uniforms have already begun a practice session, cartwheeling and backflipping to the sounds of Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin and Otis Redding. Parents mill about looking for seats, some carrying corn dogs and lemon slushies in containers as large as sand pails. Heftier girls lift twig-like ones into precarious mounts, then fling them up in the air. Toes are touched. Girls are dropped. “Dang, they are struggling more than last year,” one onlooker comments."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":319.5,"text":"I corner a dance mom, Andrea, who looks like she may have been able to do a cartwheel or two in her day. Her 14-year-old daughter, Ashland, who cheers for the Jay County Junior-Senior High Patriots, is here with her comrade in pleats, Brenna. Both are extremely blonde, wearing red, white and blue uniforms and bright red lipstick."}],[{"start":338.42,"text":"“They did a round-off into a back handspring and then a back aerial,” says Andrea, proudly."}],[{"start":343.6,"text":"“Up a hill,” adds Ashland. “That was the hardest part.”"}],[{"start":347.3,"text":"Andrea is wearing denim cut-off shorts and a “We Are Patriots” T-shirt — which, as it turns out, represents not only the squad but her politics."}],[{"start":355.3,"text":"She tells me she’s “a total Trump girl”, but her daughter has forbidden her to wear Maga gear today, since they are in Indianapolis “and they don’t like that kind of thing here”."}],[{"start":364.3,"text":"Andrea is 56, and has an enormous, blended family of 12 children that ranges in age from 38 to two. The smallest, a pair of blonde twins, are also in “We Are Patriots” shirts. They live in a rural area in the east of the state, 13 miles from the nearest store. Her family have been in the area for generations. Andrea ran a daycare centre until recently, and her husband now does construction. He’s doing well, thanks to a relatively robust state economy (Indiana outperforms the 11 other Midwestern states in terms of both GDP and a low unemployment rate, at 3.3 per cent). A strong state budget, low cost of living and good blend of manufacturing, services and agriculture have helped the state weather tougher times and higher prices. The steel, biotech and defence industries have benefited from re-industrialisation efforts at the national level."}],[{"start":417.62,"text":"That’s one reason Andrea and her family still support Trump. But there are others. “He’s strong,” she said, when I ask why she likes the president, “and he’s a very good leader. And he isn’t a politician — he’s a businessman. Also, he’s making decisions that are going to be good for the future, that will benefit our kids. We’ve got a strong military again. We’re bringing back patriotism and pride. We’re not taking down statues. I want our history to stay . . . OK, some of it has been ugly, but we learn from it. I want kids to know the truth, to learn respect.”"}],[{"start":450.22,"text":"Cops and the military, she believes, should be held in higher regard. This reflects a larger cultural notion I’ve heard from others in many parts of rural America: that those in big cities or on the coasts don’t understand their values. As the speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives, Todd Huston, put it to me: “Faith, public safety, a simpler way of living — there’s a perceived lack of respect for those things.”"}],[{"start":473.04,"text":"Andrea is the sort of voter we hear a lot about, but people like her don’t represent the whole state. Indiana is three states, really, and each of them reflects a key element of recent American political experience. The northern half, where I was raised and my father ran factories, is a manufacturing powerhouse that was decimated by the China shock — that massive outsourcing of rust-belt industrial jobs to Asia over the last several decades. While Indiana is still the biggest manufacturing state in the union as a percentage of state GDP, most of the highly paid union jobs are gone, and the labour-left Democrats here swung hard for Trump in 2016."}],[{"start":512.34,"text":"Then there’s the south of the state which is, well, the South — more Appalachia than rust-belt. Indiana still has active Ku Klux Klan members and a strong strain of anti-immigrant populism. You could draw a direct line from the nativist Know-Nothings of the 19th century, to the Klan, the McCarthyites, the Tea Party and Trumpism in my home state."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":533.96,"text":"Finally there’s Indianapolis, a diverse, affordable knowledge economy, with plenty of culture and entertainment. But “Indy”, which like many big American cities has a large Black population, exists in an orbit detached from (and resented by) much of the rest of the state. In that sense, the state capital and the surrounding county seats are emblematic of the national rural-urban divide that arguably defines American politics as much as the red-blue divide. Which party will be able to bridge that gap? The answer will decide the midterms, and perhaps the 2028 presidential election."}],[{"start":568.88,"text":"After a couple of hours of cheerleading, I move on to the Weaver Popcorn Youth Pavilion to watch the youth riding and showing competition. Teens in chaps, jeans, Western-style shirts and boots nervously show their horses. Parents and grandparents wearing muddy work boots and T-shirts cheer them on. A middle-aged woman shouts to one of the girls, “Look like you’re having fun, Piper!” Contestants are told by an announcer and judge wearing a cowboy hat, pinkish plaid jacket and boots to “Lean forward, gallop!” And they do."}],[{"start":599.22,"text":"I spot an especially attentive couple in the back row. The man has a tan, sandy hair, bright blue eyes. He wears jeans and cowboy boots."}],[{"start":607.52,"text":"The woman has an interesting face — very alert and full of feeling. It turns out Sheila Blake is a grandmother, aged 60. Her 14-year-old grandson, Tray, has just won a ribbon. “He’s worked hard, and this is the first year he’s done it all on his own,” she says proudly. That means Tray woke in the early hours of the morning to feed and care for the horse, saddle it, exercise it and so on. “Dealing with a 1,200lb animal, getting it to do what you want it to do, that’s really empowering to a child,” Blake says. “Life doesn’t happen inside four walls — showing here teaches them about work, about money.” This push for self-sufficiency stands in sharp contrast to the helicopter parents I see in my own Brooklyn neighbourhood."}],[{"start":655.14,"text":"Tray looks proud and a little nervous. He’s small, but sits tall on his horse, in a bright aqua cowboy shirt with white piping, as the ribbons are given."}],[{"start":665.62,"text":"“I was afraid I’d fall off,” he says to me later, though I doubt that was a real possibility. He’s been doing shows at the fair his whole life. “Most of the kids just spend a lot of time on their phones,” he says, when I ask about his friends at school. Then his grandmother tells him to “scratch out”, meaning sign out of the competition, and go wash down his horse, which he obligingly runs off to do."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":688,"text":"Blake is from Brown County in the southern part of the state, and from a line of farmers. She and her husband still raise animals and crops, and they are self-sufficient in terms of food. But they both need other jobs to make ends meet — agriculture is a $35bn economy in Indiana, which is the ninth-largest farm region in the country, but farming is a tight-margin business, and only a handful of industrial farmers can afford to do it full time. Blake is a schoolteacher; her topic is Earth science. Like many people I interview, she wishes more people could spend a day on a farm. “If they did, they’d understand why the price of food is what it is. People need to get back into understanding where their food comes from and what it takes to get it to the plate. Water costs money, fuel costs money.”"}],[{"start":737.06,"text":"Blake’s daughter works at the Department of Agriculture as a programme specialist, and both women feel that neither political party cares much about farmers — that politicians are completely out of touch with how people here live daily."}],[{"start":749.8,"text":"Blake worries about the war in Iran and the unsustainability of fossil-fuel usage in general."}],[{"start":755.28,"text":"Voting-wise, she calls herself an independent, and as I start to ask her whether Trump’s war might shift how she votes in the midterms and presidential election, she’s nodding before I finish the sentence. “It might. Yes, it just might. I’ll have to see the candidates, but it’s something I’m thinking about.”"}],[{"start":772.12,"text":"Blake’s willingness to consider voting across party lines reflects not only Republican own goals like the war on Iran, but also the fact that Democrats are trying harder to meet rural voters where they are, talking more about values and religion. Across the Midwest, primary elections in recent weeks are being won not so much by party affiliation but by trust — does the candidate see me? Does he or she know who I am and where I live?"}],[{"start":796.22,"text":"The conservative pollster Frank Luntz calls this trend the “politics of respect” and says that it could favour Democrats, particularly Democratic Socialists, in the midterms, and particularly in states like Michigan and Ohio, where union voters are turning against Trump. “Whoever shows up and makes people feel heard, regardless of their platform, will win,” he says. At a national level, Republicans aren’t doing so well on this score. Trump’s claims that the affordability crisis is a “hoax” and that data centres won’t take jobs don’t play with voters who have existential anxiety about AI."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":834.2,"text":"The topic of data centres comes up, unexpectedly, in the swine barn, which I can smell before I arrive. The loudspeakers are blasting Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight” and Hoosier John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane”. It’s as though music stopped in the 1980s, but I like it. It reminds me of high-school dances."}],[{"start":854.16,"text":"A little girl with a giant red hair bow, who looks to be no older than 10, is shepherding a pig that must be more than 10 times her weight. The fair queen is there, in jeans and a plastic crown with paste gems, handing out award ribbons."}],[{"start":867.88,"text":"A horde of children waiting to show their animals to judges play football in an empty show pit covered in sawdust."}],[{"start":874.84,"text":"Nearby, in another pit, there is a 30-something man asking questions of about 150 children and teens gathered around, learning how to be livestock judges. They are blonde and freckled, and the girls have tight, perfectly woven French braids, or even the more complicated fishtail braids that the Amish girls in high school wore. Boys have crew cuts and caps. Everyone is in jeans and T-shirts that say things like “Purdue Ag” or “Blackhawk Livestock Judging”. The announcer quizzes them: “Question 15. When you get behind ’em, which animal has wrinkly skin?” The students scribble quietly. The announcer says, “You all over there talking, you aren’t helping yourselves by cheating.” A few of the teenage boys look abashed. “Question 16. Which is the animal with the heaviest weight?” More scribbles."}],[{"start":924.56,"text":"I move to the cubicles, which are shared by the pigs (many of them asleep on their sides, feet up and snoring like old men) and their owners, who are chilling in lawn chairs. I chat with a couple of farmers and, in a two-degrees-of-Indiana moment, discover that one of them works at Keystone Cooperative, a farmers’ collective now run by a boy I had a crush on in fifth grade. The farmer, Jason Hine, works multiple jobs like all the others."}],[{"start":950.44,"text":"He and another farmer, Melanie Bush, say that everyone here is talking about fuel prices — and data centres. “We’re following the news more closely these days, particularly at a national level.”"}],[{"start":961.12,"text":"Bush says in her part of northern Indiana, data centres are coming into the area, driving up land prices and making it tougher to buy or lease. “Then there’s the traffic, the water consumption, all of it,” she says. Both she and Hine want people in Washington to better understand how hard it is to make a living. “It’s been hard since the 1970s really,” Hine says. Bush’s husband, a quiet man, nods knowingly. They all acknowledge the Iran war and Big Tech have added fuel to the fire of inflation. Would that make them vote Democrat? They make uncertain faces. As Hine says, “I’m thinking more about my school district rather than the midterms or the presidential election. The federal government should worry about national security, and we can worry about things like education here. There ought to be less government, not more.”"}],[{"start":1007.26,"text":"This idea that the “government is the problem, not the answer” still runs deep here and favours conservatives, who polls predict will win the state, but by a far narrower margin than in 2024. While Democrats did well in the state between 2006 and 2010, thanks to the antipathy towards the Iraq war, in which many Indiana National Guardsmen fought — the state has historically sent a high number of soldiers to battle — and the financial crisis, Barack Obama’s victory here in 2008 was narrow. Even with all the Republican errors under Trump, it still feels as if Democrats have an uphill battle to win back this part of the country."}],[{"start":1042.16,"text":"As I walk out of the barn I ask Brandon Smiley about the politics of race in the state. Smiley, 35, works for a party company that does the catering set-up for the fair. His family, like many in the area, came to Indiana three generations ago during the Great Migration, when many Black migrants left the South and came north for economic opportunity and to escape racism. This state hasn’t been that escape for his family — Smiley says he experiences racism “all day long”. Indiana “thinks in black and white”, he tells me, but job opportunities are good, and to him that’s what matters."}],[{"start":1074.68,"text":"I’ve heard much the same from other Black Hoosiers on my visit. We chat for a bit, and I ask him what he makes of Trump 2. “Well, my kids are in Catholic school and the funding cuts in education have been tough. It’s $470 a month to keep both my seven- and four-year-old in school,” a significant bump from previous years. “The grocery bill has gone from $700 to $1,200 a month.” Will his community come out for Democrats the way they did for Obama in 2008? “Maybe. People don’t care until things [like prices] hit home,” and now they are. Still, Smiley says he would never move to a place like Chicago, a more diverse and inclusive city with a strong Black community, because it’s so much more expensive."}],[{"start":1118.2,"text":"It’s almost evening, and I make my way back to the grandstand, this time for the all-important marching band competition. (A confession: I was a flag girl in the 1988 band competition. Thank God there was no social media back then.)"}],[{"start":1131.6,"text":"I don’t know whether I’m having a Sunset Boulevard moment, but the bands seem so much smaller than I remember. There is also a Cirque du Soleil quality now that feels strange — lots of costumes, theatrics, props. We just marched, threw flags and played our instruments with gusto. But the kids do seem as nervous and excited as I once was. I can see them silently counting steps, with that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look."}],[{"start":1155.96,"text":"Technicians working the sound system chat as the kids play. “How ya doin?” one asks another. “Too early to tell — too late to care!” says another, and they both laugh. Band directors yell from the sidelines, urging the kids to hit their marks: “Go to the right, no, not that sharply!” Dozens of teenagers do a precise step formation as they blow their horns at the same time."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":1177.44,"text":"The West Lafayette High School is about to perform. West Lafayette is a dot of blue in a red state, the home of Purdue University, an engineering powerhouse. The band girls wear sailor caps and have something of an interpretive dance quality, almost tai chi, with some sort of ocean theme set to Debussy. The flag girls are not on their game, and as they spin and toss their props in the air, several end up in the gravel. I blame iPhones. Surely, they aren’t practising as hard as we were in the 1980s, when there was truly nothing to do all summer but detassel corn, babysit, work at the local ice-cream shop and twirl flags. Behind me, in the peanut gallery, onlookers offer colour commentary. “Oh boy, are they doing the Wizard of Oz?” “No, it’s Wicked.” “Oh, that’s better.” As a French-braided Salome dances to something vaguely Middle Eastern-sounding: “She’s beautiful — and I like her hair too.” “Yeah. That dance was badass . . . want some Kettle Korn?” That’s heavy-duty caramel popcorn for the uninitiated."}],[{"start":1239.16,"text":"One could make a small study of food at a state fair. Fat, sugar and salt are the primary ingredients, with corn and pork coming in a close second. Corn dogs appear to come in sizes large, extra-large and obscene. Anything can be deep-fried — pickles, tomatoes, Snickers bars, ice cream, Oreos. I spot two women eating something that looks like a potato version of the fungi that explodes from the bodies of infected insects in the rainforest. I’m told it’s the “sweet and salty spiralled potato chip”, created by dunking a whole sliced potato into a deep fryer, and they can confirm it is “delicious”. As a child, I would have swooned over all this and begged my parents for a hub-cap-sized “elephant ear” of fried dough dipped in powdered sugar. Now, in the 90F heat, the thought makes me nauseous."}],[{"start":1286.34,"text":"I gravitate to the line outside the pork tent, which is the longest, and with good reason — you can smell the salty goodness of the pulled pork half a mile away. Standing in line, the prairie sun starts to burn the back of my neck."}],[{"start":1299.86,"text":"In the pork tent, I chat with an older couple from Montgomery County, an hour west of Indianapolis on the Illinois border. The husband, aged 66, is a retired AT&T technician and the wife won’t speak to me (“We’ve had trouble with reporters before”) even when I tell her I grew up in Clinton County, something that usually softens the Hoosiers sceptical of curious outsiders. Nonetheless, I learn they have two grown-up sons who work for the State Farm Insurance agency. They feel happy with their lot, particularly compared with how things were in the 1970s, when they were starting a family. “When we bought our first house, interest rates were 18 per cent,” says the husband, “and we’re about to pay it off soon.” The husband voted three times for Trump. “I like his policies — we need deregulation — but I don’t like the rhetoric. It’s not necessary.” What about the hoopla over redistricting, I ask? Did he pay attention? Does he care? He shakes his head, mirroring what I’ve heard all day. “It’s a game going on since politics started.” Still, he says, “I don’t love this war.” He’s convinced that “big companies are playing a game with prices”, using the war as an opportunity to drive them up."}],[{"start":1367.96,"text":"This idea of corporate power and corruption is something that Democrats have been trying to make hay with for years now, mostly unsuccessfully. But Trump’s blatant use of executive power for self-enrichment has provided new fodder. There is research to show that candidates who refuse Pac contributions are perceived as more trustworthy. But this tends to work more at a primary level, when voters are less likely to simply pull the lever for a single party. Voters say corruption matters to them, and they want solutions to it. But how deeply they consider that in a general election is less certain. What is certain is that the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has made Indiana a target state; Democrats need just four Indiana House seats to break the Republican supermajority. Certainly, they’ll campaign on corruption, but also on the rollback of Medicaid benefits, the failed Trump promises around manufacturing jobs and the rising costs for things like healthcare and housing."}],[{"start":1425.68,"text":"It’s dinner time, and my eyeballs are burning from hours spent in the sun. It’s time to head back to the hotel. As I walk past the watermelon-spitting contest (the marker is set for 22ft — could anyone ever spit that far?) to the midway, I wonder who in God’s name would stand in line for “Hot Wisconsin Cheese” on a day like this. (Answer: many people.)"}],[{"start":1448.36,"text":"I don’t do fairground rides — I once put my neck out riding the Cyclone rollercoaster on Coney Island and needed a month of chiropractic treatment. But I’m fascinated by the scene. As the late writer David Foster Wallace put it in a piece about the Illinois State Fair, getting on these rides is like “paying to be in a car accident”. I pass something called the Sky Scream, in which a three-storey-tall steel lever with baskets at the end hoists eager fairgoers into the sky at high velocity, spinning them around in the baskets as the giant lever itself rotates to the sounds of fast-paced dance music. The carney pushes the handle to go, and a timid redhead grimaces and clutches the sides of his basket as the ride starts. I can’t help thinking of it as a metaphor for what’s ahead — in the midterms, the 2028 presidential elections and beyond."}],[{"start":1497.68,"text":"Rana Foroohar is global business columnist and associate editor at the Financial Times"}],[{"start":1502.96,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram"}],[{"start":1512.08,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1788133675_2513.mp3"}