Ozark Wayne
 | |
| Era | The Nineties |
|---|---|
| Age | 48-62 |
| Home | West Plains, MO |
| Demographic | rural white, Vietnam veteran, retired driver |
| Lean | Swing voter |
| Race | white |
| Successor | Janesville Gary |
A drafted Vietnam veteran and retired truck driver in the Missouri Ozarks, who is both patriotic and deeply suspicious of the federal government in Washington. He is the Perot voter at the head of a line that continues through Janesville Gary to Rust Belt Rick.
Who they stand for
About 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam, and by the 1990s they were in their late forties and fifties in the small towns of the upper South and the Plains. Wayne weighs heaviest in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas and South Dakota, the states that became known as Perot country. Ross Perot took nearly a fifth of the national vote in 1992 by campaigning on the deficit and distrust of Washington, and he polled above his national share in Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas.
Throughout the decade, events kept bringing the war back into the news. Clinton's draft letter was an issue in 1992, the Senate's POW/MIA inquiry sat until 1993, relations with Hanoi were normalised in 1995, and Gulf War troops came home to parades his cohort never had. The Agent Orange Act of 1991 makes the Department of Veterans Affairs the main standard by which he judges every administration. Clinton won Missouri and Arkansas twice, and Bush took both states in 2000. Wayne's own vote is part of that swing. Gary, his successor, aims the same grievance at a closed plant.
Playing to them
He responds to a president who actually fixes the Department of Veterans Affairs rather than merely praising it, who pays Agent Orange claims without dispute, and who talks about the war directly instead of using patriotic language to avoid the subject. A candidate's concern about the federal deficit reaches him. So does any candidate who is clearly not a career politician. He does not forgive cuts to veterans' care. He also does not forgive a politician who avoided military service at draft age and later lectures others about the need for sacrifice, or thanks for his service that sounds rehearsed. He can be won by either party, and is lost by both to a third candidate when neither takes him seriously.
A president who wins him over by attacking Washington also increases support from Bitterroot Dale, but reduces support from Scarsdale Ellen, who trusts the institutions that Wayne distrusts. Increased spending on veterans is unpopular with Dot-Com Drew and Country Club Chip. Restraint about sending troops into another unfinished war keeps Wayne's support and disappoints Lejeune Dustin, who wants the military to be used.
Where they live
The five states where Ozark Wayne makes up the largest share of the electorate in the nineties:
- Arkansas
- Oklahoma
- Missouri
- Kansas
- South Dakota
Lineage
Ozark Wayne → Janesville Gary → Rust Belt Rick
The Perot voter who becomes the Trump voter. Wayne is patriotic and hostile to the federal government at the same time, and votes Perot. Gary voted Perot, hates NAFTA, and votes Bush as the lesser evil. Rick votes Trump, who campaigns on exactly Rick's grievances: tariffs, Buy American, contempt for the college-educated. The grievance is the same throughout, and moves from the Vietnam aftermath, to the plant closing, to the country's decline. By 2016 a major party runs on it. Rick is the first of the three who is not a swing voter.