This column comes to you from Atlanta, Georgia, where but for one giant ‘Trump Stands Up For Families’ billboard and some Harris-Walz placards in the leafier suburbs, you would hardly know there had just been an election. I was hoping to report a whiff of teargas after a contested result, but no. Urban Atlanta voted for Harris but rural Georgia was so solid for Trump that nothing was left to argument.
The chattering classes on the east and west coasts may be traumatised, but for plainer folks – with a sense of relief that no violent disruption kicked off – it’s back to daily life and business as usual. Or is that, I wondered, a false observation from conversations with my conference group here? ‘No, you’re right,’ a Washington economist told me over breakfast grits. ‘Government just isn’t a big thing for most Americans. They have opinions, they vote, but a change of president doesn’t actually make a great difference to their lives.’
Frequent flying
What clearly does make a difference is the state of the local economy – and Atlanta’s is stronger than those of most southern cities, chiefly due to its position as a regional transport hub that began as a pre-Civil War railway junction.
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