Wisconsin: As furious Trump demands recount in critical state, its level-headed voters are already moving on

On a street corner in downtown Milwaukee stands a man in a Biden-Harris t-shirt and a Biden-Harris cap, waving at the traffic with a Biden-Harris sign. Except that he’s showing them the back, on which he’s written the words: “Will work for money or food.”

Chatting to me on the glorious sunny morning after election night, he’s in great spirits.

He tells me he’s hopeful that under Biden, people at the bottom of the poverty scale – like him – will have a shot at making money and doing better. But Trump, he says, “has his heart in the right place” on some things – and there’s “a lot of good” in what he’s trying to do.

There’s no sense in making the rich pay tax, for one thing. “If they made their money they shouldn’t have to pay it back. I think they should donate it, but that’s on them.” Countries around the world rely on the US, and Trump is helping give them what they need. And in the end, either way, he’s hopeful he’ll be able to do better.

As we spoke, Wisconsin was close to finishing its painstaking election count, and shortly afterwards it was called for Joe Biden even by Fox News. Donald Trump has now launched a campaign for a recount; beyond the state’s borders, the atmosphere is frenzied.

Read more: Election aftermath – live coverage

But in Wisconsin itself, it seems people are keeping their heads – accepting the result more than rejoicing or despairing over it, and keeping their focus steadily on what their lives will look like in the next four years.

Just as the rage at Trump seems (for the most part) tempered, there’s little euphoria about Joe Biden’s possible victory. One left-leaning Wisconsinite, owner of a successful startup, explained to me that this was less a do-or die election than a learning experience for his own party.

“I voted against Trump as much as I voted for Biden,” he said. “If Trump wins, I’ll obviously be disappointed – but at least I hope the Democrats can take it as something to learn from.”

Neither side, to him, offers much comfort. “Biden almost scares me. If he wins, I worry they will think their strategy of going to the right worked. Really? Or did you just get lucky with people voting against Trump? It’s a step in the right direction, but it’ll be a long walk to getting things right for the country.”

This sense of the long view, of the need to keep things in proportion, came up everywhere I looked – and not just on the Democratic side.

As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Wisconsinites (and other midwesterners) are stereotyped as fundamentally nice people. This I saw borne out not just in Milwaukee, but at Trump’s own election eve rally in Kenosha. These were not the foaming-at-the-mouth foot-soldiers of media myth; the people I talked to smiled, laughed together, waited eagerly as Trump turned up more than an hour late.

More importantly, though, they mostly didn’t rise to the Trump bait. As the president ranted bilious into the freezing night, they applauded politely, cheering only when it was their turn. The bilious chant of “lock her up” made no appearance.

So when Donald Trump Jr was brought on to bellow that “we can’t just keep making America great again, we can make liberals cry again!”, it felt at first like something from another country.

The crowd laughed. Perhaps not a surprise; after all, they were also there to support a president who has trafficked in explicit racism, denigrated and harassed women, and overseen the separation of hundreds of children from their families – and who’s now claiming that counting every ballot, including in their state, amounts to electoral fraud.

Yet the laughter was shallow and blithe, not vicious. It sounded like a naughty indulgence at the expense of the other team, the sound of people dancing along with a charismatic bully as they pick on someone they’d never hurt by themselves.

To be sure, these were the kind of voters who’ll swing by a Trump rally announced at short notice on a frigid Monday night in November. But overwhelmingly, they were simply normal people – opinionated, partisan, and in hock to an extremist president, but hardly given to fleeing the country or burning it down if their man lost.

READ MORE: Can Joe Biden bid farewell to the most fractious four years in modern American politics?

Nor were they obsessed with what their state would do two days later, or how close the result would be. To the extent they were worried, they worried about the state of their 401ks, their household budgets, and the nebulous problem of getting the US back on track. They were, basically, just normal people.

Yet two days later, the outside world’s hysteria about Wisconsin reached a fever pitch that didn’t stop with the final count. After it was called for Biden, the former vice president took to a podium to declare he was expecting to clear 270 electoral votes – even as Trump and his surrogates sowed misinformation about illegal ballots and demanding counts be stopped in states where he’s losing.

Whatever comes of this – and few expect a recount to swing things Trump’s way – level-headed Wisconsinites will not catch a break from all this exhausting attention next time around.

The Democrats will always have their work cut out for them in the chain of states that runs from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania. Joe Biden may have won at least two of them, but only in heart-stopping photo finishes. And so far, it looks like he failed to make the kind of inroads elsewhere that could give these voters a break.

Meanwhile, the man on the corner – who had just pointed a lost man with dementia toward the bus station – told me to enjoy a beautiful day and all God’s blessings. Then he cheerily walked his Biden-Harris sign back to the roadside in search of work and food.