Last week, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg invoked “America’s Heartland” to distinguish himself from a field of candidates vying for the top spot in the Iowa caucus. The “heartland”, like “working class”, “midwest” and “blue collar”, are nebulous terms intended to conjure up images of Americana – factory workers, cornfields and small towns. Almost invariably, the person saying it simply means “white moderates”.

In the wake of growing progressivism, appeals to the moderate center, and simultaneously the geographic “middle of the country”, have grown louder. But Democratic politicians’ references to the midwest are built more upon a fictionalized version of the region than fact, as if one’s placement on a map dictates ideology.

The realities of the midwest hit home when I was studying the aftermath of the 2016 election. The uncomplicated narrative was that millions of voters flipped from Obama to Trump, turning solid blue, Democratic states like Wisconsin red for the first time in decades. What followed was a never-ending stream of profiles on the disaffected white working class.

In turn, Democratic leaders responded with policy prescriptions intended to appeal to them, with their first stop in the small town of Berryville, Virginia, to announce their “Better Deal” plan. Residents of the city, which boasts a population of about 4,000 people, 78% of whom are white, were regaled with terms about the “elite” and “special interests”, as House and Senate leaders still failed to commit to universal healthcare or raising the minimum wage to $15.

What got lost in the 2016 epilogue were the black, progressive and urban communities in the midwest who were equally disaffected by their presidential choices and were also working class. I was committed to finding them. I turned my research and reporting into the short documentary, Left Out, out on Sunday ahead of the Iowa caucuses.

I turned my research and reporting into the short documentary, Left Out

Before I had plans for the film, I traveled to Wisconsin’s biggest city, Milwaukee, to see how a Trump presidency was affecting its black residents a year after the general election. I was forced to confront my own biases about the state, discovering a city with a rich black American cultural, political and labor tradition. Milwaukee is 39% black, a greater percentage than Brooklyn, Houston, Oakland and neighboring Chicago. In my trips there, with a subsequent visit leading up the 2018 midterms, I met black restaurant owners and cooks, working-class canvassers and organizers. Somehow, these faces aren’t conjured up in appeals to the heartland.

What I also discovered was that, rather than some nascent, post-Trump crisis, I found black Milwaukeeans dealing with decades of abandonment from both the private sector and politicians, whether they were Democrats or Republicans. Black residents are experiencing some of the worst economic conditions in America’s history, including the lowest black male employment rate for any major city in the country. Yet, their economic anxiety, and how it could affect how they vote or the policies that would energize them, was virtually ignored. The decline in black voter turnout all over the country was largely ignored, too.

A year later, when I followed up with some of the Milwaukeeans I first interviewed, I asked whether free college tuition and Medicare for All were “too far left” for the fabled, moderate midwest. I was met with energetic support and baffled, occasionally incredulous faces at the suggestion that they wouldn’t support such policies simply because they didn’t reside on the coasts.

Instead economic anxiety turning into a vote for Trump, for many people of color, it means staying at home. Data analysis by Data for Progress co-founder Sean McElwee and political scientists Jesse H Rhodes, Brian F Schaffner and Bernard L Fraga substantiates their stories. The researchers found that those who voted for Obama in 2012 and did not vote in 2016 were majority people of color. These non-voters were less financially well-off than both Obama-to-Clinton voters and Obama-to-Trump voters. They also remain resoundingly committed to both the progressive social and economic platforms on which Democrats had previously won their support over the past several decades, according to the team’s research. More than Obama-to-Trump voters, these voters support an increase in the federal minimum wage, federal regulation of greenhouse gases, an end to mandatory minimum sentences, and abortion rights.

The disproportionate attention given to conservative midwesterners erases the progressive and black voters who have helped make crucial swing states generally swing for Democrats, like Michigan and Wisconsin. Further, it steers Democrats into centrist policies, or conservative social appeals, that could actually undermine their success in the region.

I hope Left Out, gives audiences a glimpse of what is possible when we forgo common, outdated tropes that center heartland conservatives instead of a diverse, progressive-leaning working class. Engaging these voters, and sometimes non-voters, to back policies that can fight both the growing terror of white supremacy and the economic decline facing masses of Americans is a win for us all.