Giving Up On Rural Voters Is A Lame Move Far Too Many Democrats Have Mistakenly Made

It’s very politically unhealthy that huge swaths of the country— exurban and rural areas— go basically uncontested... ceded to the GOP without a fight. Tens of millions of people don’t even get exposed to progressive arguments or any kind of alternative to a conservative vision that has turned darkly paranoid, authoritarian, xenophobic and fascist over the past decade. In 2020, there were 7 congressional districts where Trump got 75% or more of the vote:

AL-01 (Jerry Carl)

AL-04 (Robert Aderholt)

KY-05 (Hal Rogers)

MO-08 (Jason Smith)

NE-03 (Adrian Smith)

OK-02 (Josh Brecheen)

TN-01 (Diana Harshbarger)

The Democratic Party isn’t running candidates against any of them, even though, arguably, Brecheen, Aderholt and Harshbarger are 3 of the worst members of Congress nd who should be challenged on the merits. 

Across the country, there were 39 counties— 16 in Texas alone— that gave Trump 90% or more of its votes:

• Blount Co., Alabama

• Cleburne Co., Alabama

• Winston Co., Alabama

• Brantley Co., Georgia

• Glascock Co., Georgia

• Wallace Co, Kansas

• Leslie Co., Kentucky

• Cameron, Louisiana

• LaSalle, Louisiana

• Carter Co., Montana

• Garfield Co., Montana

• Arthur Co., Nebraska

• Grant Co., Nebraska

• Hayes Co., Nebraska

• Keya Paha Co., Nebraska

• Logan Co., Nebraska

• McPherson Co., Nebraska

• Beaver Co., Oklahoma

• Cimarron Co., Oklahoma

• Dewey Co., Oklahoma

• Ellis Co., Oklahoma

• Haakon Co. South Dakota

• Harding Co., South Dakota

• Archer Co., Texas

• Armstrong Co., Texas

• Borden Co., Texas

• Glasscock Co., Texas

• Hansford Co., Texas

• Hartley Co., Texas

• Jack Co., Texas

• King Co., Texas

• Loving Co., Texas

• Motley Co., Texas

• Oldham Co., Texas

• Roberts Co., Texas

• Shackelford Co., Texas

• Sterling Co., Texas

• Throckmorton Co., Texas

• Wheeler Co., Texas

Do you shudder to even think about living among these people? Hold on for a second and let me point something out. In some of the counties in West Virginia where Trump did best, the 2016 primary saw Bernie with more votes than Trump. Yes, read that again. Bernie didn’t just get more votes than Hillary, he got more votes than Señor Trumpanzee! Let me give you a dozen examples of counties that voted strongly for Trump in the 2016 general election (that’s the percentage) after giving Bernie more votes than Trump on primary day:

• Boone Co (74.1%)— Bernie- 2,410; Trump- 1,388

• Braxton Co (69.3%)— Bernie- 1,321; Trump- 861

• Brooke Co (68.3%)— Bernie- 1,966; Trump- 1,963

• Fayette Co (66.9%)— Bernie-3,585; Trump- 2,683

• Lincoln Co (74.4%)— Bernie- 1,510; Trump- 1,193

• Logan Co (79.6%)— Bernie- 3,201; Trump- 1,665

• Marion Co (62.8%)— Bernie- 5,324; Trump- 4,035

• McDowell Co (74.1%)— Bernie- 1,453; Trump- 760

• Mingo Co (83.2%)— Bernie- 2,425; Trump- 1,161

• Monongalia Co (50.1%)— Bernie- 8,096; Trump- 5,971

• Wetzel Co (71.6%)— Bernie- 1,744; Trump- 1,096

Yesterday, Scott Nelson and Brad Klein wrote about how Trump— and Republicans— draw such overwhelming  support from rural areas and how the Democrats could make inroads— kif they care to contest them. They noted that Paul Krugman’s recent NY Times column (The Mystery of White Rural Rage) identified several sources of resentment that have helped boost Republican support in rural America. “In a departure from the Times’ long-established penchant of interviewing non-urban voters in Midwest roadside diners to find out what city-dwelling liberals miss about their basic beliefs, Krugman considers studies of a decades-long process of political-economic change that has stripped many communities of economic opportunity and government services. When it comes to everything from employment in agriculture and mining, to availability of affordable, quality health care, access to healthy environments, and ownership of small family enterprises, it’s true that many rural American communities have seen a steady decline of opportunity over the last several decades. Small wonder that residents here rail against globalizing markets— and cling to values and traditions that valorize an idealized past.”

“Republicans, following Trump's initiative,” they posit, “have deliberately incited anger at national ‘elites,’ heightened fears of foreign immigrant invasions (and ‘deviant’ gender identities), and induced non-urban communities to become obsessed with the odious ‘swamp’ of Washington politics… The ‘rural rage’ discourse that’s so often wheeled out but rarely unpacked should not be seen as the simple offshoot of political and economic change. To a large degree it has been created by national media operatives and Republican agents that are skilled at exploiting latent anxieties and fears, inflaming sentiments that— truth be told— Democrats have been slow to understand. Right-wing lobbying groups and think tanks like the Family Research Council, the Federalist Society, Moms for Liberty, and Project 2025 have been working full time with celebrity politicians like Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and countless others to fan the flames of a radicalized anti-immigration, anti-LGBT, and anti-clean energy politics. The goal is fomenting fears and stoking some of the most craven reactionary sentiments in recent American history.”

We need to appreciate how powerful the machinery is of what political scientist William Connolly calls a “resonance machine” — a self-reinforcing radio, television, and internet echo chamber that silos political interests, mainstreams fringe ideas, stirs up fears, and transposes them as the basis for a legitimate politics. Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart, Daily Wire, and Truth Social are all geared to doing precisely this— providing traction for ideas that people in rural communities feel validate their anxieties, even as they do not provide a way to overcome them.

We cannot ignore the ways in which the structural impasse of congressional politics has been created by a bare majority of Republicans in the House that stonewalls a bare majority of Democrats in the Senate. The normal difficulty of getting any legislation passed has been compounded lately by ideological extremism within a GOP that can barely agree on its own House leadership— one which holds the current speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, hostage to the crudest voices of outrage from the party’s own ranks.

…Republicans and media conglomerates have become uniquely skilled at orchestrating this strategy. Republicans crusade by demonizing progressive policy alternatives and blaming “left fascists”— the term itself is deployed to confuse people. 

But here’s the kicker: the blame for gridlock is then used to frame Democrats as un-American, as socialists or communists, as devil-worshippers bent on destroying the country. Long gone are the days when we had political opponents with different but legitimate values and priorities. The point today is to treat government itself— in effect, the people themselves— as the enemy.

We also need to understand how fragile the mythology of Trump as savior is. Like the frantic efforts of the wizard of Oz to create an illusion of power, the ginning up of resentment and the valorization of a strong leader as the only way out must continually play up the outrage and conjure deep state conspiracies to keep people on edge.

The result is a volatile cocktail: an aggrieved community, one that raises hopes for rural revenge fantasies that ultimately prove to be dead ends as policy. Thus, “rural rage” is, to a considerable extent, a concoction that exploits the country’s most vulnerable, inducing them to turn against the very institutions that could help them. 

The American right-wing— aided by the superficial character of mainstream media analysis— has fashioned a fierce but perverse alliance of resentful citizens based on emotional nostalgia for a past that never existed. That leaves them only with hopes of staving off change by resistance (including violence), repression, and outright expulsion. Racialist replacement theory is part of their arsenal. They turn back the clock on gender rights, women’s rights to choose their own medical procedures, and the ability of immigrants to secure legal employment in sectors for which there’s huge need in a vast number of labor markets. 

These strategies of outright reaction bind many rural and impoverished urban communities and play directly into the hands of major industries in the agricultural and extractive energy sectors by disavowing a regulatory culture and measures designed to protect labor and the environment. This is neoliberalism with a vengeance, one that produces the precise conditions of an unregulated market that further impoverishes the working and middle classes. It also plays into the hands of radical Christian evangelicals committed to a world in which (white) men, armed with their god-given right to rule, lord it over the country and the world, regardless of impact on family health, long-term economic development, education quality, or mitigation of climate change.

The short-term emotional catharsis secured in the process relies upon a politics that undercuts the well-being of the larger community. Republican states that refuse to draw upon federally-subsidized Medicare funding for expanded services to citizens to make a point of repudiating the welfare state provide an alarming example of how self-destructive this politics can be.

Democrats can counter with a discourse that carries its own emotional power— one based not on narrow interest group politics or answering every thrust and claim of the Republican crazies, but that confronts head on the fundamental threat to American democracy posed by this fabricated climate of grievance.

Last month, President Biden surprised Americans— and not a few of his own supporters— with a feisty State of the Union speech that bluntly explained what’s at stake this election year.

Combining humor, irony, and compassion, he showed how lively he and his political party can be when it comes to matters of policy and state power. At the same time, by ad libbing comments about disastrous Supreme Court decisions (to the justices themselves!) and exposing Republican duplicity on matters of Ukraine, Social Security funding, and immigration reform, Biden very effectively energized his base by stressing the high stakes of the November election.

He also presented a compelling vision of American identity that invited others in, thereby denying oxygen to the dogmatic pretensions of white rage. Republican claims about Biden being feeble fell by the wayside. It was an instance of charismatic mobilization— an important step in establishing an alternative national conversation rather than letting aggrieved, gun-toting white Christian racism and misogyny rule the day.

The task for Democrats in the run-up to November 2024, then, will be to make the case on both self-interest and emotional grounds for a counter-narrative to the Republicans’ atavism. There’s nothing natural about the rage; to accept it as inevitable is to succumb to an ideological crusade that has arisen to mobilize political sentiments in a distinctly reactionary manner. That path is a dead end.

At this political juncture, it’s critical for the Democrats to expose how self-destructive GOP fear-mongering is, but also to establish new conversations that can draw people toward an altogether different politics— one steeped in decency, tolerance, respect, and economic adaptation. 

Christian is activating low-motivation voters who will vote for Sherrod Brown now

Jerrad Christian is one Democratic candidate not willing to give up on the rural counties in his sprawling congressional district that includes some areas that have begun evolving from red to purple— like suburban and exurban counties in the Columbus media market, which voted Trump in 2020 but supported Question One (pro-choice) last year— Licking (63% Trump, 51% yes on One), Delaware (52% Trump, 59% yes on One) and Fairfield (61% Trump, 51% yes on One). There’s no mixing those counties up with, say, Holmes County in the northeastern Appalachian part of the district— near where Christian was born and raised. It's one of the 2 or 3 reddest counties in the state. 83.2% of the voters cast their ballots for Trump and just 25% voted yes on One.

I had a long talk with him about it yesterday and he hopes to make a play for every vote in every county in the district. He’s constantly on the road driving from one county meeting to the next. “This nation,” he told me, “suffers from deep polarization and lack of dialogue across different communities. I believe that meeting people where they are, both geographically and ideologically, is crucial. We must engage in difficult conversations with empathy and respect, acknowledging the legitimate concerns and frustrations of those who feel left behind by economic and social changes. Good jobs and economic opportunities must be brought to these areas, demonstrating a tangible commitment to improving lives, irrespective of political leanings. Kindness and community engagement are powerful tools for bridging divides. Being kind to neighbors, understanding their struggles, and showing genuine interest in their well-being can break down barriers and challenge stereotypes. This approach can create openings for more substantive discussions on policy and governance, allowing for the introduction of progressive ideas in a manner that resonates with local values and needs.”

Neither the DCCC nor even the Ohio Democratic Party is making a priority of Christian’s race— Blue America has endorsed him and you can contribute to his campaign here— but he’s not letting that get him down. “The absence of Democratic candidates in strongly Republican districts,” he said, “may signify a strategic retreat but also represents a missed opportunity to engage with voters and present alternative visions for the future. Progressive policies, when communicated effectively, can resonate even in areas that seem staunchly conservative. We all love our families and want to see a brighter future. The task ahead involves not only contesting these ‘uncontested’ areas but also presenting a vision that addresses the real and perceived grievances driving the current political climate. This requires a nuanced understanding of the issues facing these communities and a concerted effort to propose practical, relatable solutions. Building a political discourse that prioritizes decency, respect, and adaptation is essential. We must put forward a narrative that appeals to shared values and common goals, moving beyond the divisive, fear-based politics that have characterized recent years. By focusing on inclusivity and the collective good, it’s possible to forge a more united and resilient society.”