Politico: Why Democrats Keep Losing Rural Counties Like Mine

[Teh_Lurv]

Politico published an opinion piece by the Dunn County, Wisconsin Democratic Chair Bill Hogseth on why he believes his county went for Trump in both the 2016 & 2020 elections. From his experience working and organizing within the county, Democrats have lost the trust of rural voters by ignoring promises to address the growing infrastructure and economic decline in these communities when Democrats have been in power.

The author makes some good points that the Democratic party hasn't done much to curb the growth of Argi-Corp monopolies or halt the deterioration of rural healthcare and infrastructure when they were in control of the Federal government. It's not hard to imagine some rural voters become disaffected when Democratic policy omits or doesn't reach their communities. I've seen some posters here on ERA dismiss rural voters as "voting against their interests". But IMO it's not enough to argue why you shouldn't vote for a Republican, voters need to be convinced why they should vote for Democrats.

The good news is the issues the author deems important to rural voters are all progressive issues that are well within a future BIden administration's ability to work on. While I don't expect Biden to break up Agri-Corp monopolies, his administration can spear-head the growth of digital infrastructure or halting the decline of rural healthcare.

Why did Trump do so well with rural voters? From my experience, it's not because local Democrats failed to organize in rural areas. Instead, after conversations with dozens of voters, neighbors, friends and family members in Dunn County, I've come to believe it is because the national Democratic Party has not offered rural voters a clear vision that speaks to their lived experiences. The pain and struggle in my community is real, yet rural people do not feel it is taken seriously by the Democratic Party.

My fear is that Democrats will continue to blame rural voters for the red-sea electoral map and dismiss these voters as backward.

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Rural voters appreciated Obama's repeated campaign promises to challenge the rise of agribusiness monopolies. But as president, he allowed for the continued consolidation of corporate power in the food system. His Department of Agriculture balked when it came time to enforce anti-monopoly rules such as those in the Packers and Stockyard Act, and failed to enforce Country of Origin Labeling, which would have allowed independent farmers and ranchers to better compete within the consolidated meat industry. The Obama Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission presided over a series of corporate mergers in the food and agriculture sectors, including the Kraft-Heinz and JBS-Cargill mergers. Taken together, these moves signaled that his administration did not have the backs of family farmers.

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What rural voters want is a glimmer of hope that things will change. They want politicians who see a future for rural communities in which food production is localized, energy is cheap and clean, people have good jobs, soil is healthy, Main Street is bustling with small businesses, schools are vibrant and everyone can see a doctor if they need to.

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Opinion | Why Democrats Keep Losing Rural Counties Like Mine

I’m the chair of the local Democratic Party in a Wisconsin county that Donald Trump won. It wasn’t for a lack of progressive organizing. It was because national Democrats have failed communities like mine.

www.politico.com

 

[Forgotten_Taco]

Nah, that's not it. They sure talk a lot about Obama who hasn't been in power for four years. What's the GOP vision for rural America, again? I'll wait for them to answer...

 

[onadesertedisland]

The problem with pandering to these communities is that they don't get anything from republicans either.

The real issue is they bind to republicans because they think at least the gop will punish their enemies in urban areas.

That rural Utopia they want is a white fascist hegemony.

 

[Blader]

You could probably (maybe. hopefully!) win back some of these rural, non-college voters with economic populism. And I think those are policies the Biden administration should pursue anyway because they're good policy and would help people. But I also think articles like these, especially when they come from someone who hails from those communities, always have huge blinders on when it comes to race because nobody wants to admit that their friends and family and neighbors will never vote for the party that is more commonly associated with people of color or immigrants. Given the years of studies done showing that was racial anxiety, not economic anxiety, that drove voters to Trump in 2016 and was far a bigger predictor of Trump support -- and given the racially-tinged Trump campaign themes of trade and immigration in 2016 and law and order in 2020 -- it seems silly and borderline ignorant to imagine that the only thing holding back Democrats from winning rural voters is a lack of progressive, economic populism and that race has nothing to do with it.

 

[King Alamat]

Speaking as someone who has lived in rural Tennessee for most of his life, that ain't gonna stop them from seeing everyone who isn't a white, straight Christian as a scapegoat for their own problems.

 

[AndyD]

What rural voters want is a glimmer of hope that things will change. They want politicians who see a future for rural communities in which food production is localized, energy is cheap and clean, people have good jobs, soil is healthy, Main Street is bustling with small businesses, schools are vibrant and everyone can see a doctor if they need to.

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This is their main delusion and why they will never be satisfied from either party. They want resources spent in small towns whereas the best bang for buck is not there and likely never will. There is no revitalization of small towns to the heydays of the 50s. There is no manufacturing comeback on the horizon, and certainly not without stronger union movements and internal spending of the type that GOP adamantly oppose and continuously undermine and for whom these people keep voting.

 

[Maximus Odinson]

Because you're a bunch of racist morons.

 

[Trago]

It's kind of unreal to think that many of these areas are actively voting against their own self interests.

 

[Deleted member 83599]

From his experience working and organizing within the county, Democrats have lost the trust of rural voters by ignoring promises to address the growing infrastructure and economic decline in these communities when Democrats have been in power.

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Funny how Republicans do fuck-all to help rural economies and infrastructure whenever they're in power and rural America never punishes them for it.

Republicans could have easily passed a sweeping rural broadband bill in 2017 or 2018 - with bipartisan support, no less - and chose to give massive tax cuts to corporations instead.

 

[PostModernMaybe]

The only way to counter the racist culture war based voting that Trump activated in rural America is to go full economic populism. More neoliberal incrementalism is just going to push those voters further away.

 

[Blader]

It's kind of unreal to think that many of these areas are actively voting against their own self interests.

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It's not when you consider that white grievance politics IS in their self interest.

 

[Brinbe]

he makes lots of good points that dems aren't who they say they are a lot of the times, that's not news. that's the case in cities too. dems are very ineffectual and that's a real frustration for many regardless of where they live. neoliberalism hurts us all. nothing he said there isn't something urban people don't think too...

but at the same time trump had been in power for those past 4 years and they voted for him in even greater numbers and what did he really do to help them except cast off blame to china or others as an excuse? it's obvious that they responded to what he was selling, which was racism... so i don't know how you fight against that? that isn't really congruent with his thesis there when you miss why they go for trump.

dems can offer all the plans and platitudes but he's making some excuses for his consistency there.

 

[Steel]

I mean, I'd never say that it it's impossible to decrease the margins, Democrats are not great messengers or advertisers. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuutttttttttttttttttt........... Rural counties are gonna remain red, cause it's easier for them to see the gosh durned immigrants and welfare queens as the root of their problems then a long spiel on policy specifics.

Either case, rural areas are a matter of the WWC specifically, they're the main demo that's going red and it's cause racism is an easy hook.

 

[resonance]

Dems kinda have to play to rurals given how the EC, Senate, and House disproportionately empower them. But the culture war stuff peddled by the GOP is very, very hard to fight back against, and, as previously mentioned, many rural voters don't want "new" opportunities. Coal miners want to keep mining coal even as demand for it collapses. You can't save those jobs without wasteful subsidies.

Economic populism could pull some marginal Trump counties back. We certainly have to try, at least until the sun belt realigns blue and Dems gain enough power to start reforming our electoral system.

 

[Dalek]

So they feel Republicans do nothing for them and Democrats do nothing for them.

But they vote Republican everytime. Gee-why is that?

 

[Red]

We should have a name for articles like these. Maybe "over-think pieces."

 

[Equippedwithtowel]

The only way to counter the racist culture war based voting that Trump activated in rural America is to go full economic populism. More neoliberal incrementalism is just going to push those voters further away.

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we have a winner folks. go this way instead of just calling them ignorant and patting yourself on the back

 

[HStallion]

I think the challenge is changing the way these people look at the world which is probably going to be pretty challenging. The author brings up some really salient points about how the Dems have failed to court rural communities and have been unable to fix the unique issues facing these people. However the GOP doesn't do any of this either and if anything makes life harder for their own constituents time and time again while selling them falsehoods and fantasies which the GOP voter eats up without second thought.

 

[Deleted member 12224]

The problem with pandering to these communities is that they don't get anything from republicans either.

The real issue is they bind to republicans because they think at least the gop will punish their enemies in urban areas.

That rural Utopia they want is a white fascist hegemony.

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A good chunk of it is this. If rural communities don't see themselves as getting anything from either party, but they perceive the cities as getting the assistance they need (cities full of blacks, gays, traitorous white libs, elitists), who they don't like anyway, they're going to go with the party that's at least trying to harm the others getting what they want.

In the absence of actual economic revitalization, which as someone else noted is probably not worth the financial investment anyway, all the various bigotries and hatred and a zero-sum worldview take over.

 

[lmcfigs]

the problem is that dems who run on those progressive policies also have the least chance of success in these extremely racist conservative counties

 

[Blader]

he makes lots of good points that dems aren't who they say they are a lot of the times, that's not news. that's the case in cities too. dems are very ineffectual and that's a real frustration for many regardless of where they live. neoliberalism hurts us all.

but at the same time trump had been in power for those past 4 years and they voted for him in even greater numbers and what did he really do to help them except cast off blame to china or others as an excuse? it's obvious that they responded to what he was selling, which was racism... so i don't know how you fight against that? that isn't really congruent with his thesis there when you miss why they go for trump.

dems can offer all the plans and platitudes but he's making some excuses for his consistency there.

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Well Trump has given out dramatically higher farm subsidies, especially this year, due to his own trade war policies...which is both an incredibly inefficient way of subsidizing rural industries and also exactly the kind of socialism that Republicans ostensibly oppose!

 

[onadesertedisland]

All of that talk about better prices for farmers ignores two problems: first the farmers in these communities are the wealthy ones, second higher food prices leads to less consumption which decreases profits.

Small towns will never return to being more prosperous than urban areas because it's insanely inefficient to have tiny, disconnected islands of commerce.

No one wants to return to ordering things out of a catalog and waiting a month for it to arrive.

 

[Kthulhu]

So they feel Republicans do nothing for them and Democrats do nothing for them.

But they vote Republican everytime. Gee-why is that?

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These communities aren't a monolith. There are Dems and potential Dems all over the country. If Democrats aren't willing to show up then of course they'll lose every time.

I would have hoped people would have figured this out after Trump won in 2016 and the down ticket losses the we just had this year.

 

[ToddBonzalez]

So they feel Republicans do nothing for them and Democrats do nothing for them.

But they vote Republican everytime. Gee-why is that?

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[HStallion]

Well Trump has given out dramatically higher farm subsidies, especially this year, due to his own trade war policies...which is both an incredibly inefficient way of subsidizing rural industries and also exactly the kind of socialism that Republicans ostensibly oppose!

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Isn't the crux though that a lot of the support for farmers doesn't ever actually go to the mom and pop farms that are in true need of it but often goes to the factory farmers who that are owned by Trump's buddies and like minded types?

 

[Brawndo Addict]

Finished the article and all it makes me think of is the moment in the Iowa Senatorial debate when Ernst didn't even know the sale or break even price of any crop compared to her democratic opposition. Did she lose because she has no conception or understanding of the actual experience and struggles of Iowa farmers? No she won comfortably without doing jack shit to address any of their problems. These voters claim they care about real local issues, but when it comes down to it they always vote Republican despite the fact they support the opposite of all the 'critical' issues. It's because those voters have one priority that supersedes all of the other ones.

For a guy to spend an entire article writing about why a rural county voted for Trump again in higher numbers and not mention racial issues once, let alone racism, is some next level avoidance.

 

[Brinbe]

Well Trump has given out dramatically higher farm subsidies, especially this year, due to his own trade war policies...which is both an incredibly inefficient way of subsidizing rural industries and also exactly the kind of socialism that Republicans ostensibly oppose!

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good points. good reminder that the only reason they demonize 'socialism' is because the 'coloreds' in cities benefit from it too (or at all). selfish, racist pricks. and i'm glad that others are pointing out how ridiculous it is to spend an entire article lambasting the democrats (and he's not wrong about his criticisms) without touching upon race at all. kinda the missing piece to all of it there. truly a politico article lol

 

[Steel]

The fact of the matter is, too, that rural communities are just doomed. From an environmental standpoint, city's are per capita less problematic, in an advanced economy perspective, rural towns that sprang up around mines, manufacturing, or trade routes are obsolete, from an education perspective, universities are not gonna be located in rural areas since that would be inefficient, thus draining their young and syphoning them off to suburban/urban areas. There's no future there.

we have a winner folks. go this way instead of just calling them ignorant and patting yourself on the back

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Calling WWC voters who vote REPUBLICAN ignorant is being generous.

 

[Mona]

If small towns had something decent to offer they wouldn't be small anymore

 

[Chrome Hyena]

The problem with pandering to these communities is that they don't get anything from republicans either.

The real issue is they bind to republicans because they think at least the gop will punish their enemies in urban areas.

That rural Utopia they want is a white fascist hegemony.

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Basically this.

The other side ALSO doesn't do shit to help them. They hate urban/suburbia, and think they are a bunch of hedonistic, godless heathens who want to 'change" their way of life. most people in cities don't give a fuck how those people live. They want to just be just left alone. Rural people are the ones constantly worried about the city folk. I think dems do need to work on outreach though, and helping those towns/areas because they are in significant decline.

 

[DrForester]

 

[ChippyTurtle]

I admit I'm biased towards rural areas but who wouldn't be? It's a deep death rattle, ongoing for decades and overlooked by most until recently. Dem approaches like gun control, and electoral reform would strip whatever political power rural areas would have left in favor of cities.

Dropping both, and waging sustained campaigns in rural areas is best. However we have a direct economic issue that prevents revitalizing rural areas, that the author makes clear in their piece, restricting trade does result in higher prices for consumers, would impact food definitely.

And yes there's definitely a impact in culture war. I hope as progressivism gains strength it can push towards rural areas but so far I don't think that's ever happening.

 

[krazen]

It's a fucked up cycle. But I hate the 'poor rural whites!' articles.

The Dems have blood on their hands; while the media loves to play with the versus and borderline racial undertones of rural vs urban...you can even look at the microcosm at the divide in the big cities that tend to be under Dem control. Laborers that would have had a piece of the American pie 100 years ago when those cities had vibrant manufacturing and industrial zones struggling in low paying service jobs and fighting for the handful of civil service jobs that give a decent pay. The Dem's failing the poor isn't a rural concept.

That said, at least the voters there don't fall for the GOP's shenanigans.

One lackluster party isn't delivering..so you reward the party that not only says they won't help you but actively fights to keep the lackluster party mediocre because you keep on rewarding their sabotage with wins. That's even skipping the racial dynamics.

 

[platocplx]

The problem with pandering to these communities is that they don't get anything from republicans either.

The real issue is they bind to republicans because they think at least the gop will punish their enemies in urban areas.

That rural Utopia they want is a white fascist hegemony.

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Yup.

 

[Nepenthe]

Funny how Republicans do fuck-all to help rural economies and infrastructure whenever they're in power and rural America never punishes them for it.

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Because Republicans at least provide a dopamine dose of bigotry on the side to make them feel better in the interim. It doesn't really matter though that the party is completely wrong and horrible and fascist. What matters is that when they get into power, they enact policies to fuck over minorities. Like, they actually DO something.

Which I think the more salient point here: there is a running theme here regarding dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party. Whether you're a rural white farmer in Ohio or an urban black retail worker in Maryland, the theme is the same: "Democrats don't do enough/do anything to address my concerns." People don't want a neoliberal/centrist status quo. They want better.

Dems need to heed these messages to make it harder for the GOP to make inroads. Even if we cannot physically bring back small town utopia, there's gotta be better solutions, different solutions, than letting these people rot.

 

[Blader]

Isn't the crux though that a lot of the support for farmers doesn't ever actually go to the mom and pop farms that are in true need of it but often goes to the factory farmers who that are owned by Trump's buddies and like minded types?

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Yeah I believe so. Though like I said earlier in the thread I don't think the economic piece of it even matters that much. The bigger driver among these mom and pop rural farmers for Trump isn't the handouts (but don't call them handouts or they'll get upset!) is the racial, white grievance portion of it.

 

[HStallion]

And yes there's definitely a impact in culture war. I hope as progressivism gains strength it can push towards rural areas but so far I don't think that's ever happening.

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The GOP could easily resell stuff like healthcare reform and the like to rural communities but they'd do it under a rather disgusting guise to get it done which is the problem with appealing to rural communities of today. A lot of their perceptions and demands often conflict with one another heavily and only being able to package it in terms of the culture war that they're happy with would this work i.e. healthcare for all... except the poor and brown folks.

 

[Aaron]

I do theatre work in a small town that voted 70% for Trump, it's because they're racist and dumb. The hard racial divides in support for Republicans and Democrats starts cleanly with the Civil Rights Act being passed in 1964, trying to pin it all on "oh, well Obama didn't spend enough on farm infrastructure" is just navel-gazing.

Because Republicans at least provide a dopamine dose of bigotry on the side to make them feel better in the interim. It doesn't really matter though that the party is completely wrong and horrible and fascist. What matters is that when they get into power, they enact policies to fuck over minorities. Like, they actually DO something.

Which I think the more salient point here: there is a running theme here regarding dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party. Whether you're a rural white farmer in Ohio or an urban black retail worker in Maryland, the theme is the same: "Democrats don't do enough/do anything to address my concerns." People don't want a neoliberal/centrist status quo. They want better.

Dems need to heed these messages to make it harder for the GOP to make inroads. Even if we cannot physically bring back small town utopia, there's gotta be better solutions, different solutions, than letting these people rot.

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What is neoliberal, centrist or status quo about Biden's platform on helping rural communities? Commentary like this always reads to me like Biden's (or whatever Democrat is the subject of these complaints) doing exactly what critics say he should be doing, but then it doesn't work (because racism is more inherently appealing to certain folk than free Internet and direct stimulus) so they act like he's somehow doing it wrong, when the reality is that no candidate is going to perfectly hit every demographic and these campaigns aren't run in a vacuum (i.e. just because Biden is promising good things for rural communities, that doesn't take Trump out of the equation, who's also hustling for those same votes).

Not to mention that Biden's only realistic shot at getting any of this accomplished is if we win those Georgia seats, otherwise McConnell will just block everything and nothing will get done. Instead of correctly diagnosing the problem (Republican obstruction), people will hone in on the incumbent president without a second thought.

 

[Tedesco!]

As someone living in the middle-of-nowhere Kansas, I can say that an abundance of Jesus, racism, lack of education and paranoia are the reasons why.

 

[AndyD]

If small towns had something decent to offer they wouldn't be small anymore

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The thing is, with COVID and the giant shift to remote work, the small towns in reasonable range of cities can have something to offer. They can have much better cost of living, less traffic and more space. But they often lack competitive internet because of Comcast driven bans on local internet, they lack good schools because of funding cuts and school funding driven by property taxes, they lack shopping opportunities because of the rise of Walmarts and they lack access to medical care because of the astronomical costs of care driving rural hospitals out of business. All of these are GOP "pro big-business" results.

I'd be more than happy to move a half hour further out of the city and get 5 acres instead of .25 so the kids can run around. But not without any of the other infrastructure needed.

 

[metalslimer]

Man people will really bend over backwards to defend a bunch of racist fucks and their backwards thinking.

 

[Steel]

I do theatre work in a small town that voted 70% for Trump, it's because they're racist and dumb. The hard racial divides in support for Republicans and Democrats starts cleanly with the Civil Rights Act being passed in 1964, trying to pin it all on "oh, well Obama didn't spend enough on farm infrastructure" is just navel-gazing.

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Yup. It's also kinda hard to blame dems for not doing enough when the only power they consistently have is over cities that operate on crushed budgets. Only systemic change that's possible is something that would happen on the federal level.

 

[Steel]

I admit I'm biased towards rural areas but who wouldn't be? It's a deep death rattle, ongoing for decades and overlooked by most until recently. Dem approaches like gun control, and electoral reform would strip whatever political power rural areas would have left in favor of cities.

Dropping both, and waging sustained campaigns in rural areas is best. However we have a direct economic issue that prevents revitalizing rural areas, that the author makes clear in their piece, restricting trade does result in higher prices for consumers, would impact food definitely.

And yes there's definitely a impact in culture war. I hope as progressivism gains strength it can push towards rural areas but so far I don't think that's ever happening.

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The Senate's not going away any time soon and it favors rural areas to an absolutely absurd degree. Asking dems to give up electoral reform to assuage rural voters is insane.

 

[Sean C.]

The only way to counter the racist culture war based voting that Trump activated in rural America is to go full economic populism. More neoliberal incrementalism is just going to push those voters further away.

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We just had a Democratic primary where one of the main contenders was running a full economic populist campaign, and he did not (in general) carry these areas even in the context of the Democratic base.

 

[lmcfigs]

yeah i mean it's very easy to call them dumb, but like...

 

[captive]

every one of these articles needs to come with the giant fucking disclaimer that democrats have had 100% control over the government for *checks notes* 2 years in the last 20.

but yea please tell me more how dems have failed rural ass counties by not being able to pass any legislation because they didn't have the power to.

 

[skillzilla81]

Love when articles use code words that just mean white.

 

[Tamanon]

I'd buy this if they didn't vote for Trump either. But, they did, and he did none of that shit.

 

[Steel]

We just had a Democratic primary where one of the main contenders was running a full economic populist campaign, and he did not (in general) carry these areas even in the context of the Democratic base.

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This is another good point. One should also note that the areas Biden carried were poorer on average than the ones Bernie did. I think people are wish casting a bit too much on what they want the electorate to want rather than what it actually responds to.

Love when articles use code words that just mean white.

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Yeeeeeeuuuuppppp.... Anyone asking dems to make inroads in rural areas is asking them to appeal to the WWC, bottomline.

 

[Dalek]

Love when articles use code words that just mean white.

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"These salt of the earth, God-fearing, hard working, simple folk..."