Personally, I think Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney is on the wrong track. He may do an excellent job of figuring out what House Democrats did wrong in 2016, but by all indications he’s making a miscalculation about how to approach the future.
His basic insight after doing an extensive review is that the Democrats are doing worse in areas where they have traditionally won and winning in areas where they have traditionally lost.
“We can win where we used to struggle and we’re struggling a bit where we used to win,” Maloney said in an hour-long interview here at the Democratic policy retreat, on the eve of a 90-minute presentation he made Thursday afternoon.
He means that there are House districts that Democrats have competed in, or even represented for a long time, that have moved so sharply away from Democrats that they need to reassess whether to compete there ever again. Yet there is also an emerging set of districts that have long been held by Republicans that are now bending toward Democrats faster than even the most optimistic strategists envisioned.
You know which seats have moved against the Democrats. They’re rural and they’re monolithically white. They also are more conservatively and culturally religious than average.
The seats where the Democrats are newly competitive are suburban.
In private they admit they realized too late that Trump was speeding up the shift of well-educated suburbanites toward the Democrats, leaving too many Republicans facing inferior opponents last year in what should have been competitive races.
The takeaway seems to be that the Democrats should help this process along by giving up on more rural seats and making stronger efforts on candidate recruitment in suburban seats.
But this trend has been a calamity for Democratic hopes of winning back control of the House of Representatives. It has been an unmitigated disaster in terms of winning state legislatures. And it’s even been failing on the statewide level, which can be seen not only from Trump’s rural-driven wins in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, but also in the fact that the GOP has recently won governors races in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, Maryland, and all the aforementioned Midwestern states. Other than a surprise win in Louisiana, the Democrats have made no corresponding gubernatorial inroads into red country.
The Democrats need to win in rural areas. Period.
But they won’t if they push the accelerator on a realignment that heavily disfavors them.
What’s also discouraging is that so many Democrats frame the question this way:
The question neither Maloney nor [DCCC chairman, Rep. Ben Ray] Lujan (D-N.M.) will answer is if they should recruit moderate to conservative candidates to compete in rural districts or just abandon them altogether.
They may not answer that question but I can tell which they’re leaning by the way they see the 2016 elections as a story about misappropriating resources. Salvation won’t come from abandoning recently Democratic districts or by recruiting “moderate to conservative candidates,” whatever that means. It will come from defining a clear economic program that convinces these once-Democratic voters that the party (or, at least the candidate) is on their side.
Abandoning these voters and these districts is basically abandoning all hope that the left will ever recover in this country.
It is the worst lesson possible to learn from the 2016 fiasco.
Did you see Pelosi’s quotes today as reported by Dave Weigel(that’s where I saw them anyway)? She’s as out of touch as they are. BTW, registered Democrats still outnumber registered Republicans in West Virginia and Sanders crushed it in the primary there. Seems like the Democrats still refuse to learn the lessons of the primary. Standing up for something, unlike Pelosi, is a way to win over voters.
And what price have any democratic leaders paid for failure? Democratic leaders are totally unaccountable.
Sanders won West Virginia because of Trump voters who probably thought he would be an easier opponent in the general. Forty percent of Sanders voters said they’d vote for Trump over Sanders in a general election. Without those rat-f*cker voters, he’d have gotten fewer voters than she did.
There is probably a lot of overlap with the crew that voted for HRC in 2008 over Obama. If you recall, she crushed him in that state.
Ah yes we all know how reliable the polls were this cycle…
I wish people would STOP THE FUCK talking about voter registration.
In the south, including WV, people are registered Dems but WILL NEVER VOTE FOR THE DEM PARTY.
The Dems PROMISED THAT THEY WOULD NOT HELP ON THE JOBS. Hillary said “Those jobs are gone for good”.
That may be true. I am sure that it is. But if you PROMISE TO NOT WORK ON JOBS, you won’t.
It’s illegal immigrants. It’s jobs for illegal immigrants instead of jobs for American workers.
It’s never saying “We need to help white men find jobs”. I don’t think a single Democratic politician has said that in 30 years.
It’s breaking up the electorate into itsy bitsy segments.
It’s helping the gays against the Christians.
The white voters are still 77% of the electorate. Dems think the “coalition of the aspirational” will overcome that.
Not for 30 years.
You want to wait 30 years?
You will appreciate this…
Today’s LA times, business:
Garlic grower can’t find workers no matter how much he spends on ads
In desperation he tries something crazy… he offers more money! From 11/hr to 13! And promises 15 in 2018! And filled all openings plus 180 more hopefuls on waiting list!
I have suggested, to derision from many, that prisoners be introduced to farm labor. A program could be created in which they were offered early parole in return for labor, at minimum wage, on a farm.
This would do several things:
I see this as a reasonable approach. We have a lot of prisoners, and we need to get them out of the jails doing something useful. Why not try it?
I would put 1 restriction. This would only be done for first timers, maybe second-timers. Third-time losers are gone, and cannot be reformed.
Sorry. I don’t think it is appropriate to make citizens compete with prison labor. Toooo many very bad incentives. And it distorts the labor market. We are all about markets, aren’t we?
Funny how farmers find wages when a true labor market operates, no?
Did you read what I said?
PAROLE
MINIMUM WAGE
Please, read for meaning. This is people who have been released. Not people in prison. On parole.
There’s a difference.
To send the message that the (D) party cares about criminals not people who were never arrested?
Prison labor never redounds to the benefit of the prisoners. Or other laborers for that matter.
It’s a great way to supply a below-market wage workforce once you round up all the people who are doing the work now though.
True.
Teh funny. Iz our trollz lurnin’? Nopes!
“American Jobs Act”. There’s this thing called Wikipedia. Also something called “a memory”. Oh, and why didn’t it go anywhere? B/c Rs of course.
“our” – who the fuck is “our”
UID 339863 – you joined last week or something, and all of sudden YOU are the host.
My UID is 1849. That means that I’ve been here a long time.
So fuck that troll shit. Booman specifically requested a time-out on troll shit.
Can you read? Do you bother?
What Booman asked is that we not troll rate posts. And lo and behold, here you are all over the thread with your Nazi bullshit, telling everyone who isn’t a rural white christian male that they are inferior. Booman’s well-meaning request had the exact result one would expect.
No, he’s saying we are equal, which you obviously don’t believe. That’s the message that I took from MLK – all of us, together, no one on top. But he was a different knid of guy. Most peo0ple DO want a hierarchy – with themselves on top.
Funny how people with master race theories seem to always be members of that master race.
So when he complains about how the Democrats are about helping the gays against the Christians, for example, where do you see the equality? Should they be helping the religious right put the boot in or just standing idly by? If only the Democrats had endorsed discrimination they’d be the party of equality?
No, that’s not how it works. And that’s just one of many, many examples.
Oi vey. Referencing one’s UID as if it matters.
How Daily Kos circa 2006.
I would be really careful about registration numbers. For decades the dems outnumbered the GOP in registration in the Panhandle in Florida.
Most hadn’t voted for a Dem in decades and I suspect the same is true in West Virginia. Many of those voters had just never bothered to change their registration. 55% of West Virginia Democratic Primary voters said they were moderate (41%) or conservative.
In some of the deep red states Sanders won because he wasn’t Clinton.
That’s true pretty much throughout the south. A lot of voters just never bother to change their party registration.
Well I wish I could say I’m surprised but they’ve been assuming demography will bail them out for over a decade now.
My Lord; the Democratic party is just begging to become the modern equivalent of the Whigs. What happened to the 50 state strategy? Why did we move away from it? I remember strategists speaking of it as if it was just dumping money down the toilet but the thing is it worked. There’s tremendous hubris in thinking one can know in advance where the political opportunities will be. The party needs to decide what it stands for and run on that everywhere, loudly and strongly.
Not gonna win the argument if we don’t even make the argument.
Boy, money sure does cloud one’s ability to think clearly! That’s why grass-roots funding is the only thing we should rely on…
Indeed! plus we need new blood. Some of these people have to go.
This would be catastrophic. Its also at least partly based on confusing cause and effect since it assumes that this hypothetical rural affinity for Rs led to the loss rather than Hillary’s campaign that led to the rural vote loss.
Hillary targeted suburban Republicans while ignoring rural Democrats. While some of these Rs voted for Hillary, almost all voted R downticket. …which is why she outperformed the house candidate most places.
“[W]hat we know about those districts that swung toward Clinton is that they’re full of rich people who voted for Romney in 2012. The five Republican-held House districts with the biggest swings toward Democrats in the presidential race in 2016 are in Texas and Georgia. All have average household incomes over $100,000 per year. Three of those five districts are on the DCCC list” [Conor Sen, Bloomberg]. “Also on the list include four Republican-held districts in Southern California — the 39th, the 45th, the 48th and the 49th — which have average household incomes above $100,000. Democrats might be turning into the party of free trade, global business and immigration — the kind of party Romney hoped to lead in 2012.”
The “Schumer doctrine:”
Did that formula work anywhere? As IA and OH were gone very early in the 2016 electoral cycle, those with half a brain would have questioned the strategy.
Exactly. Obama’s said this repeatedly: he won in Iowa because he campaigned everywhere in Iowa.
Rural Dems and independent, Dem-leaning voters need to be “asked” for their vote. And candidates “ask” by campaigning in those places they have no chance of winning. The idea isn’t that you’re going to win but that you lose by better margins.
Yunno who knows this better than most? My feckless Dem Senator Claire “I Feel Strongly Both Ways About That” McCaskill. When she ran for governor here, she only campaigned in safe blue areas, maybe in fringe areas. She got her ass stomped.
Two years later she ran for the Senate which here in Misery is arguably a harder race for a Dem to win.
She. Was. Everywhere.
It paid off. Sure, she’s not gonna win my county which competes in every election for being the reddest county in the state (we were #1 for both of Obama’s runs but “slid” to #2 by .3%). Here’s what I mean: Dubya won here in 2000 with 67.2% of the vote. Twitler just won with 82.6%. The demographics of this county have not changed one iota in the past 16 years, we’re still rural and lily white. The economics haven’t changed. It’s a very static place.
And yet, the Popular Vote Loser of 2016 outperformed the Popular Vote Loser of 2000 by almost 15% points.
McCaskill learned this the hard way and her approach to campaigning in a state like this is a useful template for Dems to apply in other states.
Again, we’re not gonna win these rural counties anytime soon, but we have to keep the other guy from getting more than 70% of the vote and in order to do that, candidates have to friggin campaign out here. The Democratic party has to have a presence out here if for nothing else than to help win at the big picture level.
I’ve repeated this here several times. I live in a rural county. Obama had a strong presence here with a paid staffer, a bus with notables toured the rural western part of the state, a staffer was at the caucuses. He lost by only a couple of votes in 2008 and won by a couple dozen in 2012. Hillary had no presence whatsoever. She barely got out of the Denver metro area. She lost my county by 530 votes. She kissed off rural areas everywhere–Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. My Michigander friends said the party begged for visits to the smaller cities and rural areas and were told to bug off by the upper ups. They had their game plan and by god they were going to stick to it. Bernie visited those areas in both Wisconsin and Michigan, and it paid off. He also spoke to their issues and didn’t have a record that contradicted everything he said.
Many rural towns and counties are dying and have been for decades. Others are growing because of migrants for urban areas many now consider overcrowded and undesirable. These areas are becoming more liberal.
We shouldn’t give up on any region or demographic.
Sigh. We really need some return to a fifty state strategy. It worked quite nicely last decade. Yes, the price that is paid is one of having party members who may not toe the line on a number of issues (although they’ll vote in ways that will be more favorable to us much more often than not), but it beats the alternative. Simply giving up on whole areas strikes me as catastrophic.
Yes, the price that is paid is one of having party members who may not toe the line on a number of issues (although they’ll vote in ways that will be more favorable to us much more often than not), …
How do we know? The Democratic establishment would all commit Seppuku before they ran Bernie Sanders clones in any district. I’m sure you’re also aware that the yoots aren’t exactly high on capitalism anymore, right?
The people who win as Democrats in red states haven’t been people like Bernie. They’ve been the Blue Dog types. That’s what Don’s talking about.
Well, Lujan will be picking them again, no?
How would we know if the Democratic Party doesn’t support candidates that campaign on liberal democratic socialist platforms? How could we possibly know when the Democratic establishment expends so much time, energy, smart-ass bullshit putdowns, and money against these candidates, over and over again? How could we possible know what you say when the party never seriously supports grassroots candidates like the ones they’re so committed to defeating?
Honestly this reads like paranoid delusion. The Democratic party supports candidates that present themselves as credible challengers to an office. They’re not growing them to spec in a lab. The fact is that there aren’t very many people running for office on a Social Democratic platform, and the successful candidates that do come close to that position are the candidates from deeply liberal states, Massachusetts and Vermont for example. If you recall, for instance, the Democratic party recruited Elizabeth Warren to run for senate. But much as we might wish there was, there isn’t a nationwide army of Bernie Sanders clones waiting in the wings, stymied by some Democratic party conspiracy.
Obviously it’s not like the party doesn’t have its share of dysfunction and economically conservative elements but the idea that they’re relentlessly or universally hostile to progressive policy or candidates is just bunk.
The Democratic party supports candidates that present themselves as credible challengers to an office.
They do? That’s news to me. Tell me what the Democrats did in my district. Or why they didn’t run anyone in Pete Sessions’s district, which HRC won.
Sounds like their candidate assembly line was on the fritz.
What candidate running in your district did you want the Democrats to support?
[sound of crickets]
Hmm, maybe you would agree with this poster over at WaMo?
Thorton Hall: Don’t nominate Hillary again, or anyone else too defined to be vague and inspiring is the lesson of 2016.
Need a large quantity of candidates who are vague and undefined enough to sell hope and change, eh?
Okay then. That explains why I’ve seen the kids carrying Mao’s Little Red Book in Walmart and plastering CCCP bumper stickers on their F-150S. Thanks for explaining that to me.
I suppose you’ve seen that DSA membership has exploded since Trump’s election, for one.
Modern 20%-ers need to refresh themselves with Dale Carnegie’s book again. You may need to be a sociopath to succeed, but you can’t show it.
At a whopping 17,000 members nationwide, that’s really impressive. Should be able to muster up a city council seat somewhere with that kind of firepower. Viva la revolucion!
Maybe these clones can learn a lesson from Bernie and simply run for office. Bernie didn’t ask for permission from the DNC for his challenge.
Sorry, it’s not going to work.
SD, ND, ID, MT: These states are in the 50 states. You could do whatever you want – you will not sell Democratic Party values in those states.
WV, TN, KY, MS, AL, GE, LA: Repeat. No sale.
NV – maybe in LV, maybe Reno. Otherwise – no sale.
People DO NOT VOTE for candidates. They DO NOT VOTE for positions.
They vote for PARTY IMPRESSION. What is the Party impression?
Dems: gays, illegals, raising taxes, women
Repubs: family, morals, lowering taxes, everyone
The Dems have concentrated so much on under-represented groups that the over-represented group, white people who are straight and go to church, no longer sees the dems as offering anything to them.
Burn a few crosses, we’re right back in this.
Now THAT’s the way to show inclusivity!
WWC voters will be impressed — and really, isn’t that what matters?
Must be a few Dixiecrats left to show us how it’s done.
Besides, white robes and matching hoods could become Ivanka’s latest fashion line. Burning crosses sold separately.
I think it all depends on what you are defining as: “Democratic Party values”. In fact I think this is the crux of the issue…
A few flies in that soup have been observed:
I saw numbers suggesting suburban districts are still 50/50 approval for Trump.
Suburban poverty is increasing, even for whites. (http://www.salon.com/2016/07/25/growth_in_white_poverty_fuels_trumps_run_largely_ignoring_the_trend_
has_consequences/) Trump won quite a few suburban districts, if I remember correctly… I don’t think that trend has reversed itself.
Agricultural incomes fell 50% between 2013 and 2016.(WSJ) Ouch.
Again you cite that statistic without any context. What’s does “50/50” suburban support for Trump mean in contrast to Bush, Obama, etc, along with timelines of said approval. You act like people should know what it means like it’s common knowledge.
Again???? I am one of the most linky persons on this blog.
There have been a TON of snap polls these first weeks of Trump’s presidency. I don’t remember where I saw it, but you must agree, it was notable and I noticed it.
No, I do not know that it is notable. I said months before the election that it would be amazing if Clinton managed to win white women, let alone make any headway into married white women. At best she’d come out even. So it would have been notable if she had won white women — as we know, she did not. Your statistic of 50/50 approval in suburbs means nothing because it’s not contextualized. What is normal? Should trump be at 40/60? What were Obama’s numbers? Bush’s? Your numbers are meaningless.
From Martin’s post…”The seats where the Democrats are newly competitive are suburban.” Maybe he should have said the suburban SOUTH.
It WAS notable to me because I expected more fall off in support from suburbanites who, according to the standard explanation, voted twice for Obama.
Still not seeing it. Why would you expect this? I am having a hard time what point you’re trying to make without any context. See, like this:
“Bush’s lowest approval I’ve ever seen was 22% in a CBS/NYT poll taken in January 2009. 57% of Republicans approved of him. Gallup in March 2008 had Bush at 73% approval among Republicans. Basically, expect 75-80% of Republicans to stick with him until financial catastrophe. The only thing amazing about the polarization is how unpopular Trump began.”
See how I showed that Bush was popular with Republicans as late as March 2008 to put it into context when people show that Trump is at 85-90% support.
See where none of your figures break it down by urban/suburban/rural either, eh?
Since this election did up-end the map, particularly in suburban districts, I watch for that break down.
I will admit, I cannot remember now if this poll was taken on a specific action of his or was one of general sentiment. So it might be very issue specific, which I really should have paid note to. And remembered.
I didn’t respond to your point – but you weren’t really right in my opinion. My point was how unpopular Trump already was with Democrats. Despite that Trump holds 83% of Republicans.
In yougov Trump was at 83% approval among Republicans but 13% among Dems. It took until year 2005 for Bush to reach those numbers among Dems. His number among Republicans was about the same as for Bush in 2001 before 9/11.
You just agreed with me and provided a handy chart showing it. He’s not in a position of strength because the only thing holding him up is a small number of independents and where the Republicans would be with any other Republican.
I wasn’t arguing he was in a position of strength.
I was noting his numbers are the result of polarization, which is one reason why I am skeptical that comparisons to previous presidents at this point in time matter much. What is up for grabs are independents who have not formed a definitive opinion yet. They will decide whether he is re-elected or not.
Half of independents are already sour on him. That leaves another 25% to sour on him, as the remaining 20-25% will be stuck with the 60% of Republicans who go down with the ship.
I don’t think the view of independents is very firm yet – which is what I noted.
An improving economy and he is over 50 fast. He has a low ceiling though.
So many issues being brought up. Probably a mixture of like and dislike. When Rep start actually legislating, there might be firming up one way or the other.
Indies are equal or more than registered voters by two. Big blocs.
Tax cuts will improve the economy – at least in the beginning. So look for his numbers to improve on that score. Of course, being a screwball narcissist he could tank his own ratings fast too.
Evidence for the stimulative effect of tax cuts is mixed. Top-heavy tax cuts are particularly poor at increasing economic activity. When paired with spending cuts they almost always balance out to having a depressive effect.
Tax cuts paired with deficit-financed spending would be stimulative, but that rests more on the spending than the cuts. Cuts that target the lower middle class and working poor can also be effective at creating economic activity. Are those the kind of policies we’re going to see? Trump’s infrastructure proposals seem more like a giant privitazation scheme (who doesn’t love toll roads?), and the Republican policy on taxes is solely focused on the top of the distribution.
You seen this? We have lost the tech edge, it seems. http://www.atimes.com/article/trump-may-need-japanese-chinese-help-rebuild-american-infrastructure/
Japan’s Abe is supposedly visiting with a firm offer of billions to invest in our infrastructure.
Wonder how THAT is gonna play.
Siemens in particular owns an incredible number of patents on the grid upgrades necessary to integrate and transmit the energy of renewables.
If he cuts spending at the same time as cuts taxes it could cancel it out. But otherwise it creates a deficit. I agree the cuts solely for the very top may not do as much, but even there you can expect some more spending, and there sure will be an uptick in the stock market. Trump also promises to let the corps bring money home at low rates and to cut corp tax rates.
There are still a lot of deficit hawks in the R caucus so getting the tax cuts is not a given. Some talk now is 2018 for tax cuts. That may play nicely with the elections especially if he sweetens if for everyone.
Don’t know what he will do with infrastructure. But he could allow private business to invest in it with a guarantee of profit. I’m not sure that is a very good idea. Still any spending will create jobs – until it gets paid back with profit.
Indies are a big block, but actual persuadable indies aren’t. The vast majority are strongly partisan for one party or the other but like to feel like special snowflakes. Estimates for “persuadable” independents hover around 10% of the electorate. The persuadable indies are almost all low-information, occasional voters.
This is why both parties have moved more towards base turnout efforts over courting independent voters and why the Clinton campaign’s attempt to reach out to moderate independents & Republicans didn’t bear fruit. Republican partisans came home to Trump, while a small but significant number of base Democrats stayed home.
It’s hard to say if indies voted as usual this time with both candidates being so generally disliked. Look at the huge jump in third party voters, too. Not normal, imo.
Independents vote for the same party candidates election after election because the campaigns never change. Present the same agenda – get the same results.
I strongly disagree with this. The Democratic party of today is so far to the left of the Clinton-era party, and the Republicans so far to the right of Bush Sr. that they might as well be different parties. They still share thematic similarities of course but they’re not at all running on the same policy platforms.
On the agricultural incomes question, what farmers need probably isn’t a trade war with China and overturning of NAFTA, which covers the other two top growing markets for US agricultural products. Or ending ethanol subsidies, that’s incoming EPA head Scott Pruitt’s pet project, or a farm bill designed by Heritage, i.e. no price supports or crop insurance, because that’s where the White House is said to be getting its ideas. If they do half of what they plan to do (the young House Republicans may come from rural districts but they have no knowledge of these things, I’ll bet, and will be pushovers for orthodox conservative doctrine), the whole Midwest is going to be ready for some old-school Prairie Populism.
The situation with indie farmers is very similar to the one that gave rise to the Populist Party. Trapped in contracts to middlemen, and single source purchasers. It is “company store” peonage. There are plenty of agricultural monopolies.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-agriculture-antitrust-idUSTRE62B42O20100312
WaPo did a piece on it, too, back then.
Matt Stoller has been on this lately. I forget where he got his data but he says a lot of rural farmers voted for Obama because Obama campaigned on taking on Monsanto and such. And then Obama didn’t take on Monsanto once elected. So this stuff makes one wonder.
Same Eastern theory that dumb hicks have no memory and are easy to bamboozle.
Most rural voters don’t work in agriculture.
The recession hit rural America harder than the rest of the country, and it has been slower to recover. This is the first chart I have seen that documents what I have anecdotally heard.
Maybe the simple truth is the recovery never really took in rural America, and the Democrats paid the price.
It is true Iowa was less antagonistic towards free trade as Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania were. But even in Iowa Free Trade was only supported 41-37.
Yeah, remember that article I posted that said trade shocks damaged areas so deeply they never came back. All those “plant” jobs in small towns vanished.
Ohio is a prime example. There used to be a factory or two in every small city. Mostly now gone.
And you would be surprised. Farming is “the” second job in rural areas.
Back in the ’70s when I worked for the Navy, the Army Ammunition Depot in Macalester OK solicited us for machine shop work. I pointed out that the work would be sporadic not constant. The Army rep said that when their blue collar guys were laid off the just worked on their ranch. Everybody had a ranch.
He further told me that these ranches were typically about 2000 acres and had 600 cattle. I expressed surprised at the ratio and told him my uncle in Michigan had a 50 acre dairy farm with around 150 cattle, the inverse ratio. He replied, “Well that’s OK in Michigan or Wisconsin where there’s a lot of grass. In Oklahoma a cow gets tired out running from one clump of grass to another.”
If the voters are not working in agriculture, they are more exurban than rural. That is, they are commuting long distances to jobs in the suburbs of cities because there are no jobs in rural areas.
What that chart shows is not necessarily that the Great Recession hit non-metro (not the same as rural) areas more but that the recovery ignored those areas longer and the recovery from recession was at a slower rate. A lot of non-metro areas are in fact remnants of dispersed manufacturing areas that still have manufacturing that is limping along. In fact, those characterize large areas of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania–the manufacturing jobs that remain in small towns. In the Carolinas, there is much more long distance (100 miles a day) commuting to jobs in the suburbs of urban clusters like Raleigh-Durham, Greensboro-High Point-Winston-Sale, Greenville-Spartanburg. In Chicago, Detroit, and Saint Louis, older suburbs are becoming indistinguishable from inner city as older inner city areas become gentrified.
Most rural voters these days who work in large numbers in agriculture are minorities. Consolidation into larger corporates farms is a more widespread reality even in the South, where there were lately more family farms.
“If the voters are not working in agriculture, they are more exurban than rural.”
I think that is a misconception. In counties that meet the census bureau definition of rural agriculture is not the number one industry.
I think the jobs in farming are shrinking in the face of large corporate farms and labor saving equipment. I’ve seen some of the very large tractors costing around $600k and the equally very large planters and combines. A dairy farm now could have a thousand milk cows all milked automatically. One fella remarked to me that farmers don’t even spread their manure anymore. It’s sold or contracted out.
There are still some factories in rural areas. I have two grandsons in rural Ohio working in small factories. But I also think many people out there are driving up to an hour to nearby cities these days for work.
Got to confess that in the erly ’80s I worked at International harvester designing microcomputers into those tractors and implements. My crowning achievement was an Intel 8051 constant flow controller for a four port hydraulic takeoff, but like my 8080 hydrostatic transmission control, it was slick!. Don’t know if it ever went into production. I left and went to TRW to work on on-road electronics just before the mass layoffs.
That’s why the Mexican guy with a mule and a plow and a three acre farm can’t compete with an American farm with high tech mechanized equipment, thousands of acres and chemical fertilizers and sprays. And, unfortunately, Roundup.
Look at the labels at your supermarket. More and more of our food comes from China and Australia. Our big agricultural export is corn to Mexico. NAFTA shattered the Mexican farmers by making them uncompetitive. Mexico grew corn like in the Middle Ages. On small three acre plots with a mule pulling a plow. Poor farmers used the Senora to pull the plow. Those broken farmers streamed North in desperation.
The peso cratered after NAFTA as middle class Mexicans on the border shopped in the USA (considered chic and better quality) destroying the small Mexican shops and causing layoffs on the larger. The peso devaluation broke the Middle Class.
Only rich Mexicans with business/social ties and investments in the USA benefited from NAFTA
Well, we will average it so it hides the distribution, no?
Back in the saddle, again. Good to see and hear. This is the main point. We’ve been an ‘effete corps of impudent snobs’ since Agnew coined the expression way back in the dark ages before Nixon
was impeached and convicted of high crimes and misdemeanorsresigned. Loathesome creature that Agnew was, he hit that nail on the head a long long time ago and it’s been true ever since as the fortunes of the Democratic Party crumbled, slowly at first, then faster and faster as the information age gathered steam, until now.And our rural neighbors are the same ones that were excited, and voted for Senator Sanders as he ran his campaign on the ground in country the rest of the Democrats just fly over on their way from coast to coast, from donor parties with the rich and famous to the boardrooms of the oligarchs. My partner and I go from our nice suburban home in Milwaukee county every summer to the county fairs up- and down-state to spend some time away from the safety and security we feel at home to get back to our roots. He’s the son of a farming family a ways north of here, I’m the grandson of a Michigan, rural town general store owner. We’re a generation removed from those roots, but we both still miss the friendly, easy-going pleasures we feel on those summer days checking out what’s going on where they vote now, mostly, for Republicans. And it’s always the same feeling we have. If the Democratic Party would just get back to the sensible, traditional values that we all shared when Franklin Roosevelt wrote the book for the Democratic Party almost 85 years ago, we’d all be voting together again, as one, to support the fundamental policies that made it possible for us to genuinely feel we were all in this together. They all sure don’t mind seeing us, a middle-aged, gay couple, wandering around their fairgrounds. They vote with Republicans against us because Republicans go out and try to relate and try to get their votes. They’d be glad to vote for us instead, for Democrats, if Democrats would just show up once in a while to show that we’re all in this together and that Democrats are going to help out. Not as a just a slogan, like they cooked up at the end of the campaign for Hillary last summer, but as an actual, ongoing way of life for all of us.
It’s mind-boggling, isn’t. Some of the most creative, intelligent, and hardworking folks on the planet that rise and lead the Democratic Party for the past forty years can’t figure out this simple little thing.
LOL If Dems think they can withdraw to their blue citadels and ride out the “deplorable” die off, they might want to examine the legal topic of preemption. Specifically, state legislature’s preemption of local laws. Gonna be a lot of those in the appeals pipeline, I suspect.
Wish I did, but I have no idea what you’re trying to say. What does the “legal topic of preemption” have to do with anything I said, mino? And why “LOL” to kick off your comment. Did I say something funny?
No. The LOL was for the impunity that blue urbans might wrongly assume they will have while they wait out the demographics. Look at what has happened to major cities under one party Rep rule already.
Have been several instances where the Texas lege has overturned local initiatives (usually urban) that voters passed. Preemption is what that is called. They can also withhold funding, as Austin may find out.
It is another spur for Dems to get back in the fight for state offices.
As far as nationally, aggregate 2016 Republican House votes exceeded that of the Dems. In 2012 Dems had half a million more House votes than Reps.
So many issues (and states) to keep up on. Thx for explaining.
A great analysis, on topic, in advance of the DNC chair vote coming up in a couple of weeks from Glen Greenwald here.
This post gives me hope maybe that BooMan will give Greenwald another ‘listen’. Why this site put him in the doghouse along the way is baffling to me.
Ah, that was the reason–donor problems with Ellison. I saw the Biden endorsement. Chuck must be sooo torn.
Ah. You live in Milwaukee. My wife grew up there. We own a house in Brandon, and you might even know where that is.
From the WP:
This sounds exactly like my wife’s relatives, all of who live between Milwaukee and Fond du Lac, in Slinger, Waukesha, places like that.
Until Dems begin to use INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE, and stop promoting illegal immigrants, women, minorities, etc, they are not going to get the 77% of white people back or even the 50% of lower class white people, or the 30% of white males. These people are gone now because you never hear a democrat say anything about whites except to criticize.
Both sides have been playing identity politics. My take on it? They don’t want to talk about economics because they’re both occupying the same bed.
Had not heard of Brandon before, though looking on the map it’s sort of on the way I drove to college at UW-Stevens Point back in the late 70s (when we voted for Carter for president in 1976).
Read that piece by Cramer a few months ago, after Trump was elected, and thought maybe it was only partly true. People echoing to her what they thought they should say based on what they were told to say if someone asked. I kind of disagree because when you meet us (them) face-to-face, of course, all of that resentment we (they) are suppose to have isn’t active at all. We all kind of like each other, despite the fact a lot of dials are set, by default up there, to Limbaugh and FOX news. They know as well as we do about the bullshit we hear from the Democratic Party leadership about how change has to happen in small doses, that their sources are blowhards as well. But Democrats, a long time ago, hired marketing people to run the show, and never showed up since.
White people are very sensitive. Maybe it’s a fault and maybe we should all just make fun of us for being so sensitive. But, as a out-and-proud gay guy since the late 70s, I’ve long wished we’d all of us ‘identity constituencies’ would just pipe down a little bit about how offended we are and worry more about those that can’t pay the fucking bills.
Only true for selected values of ‘we’, ‘us’, and ‘all’.
I’ve heard that Feingold lost his seat not because of policy but because voters didn’t like his personality. Naturally, he ran again against the man he lost to. Naturally, he lost.
As a Wisconsinite, what’s your take on that? Not asking how you personally voted, just your opinion on why Feingold lost the first time.
Well, for starters, I’d guess he lost 25,000 of the 100,000 votes or so he lost by because of Hillary at the top of the ticket. Beyond that, there was little / no Democratic excitement in Wisconsin after Sanders was forced out by the Democratic establishment. Absent that excitement, even in a presidential election year, not enough Democrats voted while Republicans smelled blood (again), showed up, and more of them voted than Democrats. Of the 75,000 others, Independents, Democrats, or whatever, that voted for Hillary, clearly they didn’t know to vote for Feingold as well (how could they, she never came to town to tell them to–Russ and Hill don’t have a very good history). Beyond that? Did the Jews show up to vote? Don’t know. I don’t think the kids here in Wisconsin voted at all much, unlike 2008 and even 2012. Why would they bother to participate in a system so corrupt it probably makes them sick to think about it. Black turnout was way down, of course, but I doubt the ones that showed up to vote purposely bothered to vote for Senator. Many blacks, gays, Jews, and immigrants voted for Trump here, I suppose just for fun. In fairness, a lot of voters here probably don’t remember Feingold’s tenure from 1999 to 2010. He was a great US Senator and it’s a shame the Democratic establishment failed to support him both in 2010 and last year.
Very possibly, a lot of otherwise supportive Democrats are pissed at him still that he didn’t run for Governor in the recall election of June 5th 2012 and just couldn’t see the upside of actively supporting his campaign last year. After all the rigmarole of getting a recall election with petitions and the bullshit of it, that Feingold failed to step up and run was a fairly big disappointment (we got Barrett again, instead, another Hillary supporter).
Clinton narrowly outperformed Feingold. Certainly some theoretical better candidate could have dragged him across the finish line but Clinton was more popular in the state than Feingold was. In contrast, Ron Johnson significantly outperformed Trump.
Clinton didn’t campaign here. She took Wisconsin for granted. Doubtless her excuse is that she was too sick to make it. Given that, she should have had the good sense not to run.
And 2010? Maybe Obama fatigue? Or Russ fatigue? Or something else?
Democrats lost en masse in 2010. We lost the governorship here that year; and with it the HSR subsidy that had been granted by the Fed. Why would Feingold have had better luck that year? Maybe if Obama hadn’t picked Hillary as Secretary of State? I don’t know. All the mistakes, and Obama’s hubris, were already taking a huge toll. None of the banks shut down; none of the looters indicted for their crimes. And the crappy ACA that took most of Obama’s first two years (and near bulletproof Congressional majority) to pass wasn’t going to help anyone out at all until 2013…. No wonder Democrats were wiped out that year. 2010 was a shitshow and neither Obama nor Clinton were ever held accountable for that huge fuckup.
You might have an argument with MD, but:
Maine has rotated between D, R, and Ind. for 30 years.
Mass. since Dukakis has elected GOP governors. Patrick’s an exception.
Vermont has alternated governors — Snelling, and a Dem — for 30 years
New Jersey has had R governors more often than not going back to Keane. Dem scandals keep Trenton red.
I see no trend.
Because at least when it comes to my native state of Vermont there is none.
The problem isn’t rural, it’s income. I can keep posting this table until people get this through their heads, but the vote shift in 2016 is undeniable.
There is a very real split in the party on the importance of economics, and the type of economics that the Party should support.
A significant source of the power of the current party establishment comes from its ability to raise money from the very groups the Sanders wing holds accountable for economic decline.
As result the Clinton wing focuses on questions of identity and tolerance. What excites that wing is immigration, gun control and gay rights.
The Sanders wing is focused on economic stagnation and believes the cause of it is Wall Street.
For reasons people do not fully appreciate, at a fundamental level Sanders represents an existential threat to the party establishment. It is therefore not surprising to hear establishment Democrats talk about focusing on metro suburbs instead of the Midwest.
The establishment wing argues you cannot win without money. The Sanders wing says you cannot win without arguing for a populist economic agenda.
These two arguments are less compatible than people think.
Palmieri on MSNBC says Dems should not use mass crowds to move left: “not everyone wants $15/hour…it’s all about identity on our side now”
Yep.
The establishment intends to use identity politics to defend its position within the party. It is all it has left.
You cannot win without a good geographical dispersion of majority votes. Money can deny that but it really cannot promote that. Which is why the GOP is in a position of permanent denial of policy and drowning government in a bathtub.
The establishment wing can no longer increase turnout of votes because the votes they must turn out are the very ones being screwed by the campaign donors of establishment candidates.
Yes, the establishment argument is incompatible. Not only that it is increasing a losing argument in general elections. It looks too much like outright corruption.
What real answer do Democrats have for why no one went to jail after the financial crisis?
About the only argument that Democrats can make is that the are less corrupt then the Republicans – which is true I guess.
But running a big money campaign means taking money from Wall Street and Pharma: and that money doesn’t come without conditions.
A partisan Democratic version of making America great again.
Dear rural Amerika, We all promise to clap extra hard for a return to 1964, so that Lee Hamilton can serve southern Indiana in perpetuity…
That world is gone daddy gone….
It will only get worse – Remaining rural Democratic vote sinks are the colleges and universities, and dependent on recruiting kids from the big city. Students (and staff) aren’t going to go where they aren’t wanted.
Here is my partisan plan for rural Amerika – sell them enough rope.
And only those towns that have large universities are going to be viable for Democratic candidates, and the towns themselves will remain viable as long as the universities are funded enough to maintain adequate staffing and so on. Once that stops, those communities will begin to dry up. Small towns with low enrollment colleges and universities can maintain population, but they aren’t exactly growing – and the locals really don’t want all them commie perfessers there, or the kids from Chicago who are there on athletic scholarships. And they derned well don’t want any of them feriners on staff or in the classroom. Beyond that? There’s nothing for most folks in small towns. Farming is increasingly large scale and automated, and will become only more so. Whatever businesses are left are drying up. And don’t count on Walmart staying around – they’ll pull up stakes the moment too many outlets seem unprofitable. Urbanization has a momentum of its own, not only here but globally. Wishing it away won’t make it stop. Best to adapt.
Walmart intends to compete on the internet with Amazon. Most retail is trying their best to shed labor. More small towns are drying up and disappearing. Crossroads villages of a store or two and a couple of churches are mostly reduced to the churches. The towns that are now disappearing at one time maybe had as much as a couple hundred residents. When the post office left or the elementary school left or the gas station left, it was gone.
Been watching it happen for a long time. Last time one of my kids and I took a road trip along a familiar stretch of highway out in the US outback, we noticed more abandoned buildings in the towns we passed, and one town that once had a quaint atmosphere was little more than a ghost town. When we buried one of my grandmothers a couple decades back, the town she called home was already a shell of its former self. When I was a kid, it had a post office, a full service gas station, a full service grocery store, a small movie house, and a few other small businesses. The post office and the gas station (by then self-serve) were all that remained. The grave yard was bigger. The locals of the small town I worked in for a decade made it very clear that they had no use for outsiders. If only we just went away and they could get their communities back. Eventually I obliged and headed for greener pastures – literally and figuratively.
I read these comments, and it’s all about the economic woes of white America being determinative. Bullshit.
https:/fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support
It was racial resentment, plain and simple. And there’s only one way to bring a lotta those folks back: “throw the dusky-hued ones under the bus”.
It’s not the average Trump voter – its the voter who went from Obama to Trump.
If they switched because of race, why did they vote for Obama?
The swings are undeniable – see above.
Standard low-information comment. “I don’t know shit, so it must be racism”. Of course, for some low-information dimbots, they combine racism and sexism, to double down on stupidity.
Are you sure it was racism? Wasn’t it sexism too?
Racism, sexism, religious and cultural themes were as central to Trump’s campaign as the economic issues; in fact they were force multipliers for the “good jobs” argument in many communities.
I agree that many voters in swing states were unwilling to trust Hillary and Democrats on economic issues. But an animating theme for that mistrust was often “Democrats care more about blacks/women/atheists/etc. than bringing back decent paying jobs and preserving our way of life.” We see that very theme on this thread. In diagnosing what happened in recent years, it doesn’t help us to deny that this theme has racist/sexist/culturally prejudiced aspects to it. It certainly doesn’t make economic sense to believe that the Party which supports workers’ rights to collectively bargain is worse than the Party which has a white-hot hatred for any organizing opportunity for the working class.
That doesn’t mean we give up on people who live in areas where there are a lot of regressive social views; there’s gettable votes everywhere. It just means that if, for example, you live in Wisconsin, have work compensation which is not keeping up with inflation, and fail to understand that the attacks by Governor Walker and his Legislatures on working people have done more to fuck up your economic circumstances this decade than immigration and trade deals combined, then you may not be persuadable by a straight economic argument.
Governor Walker, and now Trump, have put this spin on the economic argument for Wisconsin voters: “I’ll stop the coddling of those who want economic and social equality so you can return to the 1950’s, when you had elevated social status. You are better than those people and deserve better economic and civil rights; they deserve to be poor and have their rights taken from them.” Wisconsin’s new voter ID laws increased the odds that this campaign strategy would succeed.
OT, but not seeing it elsewhere, yet.
US troops join war on Shabaab in Boni Forest (Kenya)
http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2017/02/10/us-troops-join-war-on-shabaab-in-boni-forest_c1503640
They are saying Green Berets in online discussions..