Within a week of the 2016 election, I began warning the Democrats against writing off small towns and rural areas in favor of a purely urban/suburban strategy. The Democrats didn’t listen and wound up being rewarded in the 2018 midterms when Trump’s style and policies caused his suburban support to crater more than his rural support could ever hope to rise.
If we were to rerun the 2016 election, Trump would still dominate in his areas of strength, but he’d lose badly. Of course, we can’t rerun the last election. This time, Trump is the incumbent and he’s very well-funded. His new opponent attracts and excites a different profile of the electorate than his old one. And we now have four years of Trump’s performance to weigh, and that will have more impact than any other factor.
Yet, it remains the case that Trump’s rural strength gives him a chance to win in some states where he ought to lose. Ron Brownstein explains that the Democrats are in a decent position to make major gains in state legislative races, which is particularly important in this cycle, just as it was in 2010, because all the federal congressional districts will be redrawn with new census data before the 2022 midterms. Yet, the Democrats hope to achieve this by pursuing their suburban advantage:
Even if Trump holds states such as Georgia, Texas, and Arizona by maximizing his rural performance, Democrats could still get a huge boost in down-ballot races if Biden routs the president in the growing urban and suburban areas. Biden’s performance in big metros is “the whole ball game,” Vicky Hausman, the founder and co-CEO of Forward Majority, a Democratic group that tries to flip state chambers, told me. “Trump can run up the score in the rural areas, and it doesn’t impact our path to the majority through the suburbs.”
It’s not true Trump’s rural performance will have no impact in legislative races. There are still some Democrats serving in rural districts, and many contested seats that are mix of suburban and exurban. But the easiest pickings for Democrats are purely suburban seats, and the most likely path to winning mixed seats is to run up their margins in the suburban portion of the districts. Therefore, the strategy makes sense if the goal is to win control of state legislative chambers.
Yet, it would be a shame for Joe Biden to lose states like Georgia, Texas, and Arizona because he came out on the wrong end of a rural/suburban polarization. Admittedly, this would represent a shift from 2016, when this polarization cost Clinton Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the presidency. Biden probably doesn’t need Texas and Georgia to win, and he probably doesn’t need Arizona either. Yet, if the election were to shift back in Trump’s direction, the same states that won Trump the election in 2016 could come back into play.
So, there would be a lot of benefit if Biden could make some rural inroads. Not only would he secure the states he must win, but he’d start hauling in key states that Republicans must win. And, yes, this would increase the number of state legislative seats the Democrats carry, possibly allowing them to have more say in how new congressional seats are set up for the next decade. It would help them win U.S. Senate races not only in Texas, Georgia and Arizona, but also in Alaska, Montana, Kansas, and Iowa.
I’m of the opinion, that a narrow Biden win will be a tremendous relief to everyone, but that only a sweeping national condemnation of Trumpism and the Republican Party can put us on the right course. We need the Republicans and their financiers to get the message that their brand of politics is no longer viable or worth pursuing. We have to get past an equally divided and hopelessly polarized nation, and the Democrats need enough power to tackle the major challenges we face.
Therefore, the Democrats should be wary about pursuing a strategy based solely on the ripest fruit. A geographically split country is going to remain a politically divided country. A Democratic Texas would put a swift end to that state of affairs, but winning in places like Georgia and Kansas would also get us a long way toward that goal.
Everything Trump is doing is in the service of maximizing this division because he knows he needs overwhelming rural support, but the Democrats have many good argument to take to these areas of the country, from the impact of Trump’s trade wars to his handling of the coronavirus and rural health care.
Biden should be ambitious and resist running a campaign premised on winning the rural/suburban split that Clinton lost.
All of this. In addition, a point our gracious host has made numerous times in the past (but isn’t explicit in the above post), “making inroads” = “winning”.
By that I mean for example, Biden losing dozens of rural PA counties 55-45, or even 60-40 would be 1) a major victory, and 2) worth fighting for. (As opposed to Clinton losing those counties 70-30 or 80-20 in 2016.) Margins that narrow would not only make it impossible for Trump to overcome his deficit in SE PA and Allegheny County; it would also mean that Democratic state candidates in those counties would stand a fighting chance of winning a few seats.
The same applies to other swing states both north (e.g., MI, WI, IA, OH) and south (FL, GA, TX).
To me, this should indicate that there will be focus on rural districts – state parties have more on their plate than just getting Biden over the finish line, and in many cases are fitting to tip over GOP holds on various legislatures (TX, PA, NC).
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/30/dems-pour-record-cash-into-battleground-state-parties-389082
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Anybody, and I mean ANYBODY, who votes for, gives money, or support of any kind to any republican is both a racist and a psychopath. If ANYBODY needs to be convinced to vote for Democrats at this time in our history they should not be welcome in polite society, let alone in a diverse political party.
There are no ‘economic anxiety’ voters, AND THERE NEVER WERE, at any measurable numbers.
Fuck ‘rural’ American, which is just bullshit speak for ‘white’ America, meaning that old chestnut…’real’ Americans. Your obsessed with them. You’ll want to appease them, even when they come for your neighbors.
Christ, how many people have to die?
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I can only add, Amen. I have been preaching this point ever since 2016 and even before. In fairness, as much as I think that rural voters cut off their nose to spite their face in voting for the Orange Menace, I don’t think the Dems have done an adequate, forget a good, job giving small town America a reason to trust them. Globalization, etc has hit them hard. Trump was a angry shout directed at our elites.
What exactly are Biden and the Dems supposed to do to win the rural vote? They aren’t going to give them permission to be racist or use racist language. They can’t single handedly roll back the replacement of rural retail with Walmart, the consolidation of meat production into four mega-companies, or magically fix the economic woes of rural communities, especially when we are still in a major recession due to coronavirus. I guess they could promise not to pass any gun control legislation?
The only thing I can think of that would bring them joy is to dig up John Lewis’s body and let them tear it apart with dogs.
The pay per view income would be through the roof.
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I live in rural Ohio. I have been one of the few Democratic voters here for forty years. What, dear Martin, do you propose Dems do to tap the rural vote? Get rid of abortion? Promise to make every American go to church? Turn back the clock to the time when sewing bees and county fairs were prevalent? These voters yearn for an America that just isn’t there anymore. They don’t want your new fangaled ideas: universal healthcare, guaranteed incomes, anything approaching LGBT. They certainly don’t want to help any black or brown people. And, no one out West wants to help the Native Americans. If a county doesn’t have a college, I don’t see where Dem voters would come from.
You’ve been hitting this pretty hard, but I just don’t see it. As you note, the suburbs were the winning battleground in 2018, and they likely will be again in 2020. And that most definitely includes Georgia, Texas and Arizona. Biden simply cannot compete in the rural areas of GA and TX. All he needs to do is try and avoid rural Black voters from being suppressed. If he wins the suburbs of Atlanta, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Phoenix, he will have the repudiation of Hair Furor that we need.
I agree with Martin. You cannot afford to write off the rural voters completely. You don’t have to appeal to racism – enough of these voters voted for Obama. Maybe they are too far gone now into the swamp, I don’t know – but revival of rural towns requires some revival of small business, something that Martin has talked about at length, and is something that doesn’t conflict with progressive values. At least an effort should be made on this front, and perhaps as MassCommons says it can help to stem the losses.
Without massive investment in rural infrastructure, especially internet services, young people will continue to move to larger towns and cities for better employment and social opportunities. Fundamental electoral reform is a prerequisite for any successful rural strategy otherwise it is just wasted resources.
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This is a thread that Mr. Longman has pursued since at least 2016. There are a couple of problems with the rural (and everywhere else) strategy. There is an implicit assumption that these rural areas are pretty much all alike. But rural Georgia or Alabama could not be more different than rural Maine or Wyoming. Large parts of rural Georgia and Alabama have significant though marginalized POC populations. Trying to woo rural populations under the assumption they are all disaffected white people is seriously misguided.
Moreover, most rural whites who aren’t hopelessly meth heads or non-participants in voting know that the Republicans have done nothing to invest in a viable future for these areas. As long as they get their farm subsidies and as long as they believe that the GOP is on their side in the culture war against POC, immigrants and women then they will continue to vote GOP. Mobilizing the vote in rural, POC districts and market towns will make more of a difference than the purely rural vote, which was never really Democratic (as opposed to Dixiecrat anyway).