The New York Times has just published an editorial titled “What Democrats Need to Know to Win in Rural America”, which could be a starting point for a discussion about how Democratic leaders and the liberal media view rural voters.
Broadly there have been two common viewpoints about why rural voters voted for Trump in such high numbers, which could be summarized as (1) They’re evil neo-Nazi white supremacist, sexist, racist, homophobic, bigoted, etc… people who voted for Trump because he’s evil neo-Nazi white supremacist, sexist, racist, homophobic, bigoted, etc… (2) Rural voters are poor little dears who have been abused by corporations and globalization, and who actually are liberal democrats and agree with everything we believe, but they just don’t know it yet.
In her “basket of deplorables speech” Hillary Clinton suggested that half of Trump supporters are one and half are the other. Elsewhere, there’s been a media market for liberal journalists pushing explanation 2. James Fallows, for instance, published a series of articles in the Atlantic a later a book, documenting how he traveled through small-town America and found that the locals apparently all seemed to support higher taxes, more immigration, increased bureaucracy and government initiatives, and everything else that most readers of The Atlantic probably want. Some critics did note that Fallows seemed to prefer speaking with government officials and local hipsters rather than seeking out anyone representing the large conservative majorities in these towns.
And then there’s this New York Times editorial. At the top, it describes the authors this way: “Mr. Leonard is the news director for the Iowa radio stations KNIA and KRLS. Mr. Russell is the owner of Coyote Run Farm and the executive director of Iowa Interfaith Power and Light.” Here’s some of what they tell us about how the Democrats can court rural voters:
A strong Democratic platform with realistic plans for rural America would focus on four themes: demography, infrastructure, farm sustainability and environmental practices that can help combat climate change.
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In places with a strong manufacturing base, housing can be scarce. Here in Marion County, which is southeast of Des Moines, there is a lot of demand for housing from workers in manufacturing jobs. But developers are tough to attract: There isn’t much money in building 50 houses in Knoxville, Pleasantville or Pella, compared with constructing hundreds in the Des Moines metro. A federal plan could encourage housing in places like this.
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Some south central Iowa manufacturing towns have hundreds of employees who come from surrounding counties, or even Missouri. That pattern of labor flow is common in rural America. If 40 employees can gather in a dirt lot at a highway intersection in the half-hour before shift change and travel together on a bus to work and back, that’s good for the environment and for the rural pocketbook.
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The Green New Deal, even with its flaws, is a good place to start.
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Rural voters also care about values. Many Iowans are people of faith, a majority of them Christian. Democratic candidates, if they look, will find a rising movement on the Christian left
So apparently rural voters want more government, a Green New Deal, and a Great Awakening of the religious left. Which is probably pretty similar to what the typical liberal reader of The New York Times wants. Indeed, it kind of raises the question of why rural voters haven’t already flocked to the Democratic Party, seeing as their interests apparently match up so well.
Yet other than one paragraph about poor communication by Democratic presidential candidates, that is never addressed.
One wonders whether these two publications or any other liberal publications would ever consider finding an actual rural voter who voters Republican and letting that person write an editorial or two, explaining his or her perspective. Maybe the results would be somewhat different than what you get when a Democrat explains what rural Republican voters want.
