This is a decent piece, but as a conservative I can't help but chuckle. Respectfully, it seems that every day more and more liberals are waking up to the fact that being disdainful assholes to half of the country isn't good politics. Every word of this article could have been written in 2015 about the prior 10 years. It is why I voted for Trump in 2016...not that I supported him so much as I despised what the left thought of me and folks like me. I foresaw the dangers that lie ahead for anyone on the wrong side of their ire should they retain power. The last 8 years have proven me right.
I believe we are in the early phase of a true political re-alignment that began when the left abandoned their class-based strategy for one based on identitarian politics....demographics as destiny. This worked pretty well when the strategy focused on minorities and immigrants. Leveraging their complete control over the media, journalism, academia, and entertainment, the left effectively painted the other side, all 80M+ of us, as hateful bigots (bible clutching, gun toting, deplorables) while promising goodies to their constituents every four years and then do nothing meaningful for them when it came time to govern. The strategy jumped the shark with 1) their unquestioning support for the government technocrats during Covid and their glee at punishing the dissent of 'wrong thinking' Americans (many of them rural) and 2) their support for the insanity that is gender theory to the point where they cast anyone who questions the medical castration of children as...once again...hateful, bigoted, racist. Oh and toss in an insane open borders immigration policy for good measure...wash, rinse, and repeat on the 'hate has no home here' nonsense.
Oh, yeah, and the unprecedented prosecution of your political enemies isn't a great look if you're claiming the mantle of 'protectors of democracy'. There is so much hypocrisy it's difficult to keep it all straight.
The problem liberals now have is that, in a post-covid world, people are questioning everything. That tends to happen when authoritarians criminalize dissent. They have been exposed as the political animals they are. This article, again respectfully, is a testament to that. Why does it require a looming election 5 months out that polls suggest your are losing for you to snap to the conclusion that the way you've treated your fellow Americans, rural and conservative alike, is wrong? The answer seems not to be that you have a new-founded curiosity for the needs of those you've overlooked; let alone have you any remorse for how you've treated them. Rather, it seems to be like it always is with liberals...bad polling data.
Liberals are hoping they can shift on dime and convince people they are, once again, the party of the people...of the working class and down-trodden. I just don't think it works this time. That said, a good start would be to expel from your ranks those blowhards with megaphones who find glee in dismissing, condemning, and calling for the re-education of those who support the opposing party candidate. That's truly scary rhetoric, though Mao would be impressed.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying it's pretty simple...be good human beings. That's always good politics.
Dems seeking to help rural voters, would aid their endeavor, if they would stop talking about them, as if they were zoo animals. Rural areas, like cities, are a mixture of wealthy, poor and middle class residents. The grizzled farmer in the beat up pick up, may own a farm worth millions of dollars, but he will never mention that fact. The one thing that separates him, from urban millionaires, is the empathy he feels for those around him, with less financial resources.
Dems have spent the last 3 years informing voters the economy is fabulous, they are just too stupid to realize how good they have it, compliments of DC. It would be comical, if it were not so nauseating. Since Biden entered the WH, the cost of American life has risen $1000 a month. That is an indisputable fact. Rural voters do not want government handouts, they want the prices they had pre Biden.
Moreover, little enrages rural voters more than student loan forgiveness and $7500 handouts to people earning $225K a year, buying an $80K EV. Rural people believe in helping those in need. The SV Billionaire Bank bailout, paying the student loans of married 26 year old lawyers and doctors earning $250K together, on their way to 1/2 million dollar paychecks in middle age, hardly qualifies.
Finally, rural voters know how food is produced and shipped. Ditto for construction materials, timber, oil and the rest of life's necessities. They view EVs like Sports Cars, toys for boys. They drive vast distances to work and their kid's school. They are always in a hurry, because there is always more work to be done. Many require real trucks for work, and large SUVs for carpools. The notion of a half an hour charge, for a small performance car, as opposed to 5 minute gas tank refill, strikes most as insane. If Dems would stop shoving EVs down their throats, and allow for organic development, it would not hurt.
There are a lot of good criticisms here, but the economic angst is frustrating.
I agree that the economy is not as good as we are being told, but prices simply aren't going back to "pre-Biden" levels, and frankly no one actually wants them to.
1. For my whole life, voters have assumed POTUS has more influence on the economy than he does. The inflation was baked in as soon as we printed $5T for COVID under Trump. Inflation is the price we pay for getting through COVID without spiking unemployment and a deep recession. The problem started under Trump, it would have occurred regardless of who won in 2020, and now, no president will be able to put that toothpaste back in the tube. I don't love the economy right now, but I don't blame Biden. It doesn't make sense.
2. Deflation back to "pre-Biden" prices would inflict massive job losses, bankruptcies, and unemployment on the economy. Deflation is much more harmful to the people in an economy than modest inflation. Even if the inflation is killing us (it's killing me, I get it), at least we have jobs. It really could be worse.
3. For whatever it's worth, Trump's proposed policies would make inflation much worse. Tariffs? Trade wars? These things do not make prices go lower.
You suggested “What are some of these smart solutions? Clean energy projects on abandoned coalfields; materials reuse corridors; free trade school; and investment in local food processing facilities so that small producers can compete against Big Ag. “
Better solutions might be, support and encouragement of rural Internet (including Starlink) to create and support markets for goods and services, which are growing rapidly in rural areas via Etsy, Amazon, online farmers markets, and other online markets; public encouragement of remote work initiatives, which have revitalized many rural areas; support for the USPS, which is a vital link in the rural economy; and enforcement of antitrust laws in many sectors, including meat, where a handful of large corporations have crowded out local animal production in favor of far less humane factory farms.
One thing that many people seem to forget is that many of the people who consider themselves rural are actually part of MSAs and are often not counted in estimates of rural population size. A county like Goochland County in Virginia looks and in many ways lives rural, but it’s one of the richest counties in Virginia, and is probably not the set of voters you want to go out of your way to annoy.
"The missing part of the story, of course, is that most Republican elites don’t care about them either. But at least they pretend to." This is true to an extent, but I caution making a broad, and then unqualified statement like this. It is true on a variety, not all issues. One in particular is immigration policy. The best reason to explain why nothing gets solved on this issue of any worth is that neither party cares about, not just the rural voter, but the working class. Consider Democrats' framing of anyone who wants strong and effective border enforcement and less overall immigration perhaps to be among the bucket of "deplorables." This is the same Democratic party under Obama's era that agreed with and even voted along with Republicans in 2006 for the Secure Fence Act. Now Republicans, and I will focus on just one reason they truly don't care is E-Verify. Why would ANY member of Congress not want to vote for mandatory hiring of eligible workers so illegal labor is both not undercutting wages and opportunities for legal native born, naturalized citizens or green card holders? Because Republicans are who they have always been, supporters of Wall Street first, not Main Street. And now that a couple generations have benefited from greater numbers of college educations, they are part of an elite "liberal" class that looks down on earlier generations, sees them all as racist and unenlightened. So what do these new "Democrats" do? They pretend to value democracy well often spouting very socialist- even communist sounding rhetoric about how they know best for the entire population and anyone disagreeing with them are "backwater rednecks", MAGAs, etc. Truth is, many of these people are normal. hardworking Americans who know that neither party cares about the REAL, real America. The goal shouldn't be to win back Republicans to the Democratic party as much as both parties need to start giving a damn about middle class, working America. This book, I thought, reveals that not only are rural voters complex, but America's political parties are way out of touch with what people in general want and view as the kind of nation they want to live in, raise families in, and be able to earn a good solid wage that rewards their contributions to society. Most are not the fringe who want less immigration because they harbor hate towards immigrants. But they are also smarter than mass media and politicians give credit for in knowing that not ony is someone here illegally NOT an immigrant by law at all, and that while the country should welcome some limited number of legal immigrants, the gaming of both legal and illegal immigration must stop and be reformed.
'Ever since candidate Donald Trump swept 66 percent of the rural vote in 2016, bewildered urban and suburban Democrats have wondered aloud: “Why do they vote against their own interests?”'
Umm... "What's The Matter With Kansas?" was published in 2004.
I think it’s probably easier to get votes from people when you’re not publicly denigrating them. The entire “White Rural Rage” narrative sends a pretty powerful message, and a very large number of progressive and some Democratic pundits have jumped on that bandwagon.
That narrative ignores that rural America varies widely, includes a pretty decent number of Democrats and independents, includes a pretty decent number of people of color, and that, typically, many more people consider themselves rural than are counted as such in statistics. And several blue states like Vermont are actually pretty rural.
In the DC MSA, many people in the exurban counties consider themselves to be “living in the country” and consider that part of their identity. The heated rhetoric about rural voters is probably not directed to residents of Fauquier County, or western Loudoun, or Spotsylvania, Stafford, Culpeper, or Orange counties - heck, people commute to DC from as far as northern Hanover County - but there are a whole lot of exurban residents who have heard “country people bad” from progressives and took it as a personal attack on who they are and how they live. I am watching this unfold in an exurban area of Virginia, a typically blue state - a state where Biden has been tied with Trump for the last two national polls.
Honestly, this has been a huge gift for Republicans, particularly after Covid has created an exodus of remote workers and retirees to exurban and rural areas. It’s hard to gracefully walk back a message of, “people who live in the country are bad and we hate you.” That message is not primarily coming from Democratic elected officials, but it’s still sticking to Democrats.
Another aspect is that Progressive environmentalists want to eradicate the suburban, exurban and rural lifestyles. The Sierra Club and similar organizations decry sprawl and want zoning laws changed to make any area close to cities into high-density housing, preferably car-free. I suppose their hearts are in the right place, but they have declared war on a cherished aspect of the American Dream: a single-family home with yards in front and back where children can play.
I started paying attention to politics c. 2009, and I've been reading/hearing why "flyover counties" vote "against their interests" for roughly the entire time.
It's wild how the parties have flipped on who lives in terror of affluent voters. Seriously, "reuse corridors" is an absurd message to offer to rural voters. If the green lobby won't let you present a decent agenda don't say anything at all, people do not like this sort of kabuki activist messaging theatre.
This is a decent piece, but as a conservative I can't help but chuckle. Respectfully, it seems that every day more and more liberals are waking up to the fact that being disdainful assholes to half of the country isn't good politics. Every word of this article could have been written in 2015 about the prior 10 years. It is why I voted for Trump in 2016...not that I supported him so much as I despised what the left thought of me and folks like me. I foresaw the dangers that lie ahead for anyone on the wrong side of their ire should they retain power. The last 8 years have proven me right.
I believe we are in the early phase of a true political re-alignment that began when the left abandoned their class-based strategy for one based on identitarian politics....demographics as destiny. This worked pretty well when the strategy focused on minorities and immigrants. Leveraging their complete control over the media, journalism, academia, and entertainment, the left effectively painted the other side, all 80M+ of us, as hateful bigots (bible clutching, gun toting, deplorables) while promising goodies to their constituents every four years and then do nothing meaningful for them when it came time to govern. The strategy jumped the shark with 1) their unquestioning support for the government technocrats during Covid and their glee at punishing the dissent of 'wrong thinking' Americans (many of them rural) and 2) their support for the insanity that is gender theory to the point where they cast anyone who questions the medical castration of children as...once again...hateful, bigoted, racist. Oh and toss in an insane open borders immigration policy for good measure...wash, rinse, and repeat on the 'hate has no home here' nonsense.
Oh, yeah, and the unprecedented prosecution of your political enemies isn't a great look if you're claiming the mantle of 'protectors of democracy'. There is so much hypocrisy it's difficult to keep it all straight.
The problem liberals now have is that, in a post-covid world, people are questioning everything. That tends to happen when authoritarians criminalize dissent. They have been exposed as the political animals they are. This article, again respectfully, is a testament to that. Why does it require a looming election 5 months out that polls suggest your are losing for you to snap to the conclusion that the way you've treated your fellow Americans, rural and conservative alike, is wrong? The answer seems not to be that you have a new-founded curiosity for the needs of those you've overlooked; let alone have you any remorse for how you've treated them. Rather, it seems to be like it always is with liberals...bad polling data.
Liberals are hoping they can shift on dime and convince people they are, once again, the party of the people...of the working class and down-trodden. I just don't think it works this time. That said, a good start would be to expel from your ranks those blowhards with megaphones who find glee in dismissing, condemning, and calling for the re-education of those who support the opposing party candidate. That's truly scary rhetoric, though Mao would be impressed.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying it's pretty simple...be good human beings. That's always good politics.
Dems seeking to help rural voters, would aid their endeavor, if they would stop talking about them, as if they were zoo animals. Rural areas, like cities, are a mixture of wealthy, poor and middle class residents. The grizzled farmer in the beat up pick up, may own a farm worth millions of dollars, but he will never mention that fact. The one thing that separates him, from urban millionaires, is the empathy he feels for those around him, with less financial resources.
Dems have spent the last 3 years informing voters the economy is fabulous, they are just too stupid to realize how good they have it, compliments of DC. It would be comical, if it were not so nauseating. Since Biden entered the WH, the cost of American life has risen $1000 a month. That is an indisputable fact. Rural voters do not want government handouts, they want the prices they had pre Biden.
Moreover, little enrages rural voters more than student loan forgiveness and $7500 handouts to people earning $225K a year, buying an $80K EV. Rural people believe in helping those in need. The SV Billionaire Bank bailout, paying the student loans of married 26 year old lawyers and doctors earning $250K together, on their way to 1/2 million dollar paychecks in middle age, hardly qualifies.
Finally, rural voters know how food is produced and shipped. Ditto for construction materials, timber, oil and the rest of life's necessities. They view EVs like Sports Cars, toys for boys. They drive vast distances to work and their kid's school. They are always in a hurry, because there is always more work to be done. Many require real trucks for work, and large SUVs for carpools. The notion of a half an hour charge, for a small performance car, as opposed to 5 minute gas tank refill, strikes most as insane. If Dems would stop shoving EVs down their throats, and allow for organic development, it would not hurt.
There are a lot of good criticisms here, but the economic angst is frustrating.
I agree that the economy is not as good as we are being told, but prices simply aren't going back to "pre-Biden" levels, and frankly no one actually wants them to.
1. For my whole life, voters have assumed POTUS has more influence on the economy than he does. The inflation was baked in as soon as we printed $5T for COVID under Trump. Inflation is the price we pay for getting through COVID without spiking unemployment and a deep recession. The problem started under Trump, it would have occurred regardless of who won in 2020, and now, no president will be able to put that toothpaste back in the tube. I don't love the economy right now, but I don't blame Biden. It doesn't make sense.
2. Deflation back to "pre-Biden" prices would inflict massive job losses, bankruptcies, and unemployment on the economy. Deflation is much more harmful to the people in an economy than modest inflation. Even if the inflation is killing us (it's killing me, I get it), at least we have jobs. It really could be worse.
3. For whatever it's worth, Trump's proposed policies would make inflation much worse. Tariffs? Trade wars? These things do not make prices go lower.
You suggested “What are some of these smart solutions? Clean energy projects on abandoned coalfields; materials reuse corridors; free trade school; and investment in local food processing facilities so that small producers can compete against Big Ag. “
Better solutions might be, support and encouragement of rural Internet (including Starlink) to create and support markets for goods and services, which are growing rapidly in rural areas via Etsy, Amazon, online farmers markets, and other online markets; public encouragement of remote work initiatives, which have revitalized many rural areas; support for the USPS, which is a vital link in the rural economy; and enforcement of antitrust laws in many sectors, including meat, where a handful of large corporations have crowded out local animal production in favor of far less humane factory farms.
One thing that many people seem to forget is that many of the people who consider themselves rural are actually part of MSAs and are often not counted in estimates of rural population size. A county like Goochland County in Virginia looks and in many ways lives rural, but it’s one of the richest counties in Virginia, and is probably not the set of voters you want to go out of your way to annoy.
"The missing part of the story, of course, is that most Republican elites don’t care about them either. But at least they pretend to." This is true to an extent, but I caution making a broad, and then unqualified statement like this. It is true on a variety, not all issues. One in particular is immigration policy. The best reason to explain why nothing gets solved on this issue of any worth is that neither party cares about, not just the rural voter, but the working class. Consider Democrats' framing of anyone who wants strong and effective border enforcement and less overall immigration perhaps to be among the bucket of "deplorables." This is the same Democratic party under Obama's era that agreed with and even voted along with Republicans in 2006 for the Secure Fence Act. Now Republicans, and I will focus on just one reason they truly don't care is E-Verify. Why would ANY member of Congress not want to vote for mandatory hiring of eligible workers so illegal labor is both not undercutting wages and opportunities for legal native born, naturalized citizens or green card holders? Because Republicans are who they have always been, supporters of Wall Street first, not Main Street. And now that a couple generations have benefited from greater numbers of college educations, they are part of an elite "liberal" class that looks down on earlier generations, sees them all as racist and unenlightened. So what do these new "Democrats" do? They pretend to value democracy well often spouting very socialist- even communist sounding rhetoric about how they know best for the entire population and anyone disagreeing with them are "backwater rednecks", MAGAs, etc. Truth is, many of these people are normal. hardworking Americans who know that neither party cares about the REAL, real America. The goal shouldn't be to win back Republicans to the Democratic party as much as both parties need to start giving a damn about middle class, working America. This book, I thought, reveals that not only are rural voters complex, but America's political parties are way out of touch with what people in general want and view as the kind of nation they want to live in, raise families in, and be able to earn a good solid wage that rewards their contributions to society. Most are not the fringe who want less immigration because they harbor hate towards immigrants. But they are also smarter than mass media and politicians give credit for in knowing that not ony is someone here illegally NOT an immigrant by law at all, and that while the country should welcome some limited number of legal immigrants, the gaming of both legal and illegal immigration must stop and be reformed.
'Ever since candidate Donald Trump swept 66 percent of the rural vote in 2016, bewildered urban and suburban Democrats have wondered aloud: “Why do they vote against their own interests?”'
Umm... "What's The Matter With Kansas?" was published in 2004.
I think it’s probably easier to get votes from people when you’re not publicly denigrating them. The entire “White Rural Rage” narrative sends a pretty powerful message, and a very large number of progressive and some Democratic pundits have jumped on that bandwagon.
That narrative ignores that rural America varies widely, includes a pretty decent number of Democrats and independents, includes a pretty decent number of people of color, and that, typically, many more people consider themselves rural than are counted as such in statistics. And several blue states like Vermont are actually pretty rural.
In the DC MSA, many people in the exurban counties consider themselves to be “living in the country” and consider that part of their identity. The heated rhetoric about rural voters is probably not directed to residents of Fauquier County, or western Loudoun, or Spotsylvania, Stafford, Culpeper, or Orange counties - heck, people commute to DC from as far as northern Hanover County - but there are a whole lot of exurban residents who have heard “country people bad” from progressives and took it as a personal attack on who they are and how they live. I am watching this unfold in an exurban area of Virginia, a typically blue state - a state where Biden has been tied with Trump for the last two national polls.
Honestly, this has been a huge gift for Republicans, particularly after Covid has created an exodus of remote workers and retirees to exurban and rural areas. It’s hard to gracefully walk back a message of, “people who live in the country are bad and we hate you.” That message is not primarily coming from Democratic elected officials, but it’s still sticking to Democrats.
Very stupid politics.
Another aspect is that Progressive environmentalists want to eradicate the suburban, exurban and rural lifestyles. The Sierra Club and similar organizations decry sprawl and want zoning laws changed to make any area close to cities into high-density housing, preferably car-free. I suppose their hearts are in the right place, but they have declared war on a cherished aspect of the American Dream: a single-family home with yards in front and back where children can play.
I started paying attention to politics c. 2009, and I've been reading/hearing why "flyover counties" vote "against their interests" for roughly the entire time.
It's wild how the parties have flipped on who lives in terror of affluent voters. Seriously, "reuse corridors" is an absurd message to offer to rural voters. If the green lobby won't let you present a decent agenda don't say anything at all, people do not like this sort of kabuki activist messaging theatre.
~ how about rural jurors? ~
You must have missed rur jur 2: insurer furor.