The Daily Escape:
Trump barn, Ohio –  photo by Dan Keck via
The Democrats are soul-searching about why they can’t win the US rural vote. Many believe the Democrats underperformed in fly-over America, and they’re asking (again) if rural America is lost to them forever.
According to the Economic Innovation Group, the rural Midwest counties Biden won had population growth that averaged 1.8% over the past 10 years, while counties Trump won saw an average population decline of 2.5%:
“…16 rural counties flipped from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020…12 flipped from Clinton in 2016 to Trump in 2020.”
So, not much change. Over the past 50 years, the Midwest has seen out-migration, economic stagnation, young people leaving and small towns withering. They turned rightward and have largely stayed there. Is rural America worth fighting for?
Estimates of rural populations across the US suggest roughly 20% of Americans live in them. Rural areas are not exclusive to states that gave all their electors to Trump. New York and California have plenty of rural spaces and voters. Wrongo’s county in Democratic Connecticut is largely rural, and voted for Trump in 2016 and by a lower margin in 2020.
Yet, given the Electoral College, it is difficult to fashion a durable political majority if Democrats write off most of exurban and rural America. Let’s briefly look at Iowa and Wisconsin.
In Iowa, Trump won the state by 8.3 percentage points this year. GW Bush won in 2004 by 0.7 percentage points. He was the first GOP presidential candidate to carry Iowa in 20 years. Obama won with 54% in 2008 and 52% in 2012. Trump won with 51.7% in 2016, and with 53% in 2020.
Trump carried 93 rural counties, while Biden carried all six of Iowa’s urban counties. Republicans now represent all or parts of 97 of Iowa’s 99 counties.
Wisconsin flipped to blue by six-tenths of a percentage point. Biden won in 14 counties. From Martin Longman at Progress Pond:
“Wisconsin’s Dunn County is in the central part of the state, over 96% white, and represented by Democrat Ron Kind in Congress. Not far from Eau Claire, the rural area voted for Barack Obama twice, but in 2016 Donald Trump won it with 52% to 41%, a 2,000-vote advantage over Hillary Clinton. In 2020, running against Joe Biden, Trump carried Dunn County 56-42, giving him a 3,300-vote edge.”
Bill Hogseth, the chair of the county’s Democratic Party, wrote a piece for Politico Magazine, explaining that the national Democratic Party doesn’t take rural issues seriously enough to get support from rural Wisconsinites. From Hogseth:
“For Democrats to start telling a story that resonates, they need to show a willingness to fight for rural people, and not just by proposing a “rural plan” or showing up on a farm for a photo op…A big step forward for Democrats would be to champion antitrust enforcement and challenge the anticompetitive practices of the gigantic agribusiness firms that squeeze our communities. In his rural plan, Biden pledged to “strengthen antitrust enforcement,” but the term doesn’t appear until the 35th bullet point. For rural voters, antitrust enforcement is a top priority…”
Hogseth is talking about Democratic neglect. Elizabeth Warren made anti-trust and the breakup of big companies’ part of her primary campaign. That’s good policy, and if it helps win some rural votes, even better.
Republicans aren’t talking about anti-monopoly anywhere in America. A generous Farm Bill channeled money into rural areas and the Trump administration’s trade relief payments to farmers have helped maintain rural Republican support. Hogseth says Democratic neglect leaves:
“…an opening for other stories to be told to fill the vacuum—stories that villainize and divide us along racial, geographic and partisan lines.”
People don’t make decisions based solely on a rational analysis, or on self-interest. They don’t believe in the Democrats’ promises to improve things, because Dems haven’t delivered on them in the past 40 years. They need a villain to blame. Trump, and the GOP (and every other nationalist movement in history) gives them just that.
The center-left should be rejoicing, but their down-ballot results are a cause for concern. Today, Democrats are fighting about whether they should be more progressive, or remain moderate going forward.
One reason that Trump got 74+ million votes was because Democrats never mobilized the working class against him. Instead, they mobilized to win suburbia. That gave Biden the presidency, but it also keeps our enduring governmental gridlock in place.
Time to relax a bit on this December Saturday. Today, Connecticut is waiting on a snow storm that in typical nor’easter fashion, could dump 10+ inches, or miss us entirely.
Still, we have time to take a few minutes, turn away from our email, and listen to Harpist Silke Aichhorn play Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers” from his Nutcracker Suite. It was written as a ballet in 1892, and has been enjoyed around the holidays ever since:
I get particularly annoyed at how Democrats get blamed because small town American is in decline. It is in decline for two primary reasons, the first is Ag policy which was to get big or get out. It emphasized commodity crops and exaggerated the decline of smaller mixed farms. What this led to was ever greater mechanization and the reduction of jobs in rural American for “farm hands”, and the reduction of minor crops meant that services (like a place to process chickens for example) disappeared meaning that agriculture in many towns become large monocultures.
The second reason is the decline of small crafts industries from furniture making to the making of leather goods like shoes that consumed locally based raw materials. Our trade policy ignored that value of these manufacturing businesses and so we watched them disappear without comment. Harden Furniture was one example – they even had their own forest for wood. But their beautiful furniture lost the middle class market as cheap furniture that was made with industrial staples replaced their dowelled pieces. Harden is no more.
The second change was accompanied by Walmart which destroyed the downtowns. In the old days, a hardware store and a toy store would serve some of what Walmart does. The hardware store employed men who knew parts and how to repair a toilet or replace a sump pump. The toystore would employ a man to assemble bicycles etc. Walmart removed all those jobs.
Democrats had little to do with any of this – and they tried to create programs to help those who lost their jobs. Foodstamps are one program that was once more generous – I needed foodstamps in 1980 when I lost 2 jobs in a row in Dayton Ohio. Republican keep trying to cut back, and when a good idea emerges, like subsidized day care or free college, they oppose vehemently.
The information infrastructure of full of glib slogans that sound good in thrifty rural America, slogans like personal responsibility, and pro-growth tax cuts.
No suggestions for how to turn this around.