We Democrats have an urban problem. We live in cities for the most part. We relate to people in cities. We may have family in rural areas but they see us as outliers, people who choose to reject the traditions of Family Life.
There are families in urban areas. But pointing out this obvious fact does not appear to help us. We have become the enemy. We are the contrast the rest of the country needs to identify themselves as better, more pure. They have rivers and trees. We have cars... endless, endless cars. Traffic is the proof of all that is wrong with the city. Public transportation is largely a pipe dream in most communities... and we know the oil industry wishes to continue to make it so.
Yet, something has been forgotten. FDR brought electricity to rural communities. The Democrats updated the 'rest' of the United States and gave them the resources they needed to survive in a modern world.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected by the Great Depression. The enterprise was a result of the efforts of Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska. TVA was envisioned not only as a provider, but also as a regional economic development agency that would use federal experts and electricity to rapidly modernize the region's economy and society.
TVA's service area covers most of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small slices of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. It was the first large regional planning agency of the federal government and remains the largest. Under the leadership of David Lilienthal ("Mr. TVA"), TVA became a model for America's governmental efforts to seek to assist in the modernization of agrarian societies in the developing world.[1]
The Federal Government modernized the very communities that now hate the Federal Government. Yet time has passed.
Now voters in rural areas hate the Government and do everything they can to cut taxes. Kansas eliminated the income tax recently. Missouri is soon to follow. People will suffer. Sales taxes and even property taxes are regressive. The poor and middle class pay while the rich buy an extra condo.
We can throw up our hands and say these voters deserve what they get. Or we can repair the breach that will soon come.
People who know better must do their best. The rural and urban share the same burden: we are subsidizing the rich. I don't want to win anymore. I want those of us who are losing to join common cause. Stop pretending other poor people are our enemy and find a way to talk to them.