I donated to a political campaign for the first time in 2020. I donated twice during the Democratic primary, once $20 and once $15. I could have spent more, but I went with a couple small donations. Figured I’d maybe volunteer or donate more during the general election.
Didn’t end up doing those things on account of all of 2020. I’d donated to a candidate who wasn’t taking PAC money. But the final candidate had no qualms with that. Watched donors throw millions into longshot senate campaigns just because they hated the incumbent. ($57 million for a South Carolina race that was never close) Sara Gideon had $10 million in campaign cash leftover in September 2021.
No state legislative houses flipped.
The House majority lost a bunch of seats
Magic had to happen to get a bare Senate Majority
Meanwhile, and the heart of this rant, is the Democratic vote share from rural areas fell to just abysmal levels, something like 35% of rural voters sent Biden their votes. Actually that’s about the exact proportion of voters in my home county in Pennsylvania that sent a vote to Biden.
Every publication is running “how Dems lost the rural vote” stuff and they’re all basically saying the same thing. Dems stopped coming around. Stopped knocking on doors. Stopped having town halls. Put all their time into boosting up turnout in the cities and swinging the suburbs. Dems saw a losing battle in rural America and decided to just cede the field.
Now I get covid had a lot to do with that. But the rural decline was started long before that. And it’s continuing now. There are almost no rural democrats in Congress anymore (shoutout Jared Golden).
Sure, fine. Gerrymandering sucks and yall did a good job fighting it in the courts and did a shitty job fighting it with legislation. But you can’t just ignore the rural areas. Especially when the fight over things you claim to believe in often occurs in those areas you just don’t pay attention to. Small towns are going to ban books. They’re going to discriminate against someone based on skin color or sexuality. Workers are going to be exploited by bosses. 60% of the land area of the US is cherry red and can do largely whatever it wants because the national democratic party has largely abdicated its responsibility to those areas. It’s mind boggling that this happened given that there was a whole ass episode of the West Wing on just this issue and it’s considered one of the best of the series.
Now I see the national party is actively spending to boost hard-right politicians in primaries in the hopes of beating them in the general. Take a second to let that marinate. Dems are BOOSTING hard-right fringe candidates. Helping them get closer and closer to the halls of congress.
The equivalent of putting a second bullet in the Russian Roulette revolver because the other guy has to use it first.
I understand the twisty logic. The GOP nominated a pedophile for Senate in Alabama in 2017 and it netted the Dems a seat. Let’s not pretend that result is replicable.
Now I see the Dems spending $425,000 boosting a far-right primary challenger to Peter Meijer, one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach 45. First off, that’s goddamned gross. I get politics is a numbers game and from their perspective a democrat is better than a pro-democracy republican, but they’re signal boosting an anti-democracy candidate! What message does that send?!
Also, if the Democratic Party has half a million dollars to spend and they want the Michigan 3rd congressional district, shouldn’t they just spend that money IN THE DISTRICT?
I did some napkin math.
Storefront in Grand Rapids Michigan: $60,000/yr.
5 well-paid full time staffers: $180,000/yr
5 well-paid part time staffers: $130,000/yr
How is this not a better investment than signal-boosting insurrectionists?
Am I just not seeing something? Seriously am I the asshole?
I watch as the few tired volunteers in my county’s democratic party struggle to have any presence at all and close up their table early at the local fair because they cant staff it and then I see the national party is running ads FOR Republicans?
I’m not sure what it’s gonna take to get the Democrats to understand that they’re going to have to get in the game for these rural votes. Appealing to younger voters would help, as they split 50/47 for Trump this cycle. Throwing us a bone in regards to marijuana or student loans or climate change could certainly help.
There just arent enough big cities and sprawling purple suburbs in Missouri and Utah and Maine and Indiana and Alaska to get a Senate majority, let alone the House. Hate Manchin all you want but he’s the only living creature on earth that can hold West Virginia with a D next to his name. The fact that the Democratic Party hasn’t just sat its campaign arm down in a room with Jon Tester every single day to figure out how he can hold a seat in Montana is negligence.
Rural America has outsized power in American politics. The Democrats can keep complaining about it or they can try and figure out how to live with it.