Democrats won more votes than Republicans for senate, and presidency and possibly the house. And yet they control no branch of government. Why? Because rural voters have far more power than they deserve. We should not change our values to get more rural voters but change our tactics to win more elections.
Democrats win cities by overwhelming majorities, this election more than ever. For example despite winning the popular vote by less than Obama in 2012, Clinton flipped the republican stronghold of Orange County, CA. The problem is Democrats are winning these districts by so much they are wasting a lot of votes at the congressional level and at the presidential level it doesn’t matter how much the democrats run up the score in CA.
So what is the solution to this? Many will say democrats should try harder to reach voters in rural areas and there is some truth to this. Running culturally conservative candidates in many districts, similar to the 50 state strategy of Howard Dean could be helpful. But at the end of the day the values of the cities of inclusivity and diversity, are better than the values of the racial resentment and a anger at the rate of cultural change (a primarily imagined increasing rate).
But then we are once again stuck with the problem of more votes and less seats. On the electoral College front our coalition will be OK in the near future. We just had an election where we lost the Midwest and had not gained enough to pick up urban states such as Texas and Arizona but soon we will. And our party will be able to win with a dual coastal strategy along with the mountain west and Texas. On the congressional front we need to focus on winning statehouses so we can gerrymander districts so the we split our large majorities in city centers to put them with the suburbs to win more congressional seats. We should also focus on making sure it's easier to vote in urban centers by adding polling places and fighting voter suppression. We must also consider if there are too many polling places in rural area’s.
Democrats should not shrink from this culture war but embrace it. Our values are better and we should fight for them.
