If you've lived in the city your entire life as I have, then your understanding of rural (perhaps even outer suburban) life is probably somewhat limited. We city slickers tend to consider ourselves urbane, sophisticated, maybe even superior in some respects to those people who live "out there" somewhere. We can't really comprehend why they like living there - bereft of all the conveniences of modern life, away from all the glitter and excitement of city life, and unable to benefit from museums, theaters, and other such cultural attractions. Sometimes we even feel sorry for them although we're not quite sure why.
Could it be, as this terrific article by Barbara Kingsolver in last week's issue of Mother Jones magazine points out, that our perception and understanding of them, if not inherently flawed, is limited only by our own city-centric existence?
The frequent theme in discussions centering on this urban-nonurban divide with my city friends goes something like this: who in their right mind would take rural America seriously for it surely isn't a bastion of the kind of enlightened, progressive thinking that would move this country forward. The civil rights, feminist, anti-poverty, and other such progressive movements have largely had their origins in urban America.
The cultural lines seem to be well-defined in our popular imagination
"Urban" is relative. But the bottom line is that it matters. The antipathy in our culture between the urban and nonurban is so durable it has its own vocabulary:
- (A) city slicker, tenderfoot;
- (B) hick, redneck, hayseed, bumpkin, rube, yokel, clodhopper, hoecake, hillbilly, Dogpatch, Daisy Mae, farmer's daughter, from the provinces, out of Deliverance.
Maybe you see where I'm going with this. The list is lopsided. I don't think there's much doubt, on either side, as to which class is winning the culture wars.
This article, while ostensibly addressing the struggles of farmers to market their organically-grown tomatoes and their inability to seek fair prices for their products, also discusses two other themes (one explicitly, the other not) prominent in our political discourse in recent years: the red-blue political divide among our fifty states and the growing threat of global competition.
* The Red-Blue Political Divide
First, a few thoughts on the red-blue divide. This recent diary by jjacinto discusses how successful political coalitions were formed by the Democratic and Republican parties throughout the 20th century and what might help the Democratic Party in the future.
A couple of weeks ago, I watched former Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ) on The Charlie Rose Show discussing his new book, The New American Story in which he made the perfectly sensible suggestion of moving election day to weekends rather than cling to a tradition of holding elections on Tuesdays based on some 18th century considerations. Participation, he predicted, would approach 80% or more and negate the oft-cited excuse by those who do not vote in elections - mostly working class Americans who cannot afford to take a few hours off on a work day. If, as many analysts believe, greater participation would benefit the Democratic Party, why doesn't our side make this a signature issue and advocate change?
In another recent interview, Bradley summarized his opinions on this artificial red-blue political divide we've become so familiar with in recent years
The biggest lie in American politics is the red/blue divide. When you go to your son's or daughter's Little League game, you don't say to yourself, "I wonder if the parent sitting next to me is ‘red' or ‘blue.'" ALL Americans want a good life for themselves and their families. They want to be proud of their country and want it to live up to its ideals.
If one looks at the state-by-state vote percentages for Kerry and Bush in the 2004 Election (you can analyze the data several different ways through the available options), the losing candidate, John Kerry or George W. Bush, received more than 43% of the popular vote in more than half (26 to be exact) of the 50 states. The breakdown where the losing candidate received
- > 43% of the vote - CT (7 EV's), NC (15) and WV (5) = 3 states.
- > 44% of the vote - CA (55), IL (21), ME (4), AR (6), and AZ (10) = 5 states.
- > 45% of the vote - DE (3), HI (4), WA (11), and VA (13) = 4 states.
- > 46% of the vote - NJ (15) and MO (11) = 2 states.
- > 47% of the vote - MI (17), MN (9), OR (7), CO (9), FL (27), and NV (5) = 6 states.
- > 48% of the vote - PA (21), NH (4), and OH (20) = 3 states.
- > 49% of the vote - WI (10), IA (7), and NM (4) = 3 states.
In 2004, Kerry won 14 states with 188 electoral votes where Bush received between 43%-49% of the votes. Likewise, Bush won 12 states with 133 EV's where Kerry received 43%-49% of the votes. Overall, Bush's winning margin was 2.46% - 50.73%-48.27%.
Two years later, in the next nation-wide elections for the US House of Representatives in 2006, the Democratic Party won it with an overall margin of 6.4% - 52%-45.6%. For the the 1/3rd of US Senate races in play, the Democratic margin was even more impressive, 11.4% - 53.8-42.4%. Does it suggest that the 2008 Election would likely resemble the 2006 rather than the 2004 Election? While it would be foolish to compare a Presidential (2004) to a Congressional election (2006), it is clear which way the political winds are blowing.
Does the closeness of the 2004 vote in these 26 states really represent a red-blue divide? Not according to Kingsolver
Symptomatic of this rural-urban identity crisis is our eager embrace of a recently imposed divide: the red states and the blue states. That color map comes to us with the suggestion that both coasts are populated by educated civil libertarians, while the vast middle and south are crisscrossed with the studded tracks of atvs leaving a trail of flying beer cans and rebel yells.
In fact, the politics of rural regions are no more predictable than those in cities. "Conservative" is a reasonable position for a farmer who can lose home and livelihood all in one year by taking a risk on a new crop. But that's "conservative" as in, "eager to conserve what we have, reluctant to change the rules overnight," and unrelated to how the term is currently (often incomprehensibly) applied in party politics.
Given this history, one might expect the so-called red states to vote consistently for candidates supporting working-class values. In fact, our nation in almost every region is divided in a near dead heat between two parties that don't distinguish themselves clearly along class lines. If every state were visually represented with the exact blend of red and blue it earned in recent elections, we'd have ourselves a big purple country. The tidy divide is a media Just So story.
* Free Trade and Misplaced Priorities
Does the hustle and bustle of city life prevent us from paying sufficient attention to and subconsciously contribute to our lack of understanding of the problems of the working rural people? The MSM, based in the large urban centers in this country, often bombard us with never-ending opinions and discussions of global competition and free trade by the high priests of globalization such as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. For an honest discussion on the virtues of free trade and outsourcing, read this incisive article by former Clinton Administration economist, Alan Blinder, in this past Sunday's Washington Post.
Kingsolver adds
There must be some reason why we don't want to think about or compensate these hardworking men and women. The psychic divide between rural working class and urban middle is surely a part of the problem. "Eaters must understand," Wendell Berry writes, "that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." Eaters must understand, he claims, but it sure looks like most eaters don't. If they did, how would we frame the message to farmers suggested by today's food-buying habits? "Let them eat dirt" is hardly overstating it. The urban U.S. middle class appears more immediately concerned about exploited Asian factory workers.
Rightly or wrongly, the Democratic Party is perceived as an urban party while the Republicans are identified as a largely suburban/rural party. As Kingsolver points out, we cannot be thought of as the party more concerned with the plight of foreign workers at the expense of rural Americans struggling to meet ends. If the stock market is at record levels, why has economic anxiety increased substantially amongst the middle and working classes? Few, if any, of the economic analysts point out that more than 80% of stocks are held by less than 20% of those invested in the stock market. Contrary to what the 'Investor Class' types tell us about the health of the macro economy, one only has to look at Bush's poll numbers to understand the public's disapproval of how he has handled of the economy.
* Dual Citizenship
Kingsolver on how rural people perceive themselves
Most rural people of my acquaintance would not gladly give up their status. Like other minorities, we've managed to turn several of the aforementioned slurs into celebrated cultural identifiers (for use by insiders only). In my own life I've had ample opportunity to reinvent myself as a city person—to pass, as it were—but I've remained tacitly rural-identified in my psyche. It's probably this dual citizenship that has sensitized me to how urban-rural antipathy affects people in both camps. Rural concerns are less covered by the mainstream media, and often considered intrinsically comic. The policy of our nation is made in cities, controlled largely by urban voters who aren't well informed about the changes on the face of our land, and the men and women who work it.
What Kingsolver alludes to is a mindset that exists among some of our national Democratic politicians. A certain Hillary Clinton comes to mind though she's not the only one - politicians who (in some ways) have shed their rural or suburban persona to reinvent themselves as 'city sophisticates.' How did they achieve this? By bettering themselves through our system of meritocracy. You perhaps know the story well as it may even mirror your own or your parents' life story. It is a story that many of us are familiar with: get a college education, perhaps a graduate or professional degree from an elite institution, move to the inner city, get a decent-paying job, acquire new material possessions, get 'busy,' and comfortable. Why worry about those struggling to meet ends? After all, 'we' who are successful are here because this meritocratic system of ours provided us the opportunities, and why shouldn't we pursue our own selfish dreams? It is, as many classical economists tell us, the essence of capitalism. Doggedly pursue your own self interest. The resulting benefits will accrue not only to you but others. In other words, the classic 'trickle down' theory of economics popularized during the Reagan Era.
Admirable as it might be in a country that values excellence and achievement in life, what this upward mobility also brings with it is a certain arrogance, insularity, and perhaps an inability to talk to those not so fortunate and left behind. Contrast this with Democratic politicians of the past (and patricians no less) like Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy who were wildly popular with the traditional working classes whose cause the Democratic Party has historically championed and still pretends to represent.
It is probably no coincidence that the last three Democratic presidents (Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton) have all come from small town America. If you add Al Gore - who won the popular vote and by many accounts, the electoral vote too in 2000 - that would make it four. Two of the four (Clinton and Gore) would be what Kingsolver calls "dual citizens," with roots in the rural south but by education, family background, or outlook, also identifying with urban sophisticates.
* A Few Tentative Conclusions
I urge you all to go read this superbly written article. It will sensitize you to the concerns of the rural folks that the writer so identifies with. Some are poor, others not. Some are 'red'; others 'blue' with most falling somewhere in between the two. Pay no attention to this media-created artificial divide. It is decidedly unproductive. Many of them are, so to speak, aching for a Democratic candidate to 'connect' with them.
Beginning with Howard Dean's election as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2005, the Democratic Party focussed on a '50-State Strategy' designed to make it competitive all over the country rather than a select few states. Dean understood that by conceding large chunks of states to the Republicans, Democrats were shrinking the playing field which significantly reduced its margin of error in elections. Coming from a rural state (Vermont supposedly has more sheep than human beings), Dean's vision was to come to fruition in the 2006 Election. Joining forces with Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) of the DSCC and Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-5th/IL) of the DCCC, Dean was instrumental in selecting candidates such as Heath Shuler, Brad Ellsworth, Claire McCaskill, and others. Our party allowed such candidates to advocate issues and positions that did not necessarily conform to party orthodoxy. And we were successful.
Will the Democratic Party continue to heed their concerns, listen to their voices, and replicate its successful 2006 strategy at the national level in 2008? If it does that and continues on this path of allowing state and local candidates political flexibility and freedom to really represent their constituents within a big political tent, we will forge political majorities for years, if not decades, to come.
The continued unpopularity of the Iraq War/Occupation and never-ending charges of political corruption within the Republican Party presents the Democrats with an historic opportunity. It should use it in the 2008 Election to end, once and for all, this artificially created tension between red and blue America. It is a political divide that perhaps need not exist.
To end it would be to achieve what political scientists often refer to as a political realignment.