It seems about time for me to pontificate in the period between the election and the new Congress. I don’t know about you, but I plan on savoring the moment when Nancy Pelosi picks up the gavel in January. But I digress. Tonight I am going to think about rural Democrats, rural lean Democrats, and rural pragmatists. The Progressive movement needs a language that bridges the experience between rural America and every one else. It could be the difference between victory and decisive victory in 2020.
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Inspiration for tonight’s diary comes from an article I found on FB this week from Iowa Starting Line that addresses the concept of finding a common language between urban and rural voters. I’m not talking about reaching out to anyone from the “Basket of Deplorables”, including the asshats who decided it was funny to identify with them. I’m talking about Democrat leaning, former Union working, and in need of Universal Health Care more than possibly any other population in the country.
WHAT MANY DEMOCRATS STILL DON’T GET ABOUT RURAL CAMPAIGNING — Iowa Starting Line
As Iowa Democrats pick up the pieces from another stinging statewide loss, a lot of focus has been paid to the party’s continued lopsided defeats throughout rural Iowa. Carrying only 11 counties statewide, as [Dem candidate Fred] Hubbell did against Governor Kim Reynolds, simply doesn’t cut it no matter how huge the vote margins are out of the state’s urban centers.
...
But for the purposes of this piece, I want to keep the focus solely on what Democrats could be doing differently when stumping in small towns. Because after following along on some trips with many different candidates over the past four years and observing the rest of their schedules and social media feeds, I came away with one big, recurring concern.
Too often, when Democrats campaign in rural Iowa, it seems like they’re campaigning for the city administrator’s vote and little else.
What does this mean? Well the author draws three very interesting conclusions from their observations. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Dem candidates’ time on the ground in rural Iowa is repeatedly too wonky and spent with the people already pretty likely to support them. And by them, the author means the professional class.
Finally, Dems rarely see more of any county in Iowa than the county seat. I don’t know if that means anything to the person reading this. What it boils down to is the equivalent of someone going to Times Square and Rockefeller Center and saying that they know New York City. There is a big difference in rural America between the county seat and the rest of the county. Here’s the thing about rural America. They are spread the heck out.
Think about every politician’s tour through rural America that you have seen on tv. They all look the same, for a very simple reason. They are focused, designed, and tightly controlled message ads that can be expected to reach the appropriate audience via the local news, both print and tv.
But in today’s world of declining small-town newspapers, a rural populace that increasingly gets its news from social media and that is distrustful of both the mainstream media and Democrats, that approach just doesn’t feel like it’s enough anymore. It’s still useful, but that alone doesn’t cut it.
And that’s a real problem for Democratic politicians in Iowa. Getting through the social media echo chamber is tough and sometimes face to face contact is the only way to do it. That means doing what Dave Loebsack in IA-2 does. Going to the small town grocery stores and VFW halls and diners is the way to go.
With the current state of the political divide between urban and rural America, the first thing Democratic politicians need to do is relate on a human level. Honestly, the GOP scare machine and Facebook troll sites do a great job of dehumanizing Democrats and especially the national party leaders.
I saw the ads that the GOP ran against Cindy Axne, who won my district. They made a vote for Axne a vote for Nancy Pelosi, who was then cartoonishly demonized. And the lesson of Willie Horton is that you just need to keep kicking up dust to keep the dog whistle echoing.
Sometimes a Democratic politician just needs to prove they don’t have horns face to face with a voter. I’m serious. People place a lot of power on feeling like a politician represents and understands them. That is something very powerful, especially to people in high context societies.
Places like rural America where you know fewer people but to a greater depth of knowledge. The opposite of urban life. And that’s a bit of a problem. But the author saves their best aim for the biggest problem facing Democrats in rural America.
The even bigger problem here relates back to something that was repeated time and time again from Democratic candidates during the primary: that voters in rural and urban areas actually care about the same issues. That’s the biggest load of bullshit I heard during 2018, and I heard it a lot.
A more accurate description would be that the same issues that impact voters in urban areas also impact voters in rural areas. What voters in both places care about and vote on is lightyears apart. That’s something that Democrats simply have not been able to understand. In some ways, Democrats’ insistence that the two groups care about the same thing is a cop-out so that they don’t have to reevaluate their campaigns.
And that’s an important difference, care about versus impacted by. And the author is right. I don’t feel that the Democratic party understands that rural voters place value and care about things that happen right in front of them. And there’s really only one way to get in front of them.
The author concludes ...
That’s also an important lesson for Democrats’ crop of 2020 presidential candidates who will soon be descending upon Iowa. For the purposes of winning the Iowa Caucus, they too could stick to a safe campaign approach in rural Iowa, tailoring their events to meet the 35% of people who are already voting for Democrats (and who are likely to caucus).
But if they really want to figure out how to win back Midwestern states, it wouldn’t hurt to spend some of their time in Iowa stopping by those Hy-Vees and fish fries and VFWs where they can meet the kind of voter who stopped trusting the party in recent years. It would certainly help Iowa Democrats in future races if those folks saw the party’s national leaders as real human beings that they could relate to. And the candidates might just have a bit of fun while doing it.
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