Dear FSM, look at all that red.
Let’s get Computer to enhance just Tennessee as an example:
Hard to believe Republicans only won Tennessee 51% to 47% in 2000. Al Gore actually had little to do with it.
Land doesn’t vote, despite what Republicans think, and while the rest of the state has turned dark red, the remaining blue islands represent (from left to right) the population centers of Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville. Even with this massive overall shift, Republicans improved their statewide performance only 9% in 20 years. And the massive red shift of the state elides a pretty strong blue shift(1) of the population centers. But thanks to various unsavory features of the United States political system(2) (i.e, the Senate and the electoral college), rural areas are weighted disproportionately.
If historical trends hold, the Democrats will probably lose House and Senate seats this fall. This isn’t a doom diary! For the record, I believe Democrats will do better in the house than past first midterm cycles under a Democratic President. But should Democrats have a bad night (or, with our media, even have an okay night), our psychopathic media wired for republicans will wind up the mighty doom Wurlitzer and profess, among other things, that Democrats need to improve their standing among rural voters. We already had a pre-doom article on the toxicity of the democratic brand in rural America!
So how do we answer “Democrats need to win more votes in rural America”?
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First, this is a loaded question.
No one asks why Republicans don’t win the urban vote. That’s because rural America is Real America, and urban America is comprised of “Others”. It’s the same reason why press coverage of Democratic Presidents is overwhelmingly negative.
And let’s not pretend Republicans are something approaching popular.
That’s one showing over 48% since the Simpsons have been on the air.
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In order to address this question, it essential to look at what’s been happening to America during the same time as rural regions trended red.
Depopulation is conveniently shown in red in this map.
It’s not exactly perfect, but basically, the most urban counties gained population and democratic vote while the most rural counties trended more republican while losing voters. Nate Silver has more, but this makes sense from what we know about the various bases of the parties and where economic output of the Country is. 71% of the Country’s GDP is in the 16% of counties that are urban and blue.
Staggering.
I loathe an anecdotal argument, but the pattern mimics my own story, and that of my High School classmates who became professionals: every one who could leave red Florida, did so, either for a blue region in the state, or they now reside in a blue metropolitan area outside Florida.
There was a mass shooting just a few days ago in Arkansas. Mass shootings don’t even make the news anymore. It took place in a rural Arkansas county that lost 50% of the population since 2000.
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But the system is still rigged to disproportionately favor rural areas, and despite Republicans being less popular than Democrats, they still have managed to win about half the time in the same 20 years. Democrats may feel the solution is to direct good paying jobs to rural areas. But look what happened when an electric truck factory tried to come to a rural Georgia county promising 7500 good paying jobs.
It is billed as the largest economic development project in the history of Georgia, an electric vehicle factory that could grow to be five times as large as the Pentagon and produce as many as 400,000 emissions-free trucks a year.
The factory, to be built by the upstart electric automaker Rivian, is being heralded by many as a transformational $5 billion investment that will invigorate the local economy with 7,500 new green jobs and help accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy.
But then…
Speaking to a couple hundred local residents in a leafy park, Mr. Perdue invoked George Soros, the prominent Democratic donor whose hedge fund owns $2 billion in Rivian stock and who is a frequent target of conservatives…. “We can grow the economy without selling out and giving our tax dollars to people like George Soros,” Mr. Perdue said to cheers. “We can invest in rural Georgia without kicking our communities to the curb.”
That’s right. It’s not 7500 good paying jobs. It’s 7500 George Soros jobs.
Biden has promised $65 billion for rural boradband. Rural America, despite all the other problems it faces, has become a news desert. Will providing broadband help? Or will it be George Soros broadband?
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This isn’t to malign rural Americans.
There are still large numbers of Democratic voters in even the reddest of counties, and there are large swathes of blue areas in red states.
The need to win rural Americans crops up, usually after electoral setbacks, sometimes merging with the need for a 50-state strategy. When it invariably crops up again, Democrats shouldn’t compromise what they believe in to win voters who may not even be gettable.
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(1) From Wikipedia: Biden was able to improve his support in the Nashville metropolitan area, gaining 64.5% of the vote in Davidson County, the best Democratic performance in the county since FDR won 72.1% of the vote in 1944. At the same time, Biden also made gains in the Nashville suburban counties of Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson, Sumner, and Cheatham, performing considerably better than Hillary Clinton in 2016. For example, Biden lost Rutherford County, anchored by Murfreesboro, only by 56.6% to 41.2%, much lower than Clinton's 25.9-point loss in 2016. Additionally, he narrowed Trump's margins in Hamilton County--anchored by Chattanooga--only losing it by 9.7 points, the best Democratic performance there since Bill Clinton lost the county by 6.5% in 1996; and with 44.1% of the popular vote, the best Democratic percentage since Carter's 48% in 1976, consequently losing by 2.8 points. This is the first time a Democrat has even garnered 40% of the vote in Rutherford County since 2000 ...
(2) To one day be abolished.
