How can Dems win rural voters?

[DINGO Joe]

Well, rural areas used to be more swingy with "farm revolts" and such and they usually swung against the incumbent party because, well rural America has been in decline for decades now.  I mean, I've been traveling back to rural NE Iowa for 50 years now and it's really become a hollowed out, almost feudal place over that time.  Once upon a time every 40 to 80 acres had a house but then there was a trend of farmers moving to "town" (often smaller than 500) and you'd have these tidy towns with their brick main streets.  Nothing fancy but Rockwellian.  Sometimes the farm house would be rented out to the kids or farmhands, but the kids moved away and improved mechanization required fewer farm hands and the farms started getting bigger so the houses were torn down because they're on top of good soil that could be another 1/2 acres to farm.  Now the farms are 400 to 600 acres or larger and the houses left can been quite fancy with huge metal buildings holding all the machinery.  The little towns are where the small farmers who sold out or went bankrupt live out their lives and are showing their age or completely abandoned because nobody wants to live here anymore.  The main street is gap toothed with buildings torn or burned down with the occasional metal building to replace something (rural America loves corrugated metal these days).  It's pretty depressing and no reason to think anyone could make it better.

So, unless a rural area has recreational or retirement mecca opportunities they've just become places where the local old people live out their days. There still are the remaining corporate farmers and they are getting record subsidies at this point, but the fewer farm hands needed are more likely to be guest workers than locals.  When your population pyramid reaches a certain point it's hard to attract even a modest sized manufacturer  Rural places along the interstates or near a metro have done somewhat better because they are in the pathways of commerce  but even these places are only "better" because they have the Walmart and the gas station/food marts, or thanks to the Interstate a distribution center.

There is the lower cost of living in rural America and the suggestion that with better internet these places could attract remote workers and maybe that'll help close to a metro, but don't expect a wave of these folks .  It's just not gonna happen.  And the most recent wave of the COVID has proven that rural America isn't a haven from pandemics and in fact local stupidity has made it worse.

So, this is really a "state of rural America" post rather than how to appeal to them.  Can't really tell them they are going to be great again, unless you wish to lie to them.  I mean nationally, the population growth is slowing down and the boomers will die off actuarially speaking.  Unless a young person gets to take over the farm, they will go places with better opportunities.  That's been happening  since WWII.  You can make some investment in IT put some on the modern Interstate that is the internet, but how much infrastructure investment should be made on roads and the like in areas with fewer and fewer people is highly questionable.  Japan has a program that consolidates the population in rural areas into more sustainable locales, but I can't imagine rural America accepting anything like that except in an extreme environmental or natural disaster situations. 

So, this is a long post to essentially say...nothing.