Put simply, they don’t. Their near-messianic support for Trump - a big-city businessman who in terms of background couldn’t have any less in common with these people - proves that they will just march in lockstep with whatever and whoever the GOP puts in front of them. It’s all too painfully evident in the vast majority of county-by-county election result maps. The D’s future lies in suburbs, metropolitan areas, areas with growing urban centres drawing in young and educated voters. They need to keep bringing down the margins in long-standing solid R suburban counties like the WOWs in Wisconsin or Hamilton, Indiana. Places like Missouri and Ohio are only going to be competitive again if the D’s start flipping some of the counties around the major cities, turning isolated blue dots into larger blue clusters on the map.
Most “small” business owners who practically act like they own the town through having good will with the mayor/city government or being a major employer don’t act much differently from Trump. These people provide the town with access to capital, which can be converted to social capital the closer they are to the social network of these businessmen.
I would be interested to see the future of voting patterns of rural and/or exurban places with Amazon warehouses as the social dynamic would be a lot different as connecting with your manager is different from connecting with the owner—then again these areas are probably located in logistically key areas. I guess one way to look at it is to see what social dynamics were present when Walmart and other department stores became a one-stop shop and employer against small businesses and what political ramifications of that were.
