They can't. You can't fight realignment.
This isn't true. Democrats aren't going to be winning the rural vote anytime soon, but like I said, there's a big difference between getting less than 30% of the rural vote and getting 35% of the rural vote, and making a concerted effort to appeal to these voters' concerns will win over some of them.
Well, you can fight realignment, but it's a bad idea. You'll just be disappointed again and again.
Rural performance for Dems seems to be more a #candidatequality thing than anything else right now. I'm not sure what more the party could do to make itself more appealing in rural areas. These rural voters don't hate the policy, they hate the D next to the person's name. We need more of those magical candidates like Joe Manchin who make people say "he's a Democrat, but he's
our Democrat." They hate the D. You can be as liberal as you want as long as you can get people to look past the D.
