Do you think that is a good thing Democrats have become more urban/suburban?

[Calthrina950]

The question is as in the title. Given the comments on this forum about "rural hicks" and about how "people vote, not land", are users on here happy that the Democrats have become predominantly the party of the cities and suburbs? Is this the direction that the Democrats should continue to think? Are there any drawbacks to this? What consequences will this development have for the future of our politics?

Discuss below.

[Bidenworth2020]

I don't think Democrats should be blamed for rural people leaving the party- we have reached out to them with candidates like Ojeda and have advocated for policies that would help them. In fact, their policies are better suited for these rural areas than the suburbs. I don't think this trend in politics is a good thing, and it is further dividing our country on purely partisan lines. However, I am annoyed that you are only pointing out dems part in this equation when they are arguably not the ones driving this shift.

[Calthrina950]

I don't think Democrats should be blamed for rural people leaving the party- we have reached out to them with candidates like Ojeda and have advocated for policies that would help them. In fact, their policies are better suited for these rural areas than the suburbs. I don't think this trend in politics is a good thing, and it is further dividing our country on purely partisan lines. However, I am annoyed that you are only pointing out dems part in this equation when they are arguably not the ones driving this shift.

I know that the Republican Party has a role to play in this process. But I was interested in exploring the issue from this angle.

[pbrower2a]

I don't think Democrats should be blamed for rural people leaving the party- we have reached out to them with candidates like Ojeda and have advocated for policies that would help them. In fact, their policies are better suited for these rural areas than the suburbs. I don't think this trend in politics is a good thing, and it is further dividing our country on purely partisan lines. However, I am annoyed that you are only pointing out dems part in this equation when they are arguably not the ones driving this shift.

What has happened is that the comparatively liberal white people have been leaving rural areas for the cities and especially the suburbs as they sell  out their small farms. The conservatives who own  the larger farms remain, and the number of votes of any kind shrinks. Places go from 60R-40D to 80R-20D while populations decline.  That might be excellent for Republicans in local elections, but it can hurt them in statewide elections because those who leave rural areas become more amenable to liberalism while attending college.  Some rural areas will become more liberal in their voting as people (largely Hispanics) who work in dairies and meat-packing establishments start voting. Those places have much the same conditions as factories, with a genuine proletariat that has often been  mistreated and exploited. The next round of union-organizing happens in such places. 

[JA]

No. We need Southern Fried Socialism and Country Kitchen Communism.

[RINO Tom]

Not completely related, but has anyone on this forum been in more than one metro area in the United States?  "Suburbs" is so incredibly broad that it can't be put into one category to describe the attitude of voters ... it is a MUCH broader term in this sense than rural or even urban.

[YE]

From an electoral and cultural prospective, no, but let me first explain how we got here and how much the democrats are at fault.

The primary influencing factors of the old New Deal coalition - the time many on this forum myself included want to see re-invented - were the Civil War (which made the South solid), the Dust Bowl (handing the Dems much of the Midwest and arguably the West), descendants of European immigrants upset over the anti-immigrant policies of the GOP (which helped the Democrats in northern areas, starting in 1928), and the Great Depression as a whole (which shifted the country towards the Dems in general). This coalition largely included Southern whites, farmers, miners, labor unions, immigrants and after 1936, blacks, and advocated successfully for a laundry list of policies that helped us prevent another Great Depression and aided the new emerging middle class shortly before and after WW2. With blacks and non-Southern whites becoming a larger portion of the Democratic voting bloc, pressure for the Dems to take action on civil rights emerged, and by the 1960's, LBJ bullied Congress into making such law. This, combined with the suburbanization of the South, basically marked the end of Dem dominance in the deep South, which leads me to my second point.

Following the rise of the 1960s counterculture, a large culture gap had emerged between the Baby Boomers and their parents. This, along with the simple fact that the middle class was well off and confident and felt less of a need of a social safety net, in turn caused our politics to become more cultural. Furthermore, the power of labor unions in the Democratic Party began to decline somewhat; the McGovern post-1968 Democratic primary reforms basically opened up the primary process to the general population and since Taft-Hartley, unions have been in a decline in general. Furthermore, a rise of TV basically marked a decline in grassroots campaigning and both political parties started listening to overpaid consultants (and on the Democratic side, was also in response to the loss of 1972 and to a lesser extent 1968) that basically encouraged the Democrats to run a bunch of TV ads and run to the center and not run on economic populism. On the GOP side, a bunch of rich dudes figured out that with politics much more cultural, one could, with the help of the Supreme Court arguing that money is speech, take advantage of a power vacuum by emphasizing culture war issues to win over rurals while also implementing policies that favored said rich dudes. Thus, the present political coalitions were born. This resulted in a North-South divide, with the Democrats doing better in places like rural New England (turned off by the rise of the religious right and to a lesser extent their economic policies) and maintaining their strongholds in diverse/urban areas from the previous realignment.

The polarization of the US gradually rose from 1980 onward. 2008, despite Democratic dominance elsewhere, saw the southern rurals be gone for the Dems outside of the black belt. The rise of Donald Trump marked some sort of change in alignment, with the North-South divide becoming more of an urban-rural divide that we see today.

How much of it is the Democrats fault? It's hard to say. The Democrats did embrace the politics of austerity quite a bit too much post-Watergate, and probably could have taken advantage of the WWC more in general pre-Trump but outside of having a Democratic president embrace NAFTA and similar policies in the 90s (that helped wreck the middle class that left them more vulnerable to Trump's nativist bullsh**t) and Clinton's stupidass campaign, more of the blame for Trump belongs in the hands of the GOP's inability to govern as well than I initially believed prior to the 2018 election.

I don't think the urban-rural divide is sustainable. A combination of a composition of the Senate with the fact that the world as a whole politically nor economically isn't stable. The middle class has been declining at home due to the influence of a few rich guys on our politics, whose tax and regulatory policies have left us vulnerable to boom and bust economic cycles and I don't think our foreign policy in the Middle East has made the world a stable place. Something is going to have to give; I'm just not sure exactly how it will play out, although some combination of a war and a recession is likely. The end result will likely be somewhat good and may very well result in a New World Order of sorts.

[Tekken_Guy]

America is predominantly an urban/suburban country. It’s clear Dems are in a much better position than the GOP is on this.

But the difference is that Dems are at least trying to reach out to Rural areas. Why do you think they were so confident in guys like Richard Ojeda, Randy Bryce, Ken Harbaugh, Gretchen Driskell, Ron DiNicola, Diane Mitsch Bush, Lisa Brown, or Amy McGrath?

On the other hand, the GOP seem to be scoffing down at the suburbs. They’re barely doing anything to reach out. Look how badly Kevin Yoder, Erik Paulsen, Barbara Comstock, Keith Rothfus, Mike Coffman, Diane Harkey, or Jay Webber did.

Trump is absolutely toxic in the suburbs but still beloved in the rurals. The political divide is increasingly becoming cultural, with cosmopolitan metro areas and parochial rural areas. Trump is doing nothing but exacerbating that divide, and the GOP seem to have given up on the suburbs. The Dems are definitely taking advantage of the gift they’ve been handed, but they’re at least trying to break through in hostile territory.

[RINO Tom]

The idea that the RNC has "given up on the suburbs," much less actively antagonizing them - a move that would leave them winning ~30% of the vote in every election - is literal insanity.

[Bidenworth2020]

Not completely related, but has anyone on this forum been in more than one metro area in the United States?  "Suburbs" is so incredibly broad that it can't be put into one category to describe the attitude of voters ... it is a MUCH broader term in this sense than rural or even urban.

I prefer a distinction between suburbs and exurbs. Suburbs are areas like sugar land in Texas, but exurbs are like Rockwall.

[Reaganfan]

In 1994, just 32 percent of Democrats said that immigrants strengthened the country. Now 84 percent do. That's a dramatic lurch to the left. That easily had some kind of effect on more rural voters.

[Bidenworth2020]

In 1994, just 32 percent of Democrats said that immigrants strengthened the country. Now 84 percent do. That's a dramatic lurch to the left. That easily had some kind of effect on more rural voters.

... So do like 50% of republicans

[Mr. Smith]

At this point, I see where the bases are as much less important than what the aims are, even if the location does play some factor into those aims.

[OSR stands with Israel]

In 1994, just 32 percent of Democrats said that immigrants strengthened the country. Now 84 percent do. That's a dramatic lurch to the left. That easily had some kind of effect on more rural voters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmgPp_nlok

http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Ronald_Reagan_Immigration.htm

[RINO Tom]

Not completely related, but has anyone on this forum been in more than one metro area in the United States?  "Suburbs" is so incredibly broad that it can't be put into one category to describe the attitude of voters ... it is a MUCH broader term in this sense than rural or even urban.

I prefer a distinction between suburbs and exurbs. Suburbs are areas like sugar land in Texas, but exurbs are like Rockwall.

That would be a perfectly logical distinction, but we have tons of simplistic posters on this site who want things to be "urban/rural divide," with "suburbs" in the urban category.  The whole point of this site is to discourage that type of seventh-grader-level #analysis with actual data.

[DINGO Joe]

Given that the population continues to become more urban and suburban, yes it's a good thing.

[HillGoose]

I wish the Republicans would do the same, then I'd definitely be able to consider myself a Republican again.

I grew up in the rural WWC. It's not noble, it's actually pretty awful and I've spent my entire life trying to get away from the community I was raised in.