IceSpear was right!

[OSR stands with Israel]

Romney/Clinton Suburbs may vote Bernie the first time but after 4 years if him would turn against him big time.

Surely just like those populist obama trump voters in Missouri will switch back

A Better comparison is the Obama/Trump voters in MI/PA/WI/IA

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

People making six figures don't need to worry about paid family leave. Their companies offer it to both men and women nowadays. And at that level of income, they probably ought to send their kids to private school to keep them away from the undesirables. And I'm so sure, they want extra competition for their children in college applications and the job market.

Many, many upper middle class suburban families (if not a decisive majority) live in areas with high-performing public schools. If your local high school has top-notch academics and athletics, why bother paying over 10k/year for a private school?

Anything to keep the heathens at arm's length. No price is too high.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

We really do need to move on from the WWC. This is only going to get worse. I don't like the "economically moderate" suburbanites we're getting in exchange but our base of urban voters and minorities is progressive enough to keep the ball rolling on Medicare For All, ect.

Democrats turning into the suburban Dallas CEO millionaires party is frankly terrifying. Becoming the party of snobbish country clubbers is abhorrent. A lot of these rich suburbanites probably call the cops the second they see anyone poor looking in their neighborhoods.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

We really do need to move on from the WWC. This is only going to get worse. I don't like the "economically moderate" suburbanites we're getting in exchange but our base of urban voters and minorities is progressive enough to keep the ball rolling on Medicare For All, ect.

Democrats turning into the suburban Dallas CEO millionaires party is frankly terrifying. Becoming the party of snobbish country clubbers is abhorrent. A lot of these rich suburbanites probably call the cops the second they see anyone poor looking in their neighborhoods.

Those type of people still vote Republican.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The plural of anecdote is not data.

[Adam Griffin]

I could say a lot about this, but I guess I'll just keep it simple.

So, for example, anybody who has spent considerable time in field in predominantly-Latino and/or nascent immigrant communities will tell you that you can't just pop in and start generating the kinds of meaningful interactions that'll produce votes. There's an element of community and trust that must be there long-term to generate the kinds of conversations that get beyond the superficial and the groupthink.

The same can definitely be said about rural communities, especially when it's an urban LGBT organizer who's flown in for 4 months to work in hostile territory and who may or may not even know how to effectively communicate with these voters.

Seriously, Adam Griffin is the best part of this forum.

In addition, I also think simply retreating from rural areas and abandoning all existing infrastructure is a surefire way to bleed even more voters. Again, 20% is better than 0%.

Truly! We should have just locked this thread after my post.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Unless it's about West Virginia, I've found that IceSpear is usually right on the money with most things.

[lfromnj]

Unless it's about West Virginia, I've found that IceSpear is usually right on the money with most things.

yeah if he makes a bold predictions he is usually right. Its mostly because most of atlas and half the pundits are idiots and refuse to understand fundamentals.
Lean D comstock while Cockburn = tossup

[Calthrina950]

Unless it's about West Virginia, I've found that IceSpear is usually right on the money with most things.

And even with West Virginia, he's more on point than most of us here. He was one of the few who believed that it would be a close race, and it was.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Quite a few good and thoughtful points in the below post (I'm not being sarcastic for once) but I'll respond to a couple of points.

2. Rural areas are continuing to get worse economically. Since the Great Recession, job growth has been abysmal in this part of America while it has improved significantly in urban and suburban America. If you think your ability to land a decent, secure, and well paying job is difficult in an urbanized area, it’s way, way harder in rural America. Outside of retail and a few other industries (mostly low wage), steady work doesn’t even exist in many rural areas. And it hasn’t always been this way (which is a significant factor).

It's not so clean to separate true economic anxiety (the unironic kind) from racial resentment. Lots of job growth in these areas come from ag. plants which employ mostly Latinos, including a fair number of immigrants. There has been a lot of reporting on how the changes that come with an influx of non-white labor changes the community, and (unsurprisingly) a lot of the sentiment revolves around community change separate from work displacement. Here is a good, recent piece about changes in Ben Sasse's hometown wrought by the opening of a Costco poultry plant. Lots of interesting stuff in here, including my own personal observation that a lot of the people in town lobbying for the opening of the plant are typical "Chamber of Commerce"-type Republicans rather than the WWC voters we've come to associate with Trumpism. Which brings me to another point...

You must be logged in to read this quote.

There's some stuff in here I agree with but I think we have a tendency to dismiss political and economic elites as only existing in urban areas and specifically on the Coasts. I don't think you're explicitly doing it here, but there's a hazy specter of it in this post, so I'll address it. Power operates at several different scales, and one can find several scales of power concentration in these urban areas. Even though commercialization of farming has brought several agriculture into cities (this is a process that's been happening for over a hundred years) some farmers still have considerable economic, social, and political power. This is true also in other land uses like resource extraction - powerful people in these industries still live, work, worship, etc. in these areas. Your point about cultural resentment (I think framing it as indifference is half-correct) is well taken but that's not just directed at the Jeff Bezos's of the world, it's also directed as the local farmer who holds disproportionate sway in the state cattle lobby or the farmer who has the ear of the state agricultural comissioner.

Also I'll agree to disagree on how much a $15 minimum wage would help depressed rural areas.

[DINGO Joe]

Good article/post. 

[Landslide Lyndon]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You know NOTHING about Averroes.. Very very obviously. Or the geography of New York state.

I'm envious of this doppelganger of mine that's posting from a place where milk cows don't outnumber adults with college degrees several times over.

You know, maybe that's the problem with you.
Maybe you should try to confer more with people instead of cows.

[RINO Tom]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You know NOTHING about Averroes.. Very very obviously. Or the geography of New York state.

I'm envious of this doppelganger of mine that's posting from a place where milk cows don't outnumber adults with college degrees several times over.

You know, maybe that's the problem with you.
Maybe you should try to confer more with people instead of cows.

Not your best effort ... which means it's REALLY lame, LOL.

[Landslide Lyndon]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You know NOTHING about Averroes.. Very very obviously. Or the geography of New York state.

I'm envious of this doppelganger of mine that's posting from a place where milk cows don't outnumber adults with college degrees several times over.

You know, maybe that's the problem with you.
Maybe you should try to confer more with people instead of cows.

Not your best effort ... which means it's REALLY lame, LOL.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Santander]

IceSpear is always right.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I'd like to hear the same individual quoted in the OP go to a Muslim-majority banlieue in France and make a #thread about it.

"I got asked by locals why I wasn't covering my head and why I was in favor of killing Muslim babies in Palestine, and was told by an old Muslim man living in filth that he was worried about “the Jews and Crusaders."

----

Religious issues were what people wanted to talk about on the doors, not racism, poverty, unemployment, neighborhood segregation, or anything else.  I simply didn’t see the Liberal-Apologist-For-Islam narrative reflected on the ground."

[IceSpear]

IceSpear is always right.

Look, I'll be the first to admit I'm excessively hyperbolic about this topic (as well as others), but if you don't realize there's a lot of truth to the Racist Hick Hypothesis you're being willfully ignorant. Race issues are at this country's core and shape the political affiliation and voting patterns of tens of millions of Americans. Always have, always will.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

An extremely online unemployed writer with multiple grad degrees has a take on whites in the rural United States.

In Iowa there are two words for that: Who cares?

Whoever was responsible for sending this person to Oskaloosa as a political organizer should be fired, escorted from the premises, and forbidden from working on any Democratic campaign.

Said the privileged white guy from his New York City apartment.

P.S. The fact that Bernie bros are having a seizure over these comments is the most convincing argument that she is telling the truth.

<assuming Averroes is from the Big Apple
<assuming Averroes is "privileged"

what planet do you live on?

[Zaybay]

IceSpear is always right.

Look, I'll be the first to admit I'm excessively hyperbolic about this topic (as well as others), but if you don't realize there's a lot of truth to the Racist Hick Hypothesis you're being willfully ignorant. Race issues are at this country's core and shape the political affiliation and voting patterns of tens of millions of Americans. Always have, always will.

I will agree with you on this, but I think its more nuanced than this, and that other factors, such as geography, candidate popularity, among others are just as strong.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

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Lmao what? This is so f****** stupid. Wiki says Mahaska County has went Republican in every single Presidential election since 1968, Marion County in all but two (1976 and 1988). Gore lost these counties by 20 points. Does she seriously think these are the places which certain Democrats want to win back? That Sanders wants Democrats to win over conservative evangelical single issue abortion voters and people who actually care about opposing gay marriage? Christ. No wonder the Clinton campaign was such a trainwreck when they had these idiots organising for her.

[Former President tack50]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Lmao what? This is so f****** stupid. Wiki says Mahaska County has went Republican in every single Presidential election since 1968, Marion County in all but two (1976 and 1988). Gore lost these counties by 20 points. Does she seriously think these are the places which certain Democrats want to win back? That Sanders wants Democrats to win over conservative evangelical single issue abortion voters and people who actually care about opposing gay marriage? Christ. No wonder the Clinton campaign was such a trainwreck when they had these idiots organising for her.

Still, Mahaska County went from 59-39 in 2012 for Romney to 70-25 for Trump in 2016. And Marion County went from 56-42 in 2012 for Romney, to 62-31 for Trump in 2016.

These aren't counties that a democrat needs to win, but they certainly need to win back some of those rural voters and avoid being completely blown out.

So her overall hypothesis is still right, these counties are also full of Obama-Trump voters.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

She didn't say anything about Obama-Trump voters. These people sound like pretty solid Republicans.

[Badger]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Lmao what? This is so f****** stupid. Wiki says Mahaska County has went Republican in every single Presidential election since 1968, Marion County in all but two (1976 and 1988). Gore lost these counties by 20 points. Does she seriously think these are the places which certain Democrats want to win back? That Sanders wants Democrats to win over conservative evangelical single issue abortion voters and people who actually care about opposing gay marriage? Christ. No wonder the Clinton campaign was such a trainwreck when they had these idiots organising for her.

Still, Mahaska County went from 59-39 in 2012 for Romney to 70-25 for Trump in 2016. And Marion County went from 56-42 in 2012 for Romney, to 62-31 for Trump in 2016.

These aren't counties that a democrat needs to win, but they certainly need to win back some of those rural voters and avoid being completely blown out.

So her overall hypothesis is still right, these counties are also full of Obama-Trump voters.

Bingo. In 2008 my wife and I housed and Obama field volunteer for several months who is assigned to the first and fourth most Republican voting counties in Ohio. There are persuadable voters in every Community. You're going to find arguably the same ratio in a 70/30 Republican County versus a 60/40 democratic County. Admittedly, even in the last 10 years things have changed where the name of the game is turn out more than persuasion, but even there there's still the issue of turning out vote the nearly half of Voters who don't show up at the polls but might like your guy.

Organizer never had any illusions of, LOL, winning either County. Our goal was to lose by no more than 40 in my own County, which we narrowly accomplished. You add these numbers up cross 88 counties, and that's what creates a Statewide win. Winning big numbers in Cleveland and Columbus aren't going to help if you get blown out 85/15 in a host of small counties as opposed to 70/30, which is exactly what happened in 2016 and, to a lesser degree, in 2018.

[Landslide Lyndon]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Lmao what? This is so f****** stupid. Wiki says Mahaska County has went Republican in every single Presidential election since 1968, Marion County in all but two (1976 and 1988). Gore lost these counties by 20 points. Does she seriously think these are the places which certain Democrats want to win back? That Sanders wants Democrats to win over conservative evangelical single issue abortion voters and people who actually care about opposing gay marriage? Christ. No wonder the Clinton campaign was such a trainwreck when they had these idiots organising for her.

Still, Mahaska County went from 59-39 in 2012 for Romney to 70-25 for Trump in 2016. And Marion County went from 56-42 in 2012 for Romney, to 62-31 for Trump in 2016.

These aren't counties that a democrat needs to win, but they certainly need to win back some of those rural voters and avoid being completely blown out.

So her overall hypothesis is still right, these counties are also full of Obama-Trump voters.

Of course that's what she meant. But it's much easier and convenient for the bros to twist and misinterpret her words and then start attacking her as a "dumb bitch".

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Bingo. In 2008 my wife and I housed and Obama field volunteer for several months who is assigned to the first and fourth most Republican voting counties in Ohio. There are persuadable voters in every Community. You're going to find arguably the same ratio in a 70/30 Republican County versus a 60/40 democratic County. Admittedly, even in the last 10 years things have changed where the name of the game is turn out more than persuasion, but even there there's still the issue of turning out vote the nearly half of Voters who don't show up at the polls but might like your guy.

Organizer never had any illusions of, LOL, winning either County. Our goal was to lose by no more than 40 in my own County, which we narrowly accomplished. You add these numbers up cross 88 counties, and that's what creates a Statewide win. Winning big numbers in Cleveland and Columbus aren't going to help if you get blown out 85/15 in a host of small counties as opposed to 70/30, which is exactly what happened in 2016 and, to a lesser degree, in 2018.

The organiser's argument is the exact opposite of yours: "Republicans win these areas so Democrats shouldn't bother trying with any voters there since they're all deplorable". Her entire complaint is that she was canvassing in a heavily traditionally Republican county and OMG getting Republican talking points on the doorstep!!! and using that to say that Democrats shouldn't appeal to anyone in entire county, including those Obama voters who stayed home.

If the organiser had said what you said "we need to try in these places to keep the margin down because there are persuadable voters there" then she wouldn't have made that dumb as all hell tweetstorm about how rural America is deplorable and needs to be sacrificed for fiery lesbians.