How can Dems win rural voters?

[Del Tachi]

They can't because everything about the contemporary Democratic Party seeths with disdain and contempt for rural people.  You can't have a liberal media/ruling class that openly ridicules "small town" values and takes aim at rural conservatives (like Bill Maher and Chelsea Handler have been doing for decades) and not expect it to affect Democrats' electoral chances in the Heartland.  The change that happened during the Obama years was two-fold:  the "Jon Stewart" generation of Democratic staffers and activists (college kids of the 1990s/2000s, basically) came into professional politics, and Democratic leadership caved to their worst instincts in painting their Tea Party opposition as "rubeish" yokels.

[Del Tachi]

You can't have a liberal media/ruling class that openly ridicules "small town" values and takes aim at rural conservatives

Not taking aim at you because this is legitimately what conservatives believe, but it's the Republican Party that thrives off attacking liberals for their lifestyle. "San Francisco/New York values" is a catchphrase used by conservatives. I've never once heard a Democrat talk condescendingly about rural areas, yet I hear it from Republicans every time I talk to one regarding any "social issues".

I don't disagree with anything you said here (the second part of your post though, hmmm) but Republicans don't take aim at New York and San Francisco and then deride the people who live there for "voting against their self-interest" like Democrats, including many on this Atlas US Talk Elections Forum/Blog, do with rural White people.  It isn't comparing like with like.

[Del Tachi]

You can't have a liberal media/ruling class that openly ridicules "small town" values and takes aim at rural conservatives

Not taking aim at you because this is legitimately what conservatives believe, but it's the Republican Party that thrives off attacking liberals for their lifestyle. "San Francisco/New York values" is a catchphrase used by conservatives. I've never once heard a Democrat talk condescendingly about rural areas, yet I hear it from Republicans every time I talk to one regarding any "social issues".

I don't disagree with anything you said here (the second part of your post though, hmmm) but Republicans don't take aim at New York and San Francisco and then deride the people who live there for "voting against their self-interest" like Democrats, including many on this Atlas US Talk Elections Forum/Blog, do with rural White people.  It isn't comparing like with like.

Uhhhh yes they do? Have you heard the way Republicans talk about DEMOCRAT RUN CITIES and the people who live there? The "Democratic plantation"-type talk?

That rhetoric is really only aimed at Black voters (whether urban or rural) and not high-earning, White urban types that the GOP (rightfully) paints as out-of-touch elitists and then doesn't expect their vote in return, lol.

Moreoever, no one takes the "plantation" rhetoric seriously.  On the other hand,  Democratic media and commentators since 2016 have been waxing poetically about whether/if/how Democrats can reconnect with their rural base.  Joe Biden was largely nominated for this exact reason.