How can Dems improve with rural whites?

[Xing]

To give a serious response, actually visiting rural areas would be a good start. Showing that you care doesn't mean changing your views to be in complete agreement, since it's not like Republican politicians have zero disagreements with rural voters. Doing what some Indiana Democrats are currently doing, and not just focusing on the largest urban or suburban areas, but heading out to small towns, including some of the less densely populated areas of "blue" counties, and just listening to voters. They don't have to make their views seem identical to rural voters, simply have a conversation and try to reach some of them.

Putting more focus on economic issues is a good idea in general, but doing that while only focusing on cities isn't going to be particularly effective. Proving that they care about all voters, and pushing back against the "elitist cancel culture" optics is what they should be doing.

[Xing]

To give a serious response, actually visiting rural areas would be a good start. Showing that you care doesn't mean changing your views to be in complete agreement, since it's not like Republican politicians have zero disagreements with rural voters. Doing what some Indiana Democrats are currently doing, and not just focusing on the largest urban or suburban areas, but heading out to small towns, including some of the less densely populated areas of "blue" counties, and just listening to voters. They don't have to make their views seem identical to rural voters, simply have a conversation and try to reach some of them.

Putting more focus on economic issues is a good idea in general, but doing that while only focusing on cities isn't going to be particularly effective. Proving that they care about all voters, and pushing back against the "elitist cancel culture" optics is what they should be doing.

Literally the only reason "some" IN Democrats are doing that is because they’ve suffered complete electoral oblivion, have been condemned to long-term irrelevance, and have nothing (no gerrymandering, no real bench, no significantly favorable long-term trends, etc.) to make their situation less dire. National Democrats have less incentive to campaign in those places given that they’re in a far more competitive position than IN Democrats. Besides, IN Democrats are still going to lose badly in 2022/2024, likely underperforming even Clinton/Biden in most of these places.

There’s no way out for IN Democrats as long as they remain associated with the national party and run candidates who are only rhetorically or performatively moderate/"caring."

The "go everywhere"/"50-state" approach is hardly some novel strategy within the Democratic Party and has been proposed for decades, but it will remain futile given the ideological and, yes, rhetorical trajectory of the national Democratic party as well as some of the overarching global and cultural phenomena which have aided the structural power of modern-day liberalism. Unless candidates start actively renouncing certain elements of the platform (e.g. JBE in LA), they’ll mostly remain in the wilderness.

My point is that the party as a whole should do this, not that there's nothing wrong with the national party. Not sure what your issue with my post is. Even if it took electoral oblivion for them to do this, at least they're approaching a better conclusion than simply doubling down on ignoring and writing off anyone who doesn't support them, which seems to be the Republican strategy in a lot of blue states. Yes, some Democrats do this too, but I don't get why it's only Democrats who should face electoral consequences for the national party being out of touch with segments of the population (even if some of the candidates themselves aren't the ones pushing the most unpopular elements of the party), while Republicans face no flak for crapping on over half of the country and happily writing off people who live in cities (and many of whom are struggling enormously.) Not to mention, very few make any effort to distance themselves from the party in any more than a very performative way.

We can criticize the Democratic Party and those within it who write off enormous numbers of voters and those who only pretend to care for electoral reasons without giving the Republican Party a pass for doing exactly the same thing and not even getting to the point of reflection on why they lose certain segments of the population so badly without assuming that said segments are brainwashed/ignorant/evil.