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.
