How can Dems improve with rural whites?

[Person Man]

They'll improve with them when they need to.

Longer answer:
I know what MT Treasurer is talking about about the answer to him is "maybe" and I would go further to stay that there might be upcoming developments that might help Democrats appeal more to less developed areas without necessarily having to throw the national party under the bus. It might not help in places in South Dakota or Oklahoma, but it could be very helpful in places like Ohio, Florida,  Texas (for different reasons) and basically every place where the median voter generally votes Republican but is willing to vote for a "Good Democrat" or at least a "Good Democrat over a Bad Republican".

[Person Man]

It'd unfortunately require a continuation of an unsustainable energy policy. A major factor in why rural areas as a whole have become more conservative is because of their local economy's dependence on fossil fuels. This is one of the primary reasons Appalachia first swung so hard for Dubya in 2000.

It's easy to talk about investing in more sustainable energy such as solar/wind/nuclear and conservationist measures for protection of timber in the abstract as a public good to combat climate change. However, it must be acknowledged there are frictional costs to this type of disruption, and there should be accommodations to transition rural areas which see a fair amount of wealth creation from fossil fuel extraction, refinement/processing, production in power plants, and distribution. Likewise most areas with low population densities tend to be reliant on motor vehicles for transportation as most American infrastructure is designed with the implications of one owning car.

Dems/progressives need to sell these consumers on the transition to electric as well as why a restructuring of energy supply will ultimately produce economic benefit. We will all see different adverse effects of climate change, the problem is its harder to convince the electorate of that while most of those challenges are still abstract. Even worse, it'll be too late to do anything by the time those challenges are concrete.

Yes, the Dem climate change platform is the most important problem for this.  

THIS. Even in places like Nebraska or Kansas that aren't oil places like ND or coal places like WV or WY. Just by living in these places, people require a lot more fossil fuels than other people. Ignoring environmental degradation is seen as a kind of subsidy for rural living to many living there.

[Person Man]

ignore them. Let the Republicans take them on, since most of them are voting against their own interests anyway. Focus on minorities/suburban voters, that's what got the House in 2018.

Just stop. I could write a whole essay about why, in my case, I am voting very much in my own economic interest (I'm white and I live in a ruralish/exurbanish area that's hard to definitively classify as rural or not-rural) by voting straight ticket R at every election, but I know I'm not going to convince a literal 15 year old whose entire shtick is "LOL dumb racist hicks".

To address the topic, Dems don't need to win rural whites outright to win elections. They just need to avoid losing them by Saddam margins. It would be insane to expect Dems to win rural whites outright, because like blacks with Dems, the interests of rural whites very clearly lie with Republicans. Thus Dem outreach to rural whites is kind of like GOP outreach to blacks - it's about narrowing the margin of defeat - but much more fruitful because rural whites are a MUCH more elastic demographic than blacks. Losing rural whites 75-25 instead of 90-10 would improve Dem margins by 5-6 points in many states. Like many people have pointed out in this thread, local candidates de-emphasizing or taking a different approach than national DNC talking points on fossil fuels and guns would be a big step in the right direction for them.

Every election is like "Hey, I know I don't pay any taxes at all and in fact collect massive amounts of welfare, but the shtick by the far-right about how we need to stop "them gayz from having rightz" and "taking those welfare monies that should go to me". The lunahicks are voting against their own interest.

In my case I pay thousands of tax dollars every year, receive zero welfare or benefits, and am gay myself. Resistance to gay rights is a dead issue in all but the most homogenously evangelical places. The first two parts are true of almost everyone I know around here. Of the two (admitted) welfare cheats I do know personally, one is apolitical and one is a Democrat. Obviously anecdotes are not data, but it is one small data point against your facile claim.

Please, please, please, I beg you, grow up and gain some broader perspective on life. Your rank immaturity is showing.

That's probably the function of the places, not a particular indictment of who is committing Welfare Fraud. I used to know plenty a fired Republican salesmen, truck drivers, and carpenters who brag about "double dipping" and using their EBT for alcohol at "The Mexican Store". This was in Florida.

[Person Man]

Abandon all of their current economic and social policies.

I think Democrats could actually win rural whites by changing just their social views and rebranding their economic message. They need to brand it and make it populist and emphasize they want LOWER, not higher taxes, on the lower- and middle-classes, and want higher taxes only on the ultra rich. Emphasize that they are globalist (it'll help in the Rust Belt). Call for a higher minimum wage. And yeah, drop all or most of their social views.

If they only wanted to win rural whites, then yeah. They have to say "me too" whenever a Republican talks about the importance of the Second Amendment, how concerned they are about schools being brain washing centers, their "freedom" and "religious freedom", how unreasonable and dangerous transgenderism and homosexuality is, how Life begins at Conception, basically everything dealing with buttressing the power of the Churches, and how the power of Law Enforcement takes precedence over Civil Rights and Liberties. Then just rebrand the rest of their agenda in a better way by talking about ending insurance rate hikes, grocery taxes, and raising wages, even if the very wealthy have to pay more and accept slightly lower profits.

But luckily Democrats don't need to win them. If they can turn a 3.5:1 electorate into a 2.5:1 electorate out of them, that probably wins North Carolina and Florida, and might give them a chance at Ohio and Iowa again. Maybe they could be competitive downballot in the rural west again outside of major coal/oil areas if they rebranded the economic stuff and simply stopped pushing on issues that they went from not acknowledging in 2014 to jumping totally onboard of in 2022. In certain areas, it totally makes sense to be conservative or libertarian on certain issues. In a place like Ocala or Eastern Kentucky, it makes sense to run as being extremely hawkish on abortion or in a place like Boebert's district running as extremely liberal (not progressive) on guns.

[Person Man]

invent time travel and prevent facebook and twitter from happening

If we're going to utilize time travel, I actually think it's not nominating Al Gore.  While at the time he appeared to be a "White Southern Democrat" who'd "do well in the South," he represents a shockingly stark contrast with regard to cultural attitudes to every Democrat before him.  Al Gore's nomination and eventual defeat legitimized politically active and ideological Democrats who prioritized issues pertaining to social and cultural liberalism/progressivism, and they started to frame themselves in a binary against George W. Bush and all that he stood for.  This was kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, then nominating a "polished, New England liberal" to defeat this war-mongering cowboy, and an Ivy-League educated Obama who pushed more for shedding "outdated" cultural ideas than any Democrat before him.  Yes, Kerry and Obama (and even Clinton and Biden) retained basic, pro-working class rhetoric literally inherent for any Democrat, but it's become slowly (maybe even subconsciously??) less prevalent every four years.

So you’d rather they have nominated a ‘real southerner’ like gephardt or graham?

I wouldn’t “rather” anything, and the candidate didn’t need to be a Southerner at all.  It just had to be someone who came across as less snobby than Al Gore.

Would that have been Howard Dean?