How to the Dems win back rural America?

[Zinneke]

Subsidy promises? or is it a cultural issue?

[WalterWhite]

Depends on what part of rural America

Winning back the rural South? No shot of that happening. Too conservative.

Winning back the rural Upper Midwest? Incorporate populist rhetoric and protectionist policies.

Winning back the rural Great Plains? Farm subsidies.

[PSOL]

You don’t, all the people that could have made up a GOTV machine at all levels for the democratic party left for the cities or suburbs. Rural areas, or at least the majority of them over here, make up an insignificant amount of voters for both parties compared to the growing exurban population and remigration into the inner city across the country.

[RINO Tom]

Depends on what part of rural America

Winning back the rural South? No shot of that happening. Too conservative.

Winning back the rural Upper Midwest? Incorporate populist rhetoric and protectionist policies.

Winning back the rural Great Plains? Farm subsidies.

Color me incredibly skeptical that the rural South (which is a very broad region, so we would have to specify here) is any less winnable than the rural Great Plains - arguably the most conservative region of the country.

[Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist]

They don't need to.

[Landslide Lyndon]

The things needed to do to attract these people would repel the rest of the Democratic coalition.
It's a trade not worth making.

[indietraveler]

Parts of rural America vote against their own self-interests so it's hard to win someone back when there's already a misunderstanding on what they're actually voting for.

Honestly I think a good grassroots effort in as many places as possible could make enough of a difference if you could average a high single digit improvement across the board in rural areas.

[Dave Hedgehog]

Put simply, they don’t. Their near-messianic support for Trump - a big-city businessman who in terms of background couldn’t have any less in common with these people - proves that they will just march in lockstep with whatever and whoever the GOP puts in front of them. It’s all too painfully evident in the vast majority of county-by-county election result maps. The D’s future lies in suburbs, metropolitan areas, areas with growing urban centres drawing in young and educated voters. They need to keep bringing down the margins in long-standing solid R suburban counties like the WOWs in Wisconsin or Hamilton, Indiana. Places like Missouri and Ohio are only going to be competitive again if the D’s start flipping some of the counties around the major cities, turning isolated blue dots into larger blue clusters on the map.

[xavier110]

I was going to say convert rural youth to be gay, but the gays leave small town America for big cities by voting age, so even that won’t work.

In short, they don’t/can’t.

[Roronoa D. Law]

They cant. Outside of massive political realingment the Democrats can not count on the support of Rural Americans.

[PSOL]

Put simply, they don’t. Their near-messianic support for Trump - a big-city businessman who in terms of background couldn’t have any less in common with these people - proves that they will just march in lockstep with whatever and whoever the GOP puts in front of them. It’s all too painfully evident in the vast majority of county-by-county election result maps. The D’s future lies in suburbs, metropolitan areas, areas with growing urban centres drawing in young and educated voters. They need to keep bringing down the margins in long-standing solid R suburban counties like the WOWs in Wisconsin or Hamilton, Indiana. Places like Missouri and Ohio are only going to be competitive again if the D’s start flipping some of the counties around the major cities, turning isolated blue dots into larger blue clusters on the map.

Most “small” business owners who practically act like they own the town through having good will with the mayor/city government or being a major employer don’t act much differently from Trump. These people provide the town with access to capital, which can be converted to social capital the closer they are to the social network of these businessmen.

I would be interested to see the future of voting patterns of rural and/or exurban places with Amazon warehouses as the social dynamic would be a lot different as connecting with your manager is different from connecting with the owner—then again these areas are probably located in logistically key areas. I guess one way to look at it is to see what social dynamics were present when Walmart and other department stores became a one-stop shop and employer against small businesses and what political ramifications of that were.