Democrats Thought They Bottomed Out in Rural, White America. It Wasn’t the Bottom:
Republicans have never had a demographic stronghold as reliable as Black voters have been for Democrats, a group that delivers as many as nine out of 10 votes for the party. But some Democratic leaders are now sounding the alarm: What if rural, white voters — of which there are many — start voting that reliably Republican?
…
“In rural America the bottom for the Democratic Party is zero,” said Ethan Winter, a senior analyst at the group Data for Progress, who studies voter behavior. “I am serious about this.”
…
Rural, white voters in the past in the North had historic ties to the labor movement and an affinity for the Democratic Party. Increasingly, Mr. Winter said, those voters are more akin culturally to their neighbors to the South than to their local cities and suburbs.
Tom Bonier, one of the Democratic Party’s leading experts on voter data and the chief executive of TargetSmart, agreed. “You look at places in the Deep South where the white, rural vote is approaching 90 percent Republican,” he said. “That’s absolutely the concern.”
I actually looked up the Presidential year results from the county I grew up in eastern Oregon, and it doesn’t seem that the Democrats have really eroded much. They still get about 25-30% of the vote every election, which was the case a generation ago. So that suggests that the Deep South model does not hold everywhere, though it may apply to the Border States.
It is pretty obvious from reading The New York Times piece that there is no way that the Democrats are in a position to address the cultural concerns of rural America. Twenty years ago the Democratic whip in the House was David Bonior, who believed Roe vs. Wade was wrongly decided. That sort of stance would be a non-starter for any Democrat except at the most local level now.
It seems likely that Democrats will be competitive at the national-Presidential level, but the way the Senate is apportioned and the ability to pack urban districts in a first-past-the-post system means they’ll have problems in the future winning Congress unless they reposition themselves culturally, which I’m bearish on.
In Bloomberg Matt Yglesias makes the case for a repositioning, The nation and the Democratic Party need a moderate president with populist tendencies and no particular affinity with the cultural left. But he himself notes that the Democratic Party’s staff is just very culturally Left, and just like Donald Trump couldn’t control his administration due to personnel issues, so Biden would have the same problem. Also, we have a historical precedent for repositioning, Bill Clinton’s triangulation after 1994. But do a thought experiment and imagine Biden even attempting to do some of the policies Clinton executed on, like Welfare Reform.
Despite what we thought back then, the 1990’s were a culturally less polarized time.
(the main upside from a Democratic perspective is that the Republicans have not shown much ability to govern and legislate after winning elections)
Same thing happened to Bernie in 2020. 2016 Bernie was pretty close to a Popularist type of situation, besides the “Democratic Socialist” branding – run on economic stuff that’s popular, downplay the stuff that isn’t. He moved to a more firmly left-wing message in 2020, and a big part of that seems to be that his staffers were very culturally left in addition to being economically left.
and a big part of that seems to be that his staffers
Yeah, and it doesn’t help if you let a bunch of black women steal your mike while the world is watching.
Excellent review by Taibbi of Thomas Frank’s book on Anti Populism. So much of the playbook to oppose populism in the past rings true today.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/kansas-should-go-f-itself
Migration plays a major role here. Rural America is predominantly either depopulating or not growing as fast as urban America. And, much of the evolution of the political tendencies of particular states are being driven by migration from liberal states in urban areas in red states. The counterpart is not conservative migration to liberal states, it is liberal emigration from moderately left leaning states like Pennsylvania and Ohio and Wisconsin, driven by late stage rust belt decline.
This coincides with demographics. Conservatives are deeply and probably permanently behind in younger generations. Rural America is so conservative, in part, because old people have stayed there, while younger people have migrated to cities.
Conservatives are fighting a quite successful rear guard action in the short to medium term, but the long term demographics don’t look good for them.
Re; “Popularism”, I’ve had a strong reaction to some of Shor’s stuff, because it seemed relatively openly cynical about how to use democratic process for Progressive goals without getting a democratic mandate and buy-in for those goals. Not talking about the more divisive things you actually want to do, as a movement.
But frankly, now I look at it more as that just being conventional politics, of the pre-internet era. I’d take a stab in the dark that there seem like at least a couple problems bringing anything like that back to the fore though.
Firstly, this old-school configuration may not have been stable to begin with, for any party. Trust in politicians fell continuously as more information and news has become available (more TV, more radio, more internet). I think it’s credible that a strategy of “Get elected on the right message, then do what we really want” has some role to play in that. In the early ’10s, if we cast our minds back, lots of dissatisfaction with parties that seemed “the same as each other” and to do what they wanted in power without regard to electoral mandate after finagling their way in through carefully focus grouped messages . Even if it isn’t trust eroding, trying to maintain the same level of “message discipline” among a much larger class of politically engaged pundit seems harder, at root.
Secondly that particular to the Left is a higher level of mobilization among people who have an activist model of politics. Build energy among a motivated group, then loudly petition authority figures until they feel they must compromise or risk social marginalisation. Or build energy among a motivated group, create a court case, and then force your preferences through the courts. Worked for them in schools, universities, online forums and workplaces. Those same people aren’t necessarily going to pivot to a MO that wants them to be quieter and lower energy, has less of a role for them doing what they enjoy.
@ohwilleke, depends on how rural and urban are classed. Just by plotting srcbelt against year, General Social Survey seems to show that large cities don’t really grow, in terms of share of respondents in rural vs different urban level codes seeming stable since the 1990s and to some degree 1970s, and the median age gaps have also remained stable (rural is older, but so is urban, and the gap between them isn’t accelerating). Liberal vs conservative values gap seems stable too (which those values becoming increasingly correlated with voting). GSS doesn’t include children of course, but I think some sign of that should show up.
Suburban areas do grow though.
Wiki has rural share at 78% in 1990 and 80.7% in 2010 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States . Seems like a different definition than GSS srcbelt, but the general picture of little overall shift since the 1990s seems consistent. If an area is losing relative population at 2% per 3 decades but you’re losing vote share far quicker than this, without gaining reliably on the other side, it may be problem (if you wish to achieve recognisable political goals in the medium term of your lifespan).
Actually, that should be *two* decades in my last comment, my mistake.