FDR was not a president anyone should really want to emulate. After all, that's the same president that the left lionizes, who also put hundreds of thousands of American citizens in concentration camps because of their ethnicity.
But he did build some support in rural America. That's something the Democrats would really like to do, though many figure it's a lost cause. In truth, it probably is, but a recent piece from Washington Monthly suggests that it might not be necessary to win rural America, but they can make up some ground, thus helping them out in the long run in national elections, and all they have to do is capitalize on economic issues.
First, to regain their competitiveness, Democrats don’t need to “win” the rural vote. They must only increase their margins modestly—“lose by less,” as some analysts call it.
Second, as the Roosevelt era shows, voters’ loyalties can loosen at times of economic distress, and many policies promoted by President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are already wreaking havoc on rural areas. The trade war is harming soybean farmers and threatens many others who export significant amounts of produce. Ramping up deportations—in addition to disrupting communities and families—is diminishing local workforces. Cutting health and food assistance promises to escalate hospital closures and hunger in some of the country’s poorest rural areas. All that has occurred less than a year into Trump’s second term.
If rural America suffers continuing economic distress over the next one to three years and the Democratic Party invests in the right rural campaign infrastructure, the party could earn more than middling gains in 2028. That’s what happened as recently as 2008, when, during the Great Recession and with the help of Howard Dean’s famous “50-state” campaign strategy, Barack Obama won 53 percent of the popular vote and Democrats took the majority of the most rural districts.
But the problem is that then--either version of "then," be it FDR's era or Obama's--isn't now.
It's one thing to try and capitalize on economic woes to try and sway voters, but that's not going to be enough in and of itself. For one thing, Democrats are lousy on the economy, largely because they're more than willing to take from those who work in rural communities, then funnel it to those who have no interest in earning their own way in urban centers.
Even if that's not really how it works entirely, that's the perception, and they're not going to combat that anytime soon.
Then there are the social issues, which they did admittedly try to address in this piece.
Some assume that the rural-urban divide emanates from social issues or the so-called culture wars—issues such as abortion, LGBTQ rights, and gun control—yet even on these issues, the difference in views is underwhelming. Take gun control, for example. We examined several questions—including requiring background checks, banning assault rifles, and other such measures—and found that rural white people, on average, are just eight percentage points less in favor of regulating gun use than their urban peers.
The problem is that many of these same polls being referenced tend to fail to result in votes.
For example, red flag laws keep being framed as super popular among the left and the right, yet even the blue state of Maine voted against the measure the last time they voted on it. They'll revisit it today, but any different outcome likely has more to do with the Lewiston shooting than anything else.
Many of these polls are poorly created and then poorly interpreted. They don't result in wins for Democrats anywhere, much less in rural America.
And let's also be real here, eight points is a pretty significant margin, and one you're not going to overcome by offering handouts to rural communities.
Further, note that they acknowledge LGBT issues as one cultural area where there's disagreement. They don't seem to try to make the same case they do with guns, that supposedly the polling shows it's not as unpopular as it might seem. Why? Maybe because Midwest farmers and their daughters don't want to be forced to change clothes in front of biological males who say they're really girls.
Those are also much bigger issues than the piece in question wants you to believe. The Democrats have been pushing identity politics for years now, ever since Obama took office, and they're showing no signs of comprehending that the approach isn't resonating with voters.
I mean, these are people who decided to hire someone to handle outreach to young men, so they hired an obese feminist activist to do it. To say they don't get the average American or understand a world where everyone isn't viewed through the lens of where they are on some imaginary oppression spectrum is to put it mildly.
Honestly, while there might be some pain in middle America right now under Trump's watch, those rural communities still remember all the pain they endured under Biden's, too, and what Trump has done with tariffs and the like will come to pass eventually. The increased costs of everything aren't likely to go away.
So no, I don't see rural America suddenly starting to embrace the insanity of the left, even in limited doses.
They're too often the subject of disdain from the leftist elites. Why would they ever side with those who literally despise them?