Rural America Can Change the Future of the Democratic Party
It is hard to overstate the euphoria of the moment among Democrats. It has been barely three weeks since Joe Biden withdrew from the Presidential race, but it feels as if the world has been turned on its head.
That is because it has. A month ago, the New York Times/Siena College poll showed Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden nationally among likely voters 49% to 43%. But, if anything, the cross-tabs were worse. Biden’s lead among young voters and older voters was within the margin of error, while Trump was leading among white voters, the largest share of the electorate, by 17%.
For months, leading up to Biden’s decision to exit the race, the public had dreaded a Biden-Trump rematch. The race was defined by the question of who the “double haters” — who hated Trump and disliked Biden — would vote for. One voter summed up voter frustration: “Three-hundred-and-some-odd million people, and that’s all we can get?”
In the wake of the assassination attempt, and Trump’s triumphal appearance at the Republican National Convention, the race appeared to be all but over. Republican euphoria was as high then, as Democrat euphoria is now.
Early on in the primary season, Nikki Haley suggested that the first party to take the frustration of the electorate seriously and walk away from their octogenarian candidate would win the White House. And it appears she may have nailed it. The New York Times/Siena College poll published this morning paints a vastly different picture. The race has flipped by ten points, with Harris leading Trump among likely voters 50% to 46%. But again, it is in the cross-tabs that the dramatic differences are apparent. Harris now leads Trump among younger and older voters by 15 points and 13 points, respectively, and the candidates are tied among white voters.
It is notable that the poll has Harris winning 95% and 6% of Democrat and Republican votes, respectively, up from Biden winning 91% and 3% in the July poll. If Harris can pivot even slightly to the center, a Republican strategist commented to me, a substantially larger share of Republican voters are prepared to walk away from Trump, as they are well aware that the only hope they have of winning back their party is if Trump is humiliated in November.
From the moment Joe Biden stepped out of the presidential race, Kamala Harris has demonstrated to the world that she was prepared for the moment. Her messaging and delivery, from one audience to the next, has been pitch perfect. Of particular note was the clarity of her response to anti-Israel protesters in Detroit chanting “Kamala! Kamala! You Can’t Hide! We Won’t Vote for Genocide!” She did not engage with them, and instead responded: “You know what, if you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
Tim Walz was not my choice among the final crop of Vice Presidential candidates, but he appears to have been an inspired choice. As I looked at each of the finalists, they all had something to argue for them. Josh Shapiro offered the prospect of improving Democrats’ chances in Pennsylvania. Mark Kelly brought another battleground state an inch closer, along with a resume to die for. I had never heard of Tim Walz before my sister-in-law from Minneapolis asked me what I thought about his chances of being on the ticket within hours of Joe Biden stepping down. But it did not take long to realize that Walz offered something that looms to be far more important than a marginal improvement of Democratic odds in one battleground state; he offered the prospect of returning Democrats to their roots, and taking the fight to rural communities across the country.
Before Bill Clinton pivoted the Democratic Party to the center, and the lure of Wall Street money turned liberals into neoliberals; and, before that, when Vietnam and the culture wars brought the party fully under the sway of coastal elites; Democrats were the party of rural America. From Huey Long to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democrats were the party of rural economic populism that is all of a sudden in vogue on the right.
As much as the Republican Party has come to dominate politics in rural America, improving the livelihoods of rural families has never been part of the Republican agenda. The GOP Platform has a section entitled “Protect American Workers and Farmers from Unfair Trade” but as an article in Barn Raiser points out, the ensuing narrative says nothing about either farmers or rural communities. Instead, dating back to Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Republicans have cynically harvested rural votes by leveraging resentments against coastal elites, rather than delivering policies that help build a brighter future for those communities.
The selection of Tim Walz offers Democrats the prospect of making inroads into the GOP rural base by returning the party to its rural progressive roots. Born in rural Nebraska and formerly a member of Congress from rural Minnesota, Walz embraced an economic populism as Governor of Minnesota that dates back to the New Deal era, as he focused on assuring access to education and healthcare for low income and rural families. Clearly, the Harris campaign has this in mind, as the campaign quickly launched its “Rural Americans for Harris,” initiative to target rural communities.
The ability of Democrats to make good on the Walz opportunity may well determine whether the selection of Walz will be seen in retrospect as Kamala Harris’s first unforced error that could cost her the race, as some have suggested, or a visionary choice that changes the trajectory of the party’s future. Walz’s pushback against Republican accusations that he is just one more “San Francisco liberal” has been to argue that his progressive agenda is essential to economic growth and family prosperity. His retort last week, asking how providing breakfast and lunch for kids in rural and poor communities — “Kids are eating and have full bellies so they can go learn” — could be a bad thing, begs the question of what JD Vance, Josh Hawley, and other born-again rural populists on the right would propose that is more elemental to supporting rural families than making sure that kids don’t go to school hungry.
After decades of loyalty to a Republican Party that offered them little or nothing of material value in return for their votes, the Democratic ticket should aggressively contest regions of the country that they have ignored for too long — in red and blue states alike — putting forth the progressive agenda that Walz embodies: healthcare and education as elemental to transgenerational family success.
The simple truth is that after nearly a decade of Donald Trump’s unrelenting anger, and his grasping need for attention — which was on display again at this press conference this week, Americans of all stripes are exhausted. The enthusiasm of Trump rallies has waned, and his bleak, American Carnage vision of the country now stands in sharp contrast to Harris’s youth, and vibrant optimistic message.
As Kamala Harris and Tim Walz reach out to rural America, they should not cede white evangelical voters to Donald Trump. Like the rest of us, many white evangelicals are exhausted by the Trump years, which have created infighting among and within churches across the country. “It’s time for evangelicals to dump Trump and return to Christ,” one evangelical pastor put it earlier this year. As evangelical author Tim Alberta suggests in his recent book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, it is only a matter of time before an increasing number of evangelicals come to regret the Faustian bargain they made with a man who mocks them and their faith.
As I watched Trump speak to an evangelical audience last week — “I love my Christians,” he pronounced, with that patronizing smirk — imploring them to come out to vote for him one more time, he seemed to be inviting Walz, the plain-speaking Minnesota Lutheran, to push back on the deeply unChristian nature of the hatred and division that has been so central to Donald Trump’s politics and policies over the years.
Democrats should not be blinded by the euphoria of the moment. Kamala Harris’s rise in the polls should not be surprising, as the relief across much of the electorate has been palpable. But the onslaught from the Trump campaign has barely begun, and the attacks will be ferocious, centered on its efforts to label the duo as unalloyed San Francisco leftists. Donald Trump’s back is against the wall, and no campaign tactics will be off the table. The ability of the Harris-Walz ticket to survive the withering assault that lies ahead, may well lie in the Harris campaign’s ability to reframe the meaning of progressive away from the culture wars and wokism of recent years, and back to its rural roots.
The New York Times/Siena College poll suggests that Kamala Harris has taken a small lead, 50% to 46%, over Donald Trump. But the larger significance of the poll is in the trajectory of the race that it suggests, and the possibility that Harris’s lead could continue to build. Donald Trump’s core support lies at around 43%, and he failed to win 47% of the vote in either of his national elections. In contrast, Harris has significant potential upside that may be realized in the weeks ahead.
Whether she can build a more durable lead will depend in large measure on whether the Trump campaign can find attacks that stick, and dampen or reverse the momentum the Harris campaign has established in just three short weeks. But the real opportunity available to Democrats in this race is not just to deliver Donald Trump — and Trumpism — a significant defeat, but to build inroads in communities that have been steadfastly Republican for decades, and in doing so redefine the Democratic Party’s future.
You can find all of David’s recent posts at dpaul.substack.com, and his writing dating back to 2004 at https://authory.com/DavidPaul
Artwork by Joe Dworetzky. Follow his cartooning on Instagram at @joefaces and his journalism at authory.com/JoeDworetzky
