Letter to the Democratic National Committee, Specific Recommendations
The signatories to this letter represent many of your rural and working-class allies. Most of us hail from or reside in small towns and rural communities. We pledge to work with you to prioritize and fix the Democratic Party’s deficits with rural and working-class voters. With the right approach, these voters represent the lowest hanging fruit for the party and the Left more broadly.
During the 2024 election, the Democratic Party focused on its urban, college educated loyalists and donors. Instead of learning the lesson from Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” fiasco, the Party continued to ignore or minimize the priorities of working-class voters, whether in cities or the countryside, white, black or brown. And although working class and swing voters made it very clear that the cost of living was their chief concern, the response to those concerns was drowned out by the focus on an authoritarian threat to a political system that most voters already hate and distrust.
Twenty percent of the country is rural, and nearly two-thirds don’t have a college degree–these are huge percentages of the electorate that the Democratic Party has neglected. In recent electoral cycles, the Party’s losses with rural and working-class voters of all races have deepened, turning once winnable races, like Sherrod Brown’s and Jon Tester’s, into losses. This shift has happened in state legislatures and local offices as well, cementing what amounts to one-party rule across much of the nation.
As badly as we’re losing, we may not yet have hit bottom. Democrats need something to work for, not just against. Even in this time of crisis for our democracy, to focus solely on the threats and horrors of MAGA without putting forward a clear agenda that addresses the grievances so many citizens have is to repeat the failures we’ve made since Trump arrived in 2015. Rural and working-class issues are not only widely popular but will lead to broad-based prosperity once implemented. This is the agenda so many are eager to work for.
In this letter, we highlight what we believe to be the most important causes of our losing trend and propose concrete steps to reverse our decline and reinvigorate the Party.
Why we’ve lost rural and factory town voters
1. A forty-year bi-partisan embrace of neoliberal policies that have hurt rural and working-class people and hollowed out their communities, including:
Favoring investors over workers in rulemaking and trade agreements
Disinvesting from rural and manufacturing town economies
Failing to enforce antitrust laws, while exacerbating corporate concentration with subsidies, propelling the destruction of thousands of independent businesses, banks, and farms
2. Steadily declining investment in rural and small-town party infrastructure, committees and candidates, based on a belief that such places are now unwinnable for Democrats. This has proven to be a self-fulfilling prophecy that has alienated not only the average rural voter, but local Democrats as well, many of whom feel unseen and unheard by state and national party leaders. (Scathing accounts of Democratic Party malpractice from local activists can be read here, here and here. We’ve heard dozens more testimonials along the same lines).
3. A short-term political strategy hyper-focused on “winnable races” at the expense of long-term investment in broadening the Party’s base. Driven increasingly by an elite donor and consultant class, this singular focus on winning the next election has simultaneously failed to deliver enduring Democratic majorities while driving more communities and more constituencies ever deeper into Republican hands. Democratic affiliation has slipped from 36% (in 1988) to 28% of Americans. Reclaiming even a third of those voters would turn the map blue for the long term.
Our Recommendations
1. Invest in local and state parties
Democrats have ceded large swaths of the country, banking instead on mobilizing reliably blue urban and suburban strongholds. Decades of neglect have allowed local and state parties to wither and losses in red-leaning areas to mount. In the absence of a strong local Democratic presence, perceptions of Democrats are based on the Party’s national talking points and on the often out-of-touch, preachy, and polarizing rhetoric of the broader liberal-left media, social media, and NGOs. All too often, Party representatives in media focus on issues that either have no clear effect on daily life or are unpopular.
In 2022, Democrats left 51% of partisan down-ballot races uncontested. Potential candidates in red districts are discouraged by the anticipated lack of support from the Party. Yet, as the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, CherPAC, and Contest Every Race have demonstrated, Democrats can win over Republican voters when they focus on issues of central concern to local residents and employ down-to-earth and/or populist rhetoric.
Year-round organizing and community-building are the antidotes to the toxicity of the Democratic brand. These activities require staff in the field as well as state-level coordinators, all of whom should be from the area, not from the Beltway.
Democrats spent more than $4 billion in advertisements in the 2024 campaign cycle. Allocating just 10% of those funds annually to long-term organizing and outreach in these communities would do far more to broaden our base of voters and win elections.
2. Scale effective rural organizing, including the “Community Works” model and others with strong potential for impact
Community Works enables local Democratic Party committees to both broaden their base and improve the perception of Democrats by undertaking regular, concrete, non-political work to solve local problems, in partnership with civic groups, churches, non-profits, and businesses.
Many other initiatives, at local as well as statewide levels have also had significant success in reaching rural and working-class communities. We recommend creation of an incubator fund to test early-stage ideas, and an accelerator fund to bring more developed efforts to scale.
3. Recruit working class and rural candidates and invest in their campaigns
Most Americans are working class, identify as working or middle-class and, as the Center for Working-Class Politics has found, prefer candidates who care about the same things they do, talk like they do, and have relatable life stories. Unlike race and gender, class is a cross-cutting identity for the vast majority of voters.
4. Apologize for NAFTA and other disastrous policies
Trump has owned this issue since 2016 and has peeled off a sizeable chunk of blue-collar union members who were once reliable Democrats. The Democratic Party should formally apologize for the damage done by NAFTA and other trade deals, pledge long term investment in decimated factory towns, and commit to a pro-worker agenda.
5. Build an enduring majority across class, race and geography through a focus on universal economic populism
There are strong majorities in favor of many progressive economic policies that curtail the power of the wealthy elites and fight for everyday people. Such policies help forge common ground rather than splintering us according to our differences. Pledge to serve all Americans, especially those who are struggling, including but going beyond the sixteen interest groups currently lifted up by the Party.
This will require development of platforms with universal, cross-cutting appeal. The Rural New Deal is one such example. Developed and written by rural people, it provides both a substantive policy platform and a much-needed reminder for the Party that sound analysis and expertise exist beyond elite universities and outside of the Beltway. The Party simply needs to bring such folks to the table.
6. Restructure the party from the bottom up, moving spending from ads and Beltway consultants to year-round outreach and local strategies and messengers.
The actions of the Trump administration since January 20th have confirmed many Democrats’ worst fears about the threat he represents to our democracy. However, making that threat the central, most prominent 2024 electoral message left many working and middle class voters feeling unheard. The reliance on this strategy was born of a dependence upon a small group of media and messaging consultants who generally do not live in or understand rural and working-class communities. The guidance they often produce confuses and frustrates folks working in the field. We recommend shifting spending to long-term investment in effective grass-roots strategies, local organizers, and people who actually know how to talk to working folks.
Massive spending on ads has been a poor investment overall. We recommend abolishing the practice of consultants getting a share of ad buys and shifting a significant portion of these expenditures to the traditional and social media venues with strong rural or working-class audiences. To make messaging more effective, both rural and non-college individuals should be part of every communications team as a safeguard against insularity and elitist talk. In addition, to minimize the problem of conflicting messaging guidance, consultants should be required to collaborate with each other with full transparency in pursuit of the best possible work product.
All of the above are better investments than expensive, polarizing TV ads.
7. Staff the Rural Council
Provide a full-time staff person for the DNC Rural Council to help coordinate, catalyze and support the critical work outlined in this document. Additionally, hire a full-time Rural Organizer, with extensive rural experience, to help lead a team of regional rural