Across much of the United States, there is a deep political, cultural, and economic divide between rural and urban/suburban people. Many urban and suburban liberals view rural America as an irredeemably racist, ignorant, decrepit backwater. Many rural conservatives and moderates view urban liberals as snobby elitists who look down on them, lack morality and common sense, and seek to impose ineffectual one-size-fits-all remedies.
“Democrats need to understand that we cannot give up on rural America. Making room for these changes won’t be easy, but just as FDR did a century ago, we have no choice but to reach out and bring all of America along. After all, it saved our nation.”
Among liberals, this polarization is understood to be fueled by right-wing media and politicians stoking anti-elitist and racial resentments. While true, there is another side to this equation: Liberal politicians, parties, groups and media deepen the divide when they neglect or sneer at the legitimate grievances, and worries of working and middle-class rural communities; when they fail to rein in corporations that pillage rural America; when they overlook progressive rural innovations; and when they condescendingly posit themselves, the “creative class,” as superior to the “rubes” in intelligence, expertise, taste and morality.
What many non-rural leftists are unaware of is this: After decades of deindustrialization, devastating cycles of fossil fuel boom & bust, extreme weather, the crushing of family farmers, population decline, and severe public under-investment, rural communities have some of the highest concentrations of poverty, unemployment, and substance abuse in the country. The two major parties have ignored if not accelerated these trends. In this vacuum, divisive figures stoke resentment as a smokescreen covering up their allegiance to wealthy and powerful corporations and banks. Rural voters, like all voters, gravitate toward politicians and opinion leaders who recognize their plight (or pretend to) and resent those who do not.
Why Bridging the Divide is Important
The fates of rural, urban, and suburban America are intertwined. Sustainable and equitable rural prosperity makes modern life possible, as it is rural communities that provide the vast majority of the food, fiber, materials, energy, and other resources on which city and country folks alike depend.
In many rural communities, wealth has been systematically extracted for decades with few lasting benefits for the people living there. This has given rise to rural people feeling taken for granted by urban liberals, and this sentiment engenders defensive rejection of policies and programs associated with liberalism. Whether it’s a public bank, solar-powered public buildings, or a unionization drive, these initiatives face an uphill battle when they’re tainted from the outset by negative preconceptions about the Left. Depolarization opens up a space in which progressive people are not seen as enemies, and progressive ideas are given a fair hearing.
Communities cannot flourish without a healthy democracy, but most rural areas are governed by a system that amounts to one-party rule. In the absence of competitive elections, tens of millions of working Americans of all ethnicities, religions, gender identities, and sexual orientations are represented in statehouses and Congress by politicians who do little to preserve and protect the safety, jobs, schools, hospitals, farms, and landscapes of rural America.
The reverberations of one-party rule extend to the national arena. Due to gerrymandering and structural flaws in the Electoral College and the makeup of the Senate, extremist politicians, often though not exclusively from rural areas, exert disproportionate influence on national affairs.
Rural voters make up more than 40% of the electorate in many battleground states and, since 2006, their partisan allegiances have swung wildly depending on which party is paying more attention to them. Vote-switching by as little as 2-3% of these voters can change the outcome of elections.
Why Bridging the Divide is Possible
Rural America, birthplace of the “prairie populists” who challenged the robber barons of the first Gilded Age, has not always been solidly red. Even today, progressive bulwarks like the (public) Bank of North Dakota, farmers unions, electricity co-ops, and farmers markets contribute to the health and vitality of rural communities.
When Democrats, beginning in in the 1970s, reoriented as the party of educated professionals, progressive populist initiatives were left without a champion and rapacious corporations and banks were left off the hook. In the void, Republicans have refocused voters’ attention on cultural wedge issues like abortion and guns. The revival of locally-flavored brands of rural progressive populism will appeal to some rural Americans who are otherwise voting on the basis of cultural conservative values, party loyalty, and/or racism or nativism.
When politics is a zero-sum game in which only rural or urban America wins, or in which only native-born or immigrant workers advance, then people hunker down and defend their interests. But when people feel that they are heard and that someone has their backs, they’re less enthusiastic about fighting the culture war and more open to universal programs that lift up everyone in need, regardless of where they were born or what gender they identify as. If the Left has their backs—by listening to their experiences and ideas, honoring local wisdom, and seeking common ground, it can regain the trust of many working and middle-class rural Americans.