The Coalition To Stop Pining For The Past

A Rural Revival Won't Happen For Democrats

The head of the DCCC gave a quote about how the GOP have to pick between QAnon and College educated voters, and now everyone is being stupid online, so let's go through some things.

First, it is very, very, very clear that the GOP does face a choice between suburban reversion and rural margins - we saw it in Australia. In 2016, Malcolm Turnbull held the line in suburbia and got destroyed in the regions, and then in 2019, Scott Morrison flipped it, conceding ground in the suburbs while getting seats like Longman, Braddon, Bass, and Herbert back. Funny how that works. This is the GOP's fundamental problem - if they wanted to pivot to being a party full of Charlie Baker's, sure, they could pull off a suburban reversal. They'd just lose Mahoning in doing so.

Second, the quote did not say that everyone without a degree believed in Q, or that nobody with a degree did, but if you seriously want to pretend that's the case that's your right. Education is the silver bullet to understanding the swings we are seeing - and, unsurprisingly, the areas with more graduates are why Joe Biden is President. Stunning how this works. If you really think the quote was somehow disastrous, shut up. We will have all forgotten it by Friday.

Thirdly, and this is my main complaint, we need to stop pretending that there is a goddamn thing Democrats could do to see widespread rural improvement. There fucking isn't. You want to see Democrats win back rural areas? Get in a fucking time machine, because it isn't happening. Not now, and not in the future. Pining for it is just a slap in the face to every non-white, and non-straight, person.

Now, I'm aware of the fact that "rural" areas is always used as a code for "white" rural areas, because Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock did quite well in southwest Georgia, but that's not what counts as rural to most people, so let's talk about rural, white America. Let's talk about the fact that it is full of white social conservatives who hate people like me because of something I didn't choose, wouldn't have chosen, and can't do anything about, my homosexuality. It's full of people who believe that police do good things, and who default to assuming that if a cop arrested a Black man, that man probably did something wrong. It's full of people who believe in a culture, and a world, that is completely and utterly antithetical to everything the Democratic Party believes. Why, then, should we think that there's anything the Democratic Party can do to get these people to vote for it?

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Democracy is not, fundamentally, about electing platforms to office, it is about electing people. We are, in effect, electing a collective judgement. We are electing leaders who can form and shape an agenda, but we are also electing people who can advocate for a worldview, and can fight for people. The argument against Trump from many on the right was that he could deliver a Presidential signature on a Republican agenda, sure - but that you aren't just electing that when you elect a President. You're electing a leader, and substituting that person's judgements for your own. This isn't a direct democracy, nor should it be.

When you get wrapped around the axle of policy programs and white papers, you miss the fact that elections are about a worldview, and which worldview you subscribe to most. It is extremely clear that God fearing Christians and I don't share a worldview, so why should we support the same political party? Why are these voters the ones we want?

Yes, they used to vote for Democrats, but they used to vote for Democrats when rights for people like me was a fringe minority position held by the cranks. The worldview of the Democratic Party was still broadly in line with the views of many actively religious voters. Accepting Safe, Legal, And Rare as a preferred abortion policy accepted a fundamentally Christian worldview - that abortion is going to happen, but it isn't a good thing. You could reconcile your religion and your culture with a vote for Democrats because they did shit like sign DOMA.

Advocating for a newfound rural focus for Democrats is either asking the party to abandon the social liberalism that has flipped Georgia, or asking the party to burn millions and millions of dollars on unwinnable races in unwinnable areas in the name of "rural investments" that will inevitably fail when social conservatives don't vote for the party of social liberals. We know these issues aren't about the failures of the Democratic Party, because they're happening (*say it with me now*) in every major English speaking democracy. I know it's hard for Americans to get their heads around the idea that there are other countries in the world, but this shit isn't about you. This isn't about esoteric failures of party machines, it is about a fucking global realignment. Voters are voting for the parties that best represent their worldviews, and the way to get those voters back is to become a culturally conservative party again. Short of that, all you're doing is burning money on a self indulgent ego trip designed to show everyone that you're less concerned with winning votes and more concerned with looking like you care about everyone.

The Democratic Party is bleeding with rural voters because the America the Democratic Party wants scares the ever loving shit out of cultural conservatives. They want an entirely different world than the one that people like me want, and that's their right. There's just no reason to think we should ever vote for the same political party.