Kamala Harris knows what every Democrat knows: Their party isn’t popular in rural America, and that’s a political problem. Just as President Joe Biden tried to change that — both in the 2020 election and in the White House — Harris is attempting to convince rural voters that she has something to offer them. But it isn’t working — at least not yet.
On Thursday, Politico published a two-page agenda that is part of the Harris campaign’s efforts to address the needs of rural communities. The document mostly pledges to continue and expand programs already in place under the Biden administration, and it emphasizes the admiration and affection Harris and her running mate have for rural people. “Vice President Harris and Governor Walz know that rural America is the foundation of our country,” reads the first sentence. Try to imagine Donald Trump saying something as complimentary about the cities where support for him is as thin as it is for Democrats in rural areas.
It wasn’t all that long ago that Democrats did better with rural voters.
The Harris campaign’s interest in rural voters is unsurprising, given that they punch above their weight at the ballot box: The structures of the Electoral College and the Senate give small rural states disproportionate influence in the presidential vote. Republican gerrymanders leveraged the GOP margins among rural voters to control state legislatures.
It wasn’t all that long ago that Democrats did better with rural voters — not winning, but keeping the margins at least somewhat close. In 2008, Barack Obama got 43% of the rural votes, and did especially well in rural areas of battleground states his campaign would blanket with staff members and volunteers.
But in subsequent years, rural voters — more specifically, rural whites — moved right. According to the Pew Research Center’s data, Donald Trump won the rural vote by 59% to 34% in 2016; among only rural whites, his victory was 62% to 30%. Four years later, he did even better, winning the overall rural vote by 65% to 34% and the rural white vote by 71% to 28%.
Democrats in turn spent less and less time appealing for their votes. That turned out to be bad not just for Democrats but also for rural people themselves. “We pretty much own rural and small-town America,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in 2022, and the GOP took that to mean that it didn’t need to actually deliver practical improvements in the lives of the people who kept voting for it. After all, Trump succeeded with these voters not because he had brought prosperity to rural Americans, whose deep and profound problems in economic opportunity, health care access and infrastructure hadn’t noticeably improved. Instead, Republicans told rural voters not to expect anything real from their government, as though all they should ask of candidates is a steady diet of anger and resentment — which Trump was happy to give them.
The usual advice from rural activists to Democrats is appealingly straightforward: Show up, listen, treat us with respect, demonstrate that you want to help our communities thrive. Biden did just that: His 2020 campaign put out a lengthy plan for rural development, and he talked about rural Americans with the empathy and respect Democrats are always told has been missing. “You know, it really does go to the issue of dignity, how you treat people,” he said. “I think they just feel forgotten.” The kind words and white papers didn’t work: Biden lost rural voters by an even bigger margin than Hillary Clinton did four years before.
Democrats need to launch an unapologetic attack on Republicans in rural areas for betraying their constituents’ trust.
But once he took office, he kept trying. The major legislation Biden signed, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law, set aside billions of dollars for rural communities. The recent announcement of $7.3 billion in grants for clean energy projects in rural areas is just one example. The Biden White House earmarked billions to bring broadband internet access to rural areas, increase health care access in those areas and create the Rural Partners Network to coordinate government programs and aid in such communities. Biden and administration officials regularly travel around the country to promote these efforts and extol rural Americans’ importance.
In practical terms, those efforts have been a mixed bag. Some have injected new life into rural places. Others have had troubling rollouts, with rural broadband a particularly maddening challenge. But in one way, the picture is unambiguous: Politically, the administration’s rural efforts have been a bust. In a new Pew poll of nearly 10,000 Americans, Trump is beating Harris by 66% to 32% among all rural voters and 71% to 28% among rural whites. In other words, Trump is doing almost exactly as well as he did four years ago.
Harris hasn’t been a candidate for very long, so maybe things will change. There are still weeks to go, and the vice president is making a concerted effort to reach out to rural voters. She picked Tim Walz, a native of rural Nebraska, as her running mate. After their convention, the two went on a bus tour of southern Georgia, stopping in rural areas that seldom see presidential candidates. The campaign recently hired Matt Hildreth of the progressive Rural Organizing group to lead its outreach efforts to rural voters (Trump has no rural outreach director).
Clearly, Harris is serious about improving her party’s recent showing in rural areas. Perhaps these attempts will show results. And there’s no longer much question that Democratic administrations are better for rural America than Republican ones, because Democrats are the only ones even trying to help. If Harris becomes president, she’s sure to do the same.
But recent history shows that simply telling rural voters about what Democrats have done or will do for them won’t be enough. Nor is showing “respect” sufficient to change people’s minds. Democrats also have to convince people that Republicans are the ones who really disrespect them, by taking their votes for granted and doing nothing to improve their lives. Democrats need to launch an unapologetic attack on Republicans in rural areas for betraying their constituents’ trust. If they don’t, these voters will remain decidedly pro-GOP, and Democrats’ efforts will continue to go unrewarded.
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