General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why Democrats Keep Losing Rural Counties Like Mine [View all]Azathoth
(4,608 posts)OK, let's say the Dems are out of touch coastal elitists who are too busy banning guns and eating vegan foie gras to care about the plight of small farmers and rural Americans. Their agenda and messaging are broken.
So what's the GOP alternative that is winning such loyalty from these folks? Obama proved Dems don't care about small farmers by allowing a merger between two agribusiness giants. Ok, fine. So naturally the answer is to fall in love with the GOP's Middle America-killing trade wars and their policy of rolling back every single regulation preventing big business from exploiting, poisoning, killing and tossing aside the bodies of poor rural Americans?
Or maybe healthcare concerns. Rural healthcare is a nightmare, elitist Dems don't address it. OK. So clearly we need to form a cult around a party whose entire healthcare platform is repealing access to health insurance because it was named after a black guy? And of course we need to oppose mask-wearing during a global pandemic 'cause that's tyranny.
We could go on and on with this nonsense. It's absurd and everyone who isn't in denial recognizes how absurd it is.
Rural Americans vote Republican because of cultural reasons. That's their "team" and everyone knows you don't switch teams unless you're disloyal. And their team's messaging to its fans is simple: we're gonna stick it to liberals and minorities and secularists and immigrants and gays and Jews and Muslims and the Chinese and promiscuous women and socialists and globalists and the media and Hollywood and egghead scientists and city-dwellers and people with college educations and so on. We're gonna make the libs cry and and we're gonna scapegoat and pay back everyone who isn't you.
That's the messaging rural Americans are voting for. And in almost every instance, they're voting for it in support of policies *diametrically opposed* to their own interests.