Reply #85: If rural people see social issues as the ONLY focus of the Dems, then they have no reason to vote

[Lydia Leftcoast]

For example, I remember the early years of the Reagan era.

There were still a few New Deal Dems in Congress at the time, and the Dems as a whole had a majority. But this was during the ascendancy of the DLC, which agreed with Reagan on 1) a military buildup, 2) intervention in Central America, 3) being "pro-business" (=pro-corporate),and 4) tax cuts for the wealthy. However, they were huge on social issues.

At that time, the predominant concern in rural areas was farm foreclosures. Now that middle class suburban people are getting foreclosed on, it's a big national issue, but when rural people were losing farms that had been in the family since the 1860s and were forced into working in gas station convenience stores, the Dems did NOTHING, despite pleas from rural state legislators and New Deal Dems.

Mind you, they still had a majority in Congress at this time.

Now if the Dems had gotten together and created a program of low-interest refinancing for independent farmers, they would have had the loyalty of the rural voters for generations. Even if Reagan had vetoed it, the Dems could have still proclaimed that only the Republicans were preventing them from helping independent farmers.

But they did nothing. I suspect that too many Dems were getting big contributions from agribusiness and didn't want to do anything to impede the agribusiness monster as it swallowed up America's farms.

Anyway, the result is that the farmers felt abandoned by everyone.

But along came the Republicans, nasty but extremely clever, and started campaigning on opposition to social issues. Their line was, "The Democrats just care about black people and yuppie women who want to be lawyers and sluts who want to have sex without consequences and people who don't want your children to sing Christmas carols in school."

So the rural mindset is, "At least the Republicans understand our values. We have no black people here, the women here are more concerned about keeping body and soul together than about becoming lawyers, we never liked the sexual revolution, and why shouldn't we sing Christmas carols if everyone in the district is some sort of Christian?"

You cannot campaign PRIMARILY on social issues and win a rural audience. You have to provide tangible results.

If the Obama administration had dug in its heels and taken Max Baucus instead of Dennis Kucinich in a ride no Airforce One and had instituted true single-payer health care, that would have taken a tremendous burden off the remaining self-employed farmers.

If the Obama administration had reinstated the usury laws that prevailed before Reagan instead of leaving interest rates high in its "credit card reform bill," struggling families would have had some hope of paying off their debts.

If the advent of the Obama administration had marked the beginning of new roads and bridges and social services for the large elderly population instead of new countries for rural youth to go die in, rural voters could have seen some advantages to voting Democratic.

Your average voter doesn't vote on lofty principles or team loyalties. They vote on specific issues, and if the Dems appear to be appealing to the yuppie vote (as many of the DLCers do), then the rural voters will ignore them and vote for the Republican, who at least pays lip service to their culture.