Posted on 10/14/2017 8:00:45 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
With a cardboard cutout of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in front of him, U.S. Agriculture Secretary and former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack speaks Sunday at the Central Iowa Democrats' fundraiser at Iowa State University's Hansen Agriculture Student Learning Center in Ames.
DES MOINES -- Rural Iowa shifted its political direction in 2016 and caught Democrats off guard.
The conversation of how to earn back those votes is dominating the conversation among Democrats these days.
It was the focus by speakers at a recent fundraiser held by Democrats from Polk County, which is dominated by the city of Des Moines and its suburbs, as they talked about the party’s need to reach voters outside the state’s biggest cities.
This week in Des Moines, Democrats gathered again to discuss the need to regain the trust of rural voters at an event organized by a new national advocacy group formed for the sole purpose of having that conversation.
“We have to make our argument with courage, and we have to make it everywhere,” said Jason Kander, a former Missouri secretary of state and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in 2016.
Kander was one of the speakers at the event in Des Moines hosted by New Democracy, an advocacy group formed to help expand Democrats’ appeal in the Midwest, the region that Democrats’ losses took the biggest hit in the 2016 elections. Formerly blue states like Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania all flipped to Republicans in the presidential election.
That swing was magnified in Iowa, a state that went twice for Democrat Barack Obama but in 2016 went for Republican Donald Trump by almost 10 percentage points.
From the 2012 to 2016 elections, the state swung nearly 15 points from the Democratic candidate to the Republican.
Obama won 38 counties in 2012; 32 of those went for Trump in 2016.
Most of those 32 counties that swung away from Democrats were in rural areas, particularly in eastern Iowa.
“(The 2016 election) brought home a reality that we were dimly aware of, but were not focused on,” said Will Marshall, who formed New Democracy. “We have to expand the party and we have to expand in all directions, reaching beyond our core partisans and engaging voters who are not now Democrats or are not now voting for us.”
Marshall added, “We have to go everywhere and build real, winning coalitions and majorities again.”
So how do Democrats earn the support of rural voters?
“Before the Democrats can win over the folks you mention, they have to get these folks to be willing to listen to them,” said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University and author of a book on Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses. “You don’t do that with a list of policy proposals; you do that by presenting an overarching vision for the country that respects them and includes them.”
“Calling them delplorables or focusing on an identity politics that speaks to every group that’s not them will not accomplish that,” Goldford said.
That message seems to be getting through to Democrats.
“What happened in Iowa (in 2016) unfortunately and tragically has happened all over the United States. Because our party, for whatever reason, stopped showing up and stopped competing effectively in rural areas,” said Tom Vilsack, the former two-term Iowa governor and U.S. ag secretary for all eight years of the Obama administration. “We stopped understanding the hopes, the dreams, the aspirations, and yes the frustration and anger of those who live, work and raise their families in rural areas. We forgot how to talk to folks, and when we did we often talked down.”
How Democrats talk to rural voters is a problem, said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster. The website for the polling firm ALG Research, in which Anzalone is a partner, believes he has helped beat more incumbent Republicans and take back more Republican seats than any other polling firm in the nation.
Anzalone said Democrats can get trapped by holding hard-core stances on issues like immigration, and by holding contempt for voters who don’t agree 100 percent with their stance on the issue.
“The problem is is that ... we, generally, as Democrats, if they have those feelings, we kind of treat them like idiots. We condescend, literally treat them like idiots in elections,” Anzalone said. “And I think that this is a really big problem that we have to figure out, to understand that their values and their concerns aren’t ones that we can just dismiss, in small towns or big towns. Because a lot of what I’m talking about is actually in suburbia, in a place like West Des Moines.”
Anzalone said, when that happens, as Goldford alluded to, voters will tune out Democrats regardless of whether they are talking about the right issues.
Many Democrats have said they must shift their message in 2018 and beyond to focus on jobs and the economy. But, Anzalone said, none of that will matter unless Democrats first learn how to talk to voters on issues with which they may not perfectly align with Democrats.
“We want to talk about believing that there is a magic fairy dust on our economic message,” Anzalone said.
Democrats can do that simply by being genuine, multiple leaders say.
Kander said, while there is a debate within the party about which direction it should go ideologically -- more to the left or more to the center -- he feels it’s more important for Democrats to be genuine and honest, and that voters will respond better to that regardless of the candidate’s ideology.
Kansas City mayor Sly James said it’s about listening, not pandering.
“It’s not about putting on overalls, sitting on a tractor and acting like you know what it’s about,” James said. “That ain’t what it’s about. It’s about listening to them.”
If Democrats do that -- simply listen -- they may begin to win back those rural voters they have lost, said Matt McCoy, an Iowa state senator from Des Moines.
“Our future is not how we talk to rural Iowa,” McCoy said, “but rather how we listen.”
The ‘Rats talk down to all the voters.
I love how the communists think using the word “folks” as often as possible is the route to getting stupid farmers and hayseeds to give up their guns and white privilege.
Like a broken clock.
“I ain’t on ways tired.”
The Democrats anti-White, pro illegal alien and pro BLM stances aren’t gonna help. White working class people know that the Democrats hate their guts now!
Uh huh. And when they can fake that, they've got something going.
There has been considerable talk about addressing this issue by simply taking the votes of Flyover Country away: going with an urban-centric popular vote and eliminating the Electoral College. In that scenario they wouldn't have to earn their votes because their votes won't matter. Listen carefully to those who proclaim that Hillary "won the popular vote". That's precisely what they're getting at.
That won't happen. And so, regretfully, the bicoastal urban elitists who are currently the decision makers within the Democrat party are going to have to soil their soft hands and learn how to fake sincerity whilst mingling with the unwashed. Calling for a change in attitude is futile, although it's the right answer.
Please Demoncrats, continue pivoting Left and honestly tell people you want to run their lives. You'll get their votes, trust me!
They lost rural voters a long time ago, there just wasn’t a good alternative (McCain? Romney?) until now. Plus, some rural people bought into the black guy thing, much to the nations peril.
I was hoping they’d stay stupid a little longer.
bkmk
Sounds to me like their only intent is to sucker their former voters into coming back and keeping or putting them in office, so they can continue their uppity, regal, snobbish ways as always. No intention whatever to change their ways, or respect the people who actually make the Country work.
Don’t worry. The fact that they have a cardboard cut-out of Hillary Clinton at that meeting tells me that they haven’t learned a thing.
Was that the one chucked inside the Scooby van like a side of beef?
Lets give speech in front of a 4-H sign. Add a white picket fence and wear a blue colored shirt to symbolize the working man. Now we have our strategy!
I believe that’s a room at the ISU Memorial Union. My sister and brother-in-law are alumni there.
The dogma of Marxism subordinates the value of human beings to nothing. It’s in the DNA of Democrats to think of people as cattle.
Are you sure that’s cardboard? She’s always been rather stiff...
No matter how they like the fact remains they hate rural folk. A vote for Democrats is a vote for men in the girls bathroom. A vote for communist brainwashing in schools. A vote for national suicide.
Rush has pointed out many times they can never do that because they'd have to say:
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