Rural Democrats: Party Ignored Us, Suffered the Consequences

Roll Call ^ | November 29, 2016 | By Alex Roarty

[Brad from Tennessee]

Democrats in rural America have a blunt message for the rest of their party: We saw the electoral disaster coming — and it’s your fault.

Strategists and party officials say their warnings about the party’s lackluster outreach to rural voters went unheeded by Democratic leaders for years, culminating in this month’s shock defeat to Donald Trump. A presidential candidate who actually performed poorly in many cities and suburbs nonetheless scored an upset victory because of a surge in support from small towns and rural areas.

To these old Democratic political hands — many of whom hail from well outside the cities where most party professionals live — the outcome would have been preventable if the party had developed and sustained an effort to win over these voters. Instead, they say a Democratic Party that focused on only the urban and suburban vote either ignored rural America entirely or badly mishandled the outreach it did undertake. . .

[Doogle]

Hillary ignored the rural folks because as she stated while campaigning in upstate NY...”WTF am I doing here?...these people have no money”

[alternatives?]

They think if they just develop and mouth some talking points they can win this group.

After all it has worked for blacks and single moms.

[Kozy]

Hillary ignored the rural white folks because they are white; only blacks, illegals, gays, atheists, and really rich white movie stars, Wall Street bankers and 1% matter.

[Paine in the Neck]

The ‘Rat party funders and upper echelon troops consider themselves to be part of, and act as, a transnational urban party. Their allegiance is much more to the urban elites globally than to the rank and file populace of the nations they happen to reside in. They form a sort of unified global Penthouse Archipelago, a Saul Steinberg nation, who consider the whole rest of the world below their lofty heights to be merely resources, feedstocks, with which and upon whom they can work out their fantasies, phobias, neuroses, and manias.

[Hotlanta Mike]

Today’s democrat party epitomizes the lunatic fringe...

[RayChuang88]

The ‘Rat party funders and upper echelon troops consider themselves to be part of, and act as, a transnational urban party. Their allegiance is much more to the urban elites globally than to the rank and file populace of the nations they happen to reside in. They form a sort of unified global Penthouse Archipelago, a Saul Steinberg nation, who consider the whole rest of the world below their lofty heights to be merely resources, feedstocks, with which and upon whom they can work out their fantasies, phobias, neuroses, and manias.

You just perfectly described the denizens of the fictional capital city of Panem from Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy. I don't think even the author could have imagined that description matched the people of some of the largest cities in the USA and Washington, DC. And it was Hillary Clinton literally pandering this this very crowd that cost her the election.

[Moonman62]

Rural areas are where Conservatives dominate. The key to winning as a Republican is to run as a Conservative. More people identify as Conservatives than liberals overall, too.

[NobleFree]

the Democratic Party has become captive by a set of city-dwelling political professionals who personally don’t understand the important differences of urban versus rural campaigns. It’s a blindness that led them to dismiss the results of successive midterm elections, electoral wipeouts that many Democrats believed was mostly a consequence of the party’s urban base failing to turn out.

Stay stupid and keep losing, Rats!

[MrBambaLaMamba]

Selecting a violent, alcohol and drug addled, psychotic criminal as their candidate didn’t help them either.

[libertylover]

I think Greg Gutfeld said it best: “Small town America got tired of having their values mocked.”

[Twotone]

What I want to know is, Why the H*LL are these people still Democrats?!

[SgtHooper]

LOL!

[thirst4truth]

I am a rural voter. My town is about 22,000, in the county only 100,000. I think issues like homosexual marriage, health care and transgender bathrooms tipped the rural voter over the edge. Everything sacred to them, personal to them was being mocked and ridiculed by the city slickers, who know nothing about our lives.

BTW, the R congress won over 3 million more votes than democrats. So when a D starts talking about popular vote, let them have it with the peoples house, across the nation representing every corner of America, crushed the D's in popular vote.

[MayflowerMadam]

Hillary did these simple things that everyone understood:

She promised to put coal miners out of work.

She had a choice to support Black Lives Matter thugs or police; she chose BLM. Decent people prefer the police.

She cheated in debates. Decent people know that cheating is wrong and instill that in their children.

[Cheerio]

And yet they reelect Pelousy as their LEADER!!!!!!!!!!! Fantastic. But here is a warning GOPee - you had better deliver more than you have in the past 6 years which is nothing, BUT THIS

Here’s a list of those modern conservative “small(er) government” principles:

• Did the GOP secure the border with control of the White House and Congress? NO.
• Did the GOP balance the budget with control of the White House and Congress? NO
• Did the GOP even pass a FY 2016 budget with control of the House and Senate? NO.


• Who gave us a $2.5 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill in December 2015? The GOP
• Who eliminated, not just raise but eliminated, the debt ceiling? The GOP
• Who gave us the TSA? The GOP
• Who gave us the Patriot Act? The GOP
• Who expanded Medicare to include prescription drug coverage? The GOP
• Who created the precursor of “Common Core” in “Race To the Top”? The GOP


• Who is working against Donald Trump? The same GOP

mcconnell ryan