Alex Roarty of Roll Call talks to Democrats in rural areas, who say that “The Democratic Party ceded rural America to the Republicans quite some time ago.”
From Roll Call:
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.
Read the rest of the story here.
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