Why Trump may have an unexpected weakness with rural voters in 2020
A new Democratic analysis suggests the party’s 2020 presidential nominee has an overlooked opportunity to win over voters in rural America, potentially halting a decade-long slide with a slice of the electorate that has shifted decisively toward the GOP.
The analysis itself is replete with caveats and faces deep skepticism from top Republicans and even some Democrats, who doubt President Donald Trump is losing ground in a region of the country that includes his most devoted supporters. But it might nonetheless reshape the common understanding of how Democrats can win next year’s presidential election — and points to a possible vulnerability for Trump and the GOP.
The Democratic analytics firm Catalist recently published a review of the 2018 midterm elections using data gleaned from voter files, a state-by-state report that offers the most detailed look yet at turnout in last year’s races.
The findings were startling: When comparing the 2016 presidential election to 2018 House races, the biggest increase of support for Democrats came not in the suburbs (which received the most attention) but in rural areas.
Read more: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/campaigns/article231263808.html
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We saw it happening on Midterm Election night, and each night after until BlueWave!
Mahalo, TexasT
about a friend's sister, whose family restaurant up in Iowa or Indiana is in trouble from all this.
This is from the article linked to in this one, same study but not limited to rural voting, on the discussion of whether Democrats should focus on mobilizing the formerly feckless to the polls or go after disaffected Repubs/Repub-indies. Data show our blue wave came more from the latter -- RW voters voting blue, but they say it should be "and," not "or."
That last is rather shocking. After nearly 2 years of Trump and several of increasingly corrupt and betraying Republican legislators, mobilization of the 40% feckless and young (and many of our @5% who may not vote from age/disability), was still lower than migration from right to left.
Agree we need to try for both, but this is making me think we really need special concentration on the kind of people who show up to vote every 2 years. We only need a few more percent for a revolution.
idea for all they can get out of it. We all know socialism isn't a force in our party, mostly a phony boogie the right is trying to smear us with. Even socialist lite revolution can't be sold to an electorate who can look it up on their phones. So no accident the smear didn't work during the midterms, when candidates across the nation ran on meeting local needs in ways people wanted.
Big, bold solutions for big problems and big advances where we must have them are not at all the same thing as revolution, though they can have revolutionary effect as FDR's New Dealers proved. And our party and current candidates are running on the former, and wanting that is actually what large majorities on both sides of the aisle have in common. Disaffected conservatives may be energized to get out and vote against us, but not by the threat of national healthcare or a return to affordable college.
And take a good look at our candidates for real: lots of heavy-hitter mainstream liberals and some lighter weight mainstream liberals and blue dogs. Sanders is there but an outlier who poisoned himself for 2020 in 2016. Only Elizabeth Warren is coming over as iconoclastic, and interestingly, perhaps because she's batting for the establishment, her big proposals are not frightening anyone so far, even drawing some approval from the right. No one really expects her to be our nominee at this point, though, and after Sanders she's the biggest "socialist/commie" scare the swiftboaters have.
Very to the point also, Sanders is pushing capitalism-based solutions in 2019 and also trying to appeal to conservatives. And even those proposals aren't iconoclastic but rather resurrected liberal Democratic answers that worked in the past, before the Republicans took us in a bad direction. So indicative of what people really want. A yearning for socialist revolution is not exactly why why the old-fashioned label "Medicare for All" caught fire. It was because name itself suggests a turn to what is old and proven.
All those old programs and rights people are so comfortable with and want protected, expanded, more of -- and returned to them where lost, were and are Democratic Party achievements from the New Deal era ending in 1980, plus bright spots from the conservative era like equal rights advances and the ACA.
MSM coverage of us as a party is averaging 2-3 Pinocchios, and the right will hit extremely hard for 2020. But really, so far it seems to be shaping up pretty much as you wish. My fingers are long crossed and cramped while waiting for those tragically delayed coattails. 
