Why can't Democrats win in rural areas?

[hunter]

62. "Brain drain" is real.

Many of the interesting kids in rural areas leave. And too many kill themselves directly, or indirectly by such recklessness as drunk driving.

My grandparents were all great disappointments to their families. One grandma and her sister didn't want anything to do with the dairy industry. They ran wild in Hollywood. One grandpa didn't want to be a rancher or miner so he ran off at 16 to what he thought was the big city of Cheyenne, Wyoming. The city failed his expectations so he joined the Army Air Corp and ended up in California, where he met my grandma. Two of my grandparents left ranching during World War II to work as welders in the California shipyards. They never went back.

I live in a solidly Democratic and diverse California city where the primary business is agriculture. Nevertheless my own kids went off to college in big cities and never returned.

It's a sad fact that Trumpist U.S.A. has correctly discerned that good schools with reality based science and history curriculums, and bright hard working immigrants who have overcome astonishing obstacles to get here, are a threat to their culture of racism and anti-intellectualism. No politician is ever going to say that.