People are told over and over not to see what is right in front of them.
"'Candidate after candidate would tell me they were working their socks off and never really seeing any evidence of a real campaign on the Republican side,' Wikler told us. 'And some of those candidates right before the election told me that they were really confident they'd win, because they knew their opponent had essentially done nothing, had barely filed any fundraising, had no meaningful field presence to speak of. And yet the Republicans would still win by these massive margins.' ... Nevertheless, when it comes to policy, Democrats at both state and federal level never stop trying to help rural America, as politically unrequited as their efforts might be. Every Democratic presidential campaign puts out some kind of rural agenda, full of policies and programs and economic developmental ideas. And when they take office, they back it up with dollars; when Democrats pass a big spending bill, it is likely not just to make a point of directing money to rural areas, but also to ensure that resources are in place to help rural communities access funding and navigate federal bureaucracies.
"You will search in vain for similar Republican initiatives to revitalize urban centers, yet nobody accuses Republicans of 'ignoring' urban America or demands that the party genuflect to the urban citizens who vote against it in such substantial numbers. In fact, the GOP's overt hostility towards cities is taken as a given ... . Rural Americans can usually expect their concerns to fall on deaf Republican ears, while Democrats are eager to help ... .
"Black, Latino, and Native rural Americans find themselves in even worse conditions than their White rural counterparts ... . And unlike most rural Whites, they've experienced generations of discrimination and abuse from federal and state governments. But they haven't abandoned their belief in the democratic process. They aren't threatening election officials, or planning violence against people they don't like, or plotting to overthrow the government."
Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, "White Rural Rage"
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