2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: How were we supposed to reach 'Rural Whites' and still maintain our base? [View all]brer cat
(24,523 posts)we cease to be the democratic party for all practical purposes. I think we all understand that we need to reach enough people to win elections, but we won't by pandering to deplorables.
Beside which, who is deciding what "rural whites" are? There isn't a monolithic group that fits that role. I have many rural white relatives who always vote and vote republican. Most are well educated and have decent if not really good jobs. They didn't lose a slot at college because of affirmative action or lose out at a job because a minority received a boost, and they don't claim that ever happened. A significant portion of them live in all white rural areas where they have no interaction with anyone other than whites. They are evangelicals and their religion dictates how they vote. Their support for trump in particular was based on some namby pamby freedom of religion crap that supposedly the democrats were going to yank out from under them. Unless the democratic party wants to support god in schools, outlawing all abortions, and putting gays back in the closet or in front of a firing squad, we will never see these folks in our tent.
I also live in a mostly white rural area. I ran across many of the poorly educated, marginally employed if working at all, and not one of them was going to vote. They may talk about economic issues or how AAs or immigrants make their plight worse, but they have little or no interest in how elections can or might change their lives. Case in point, my daughter's ex complains constantly about how hard he has to work to pay extra taxes to support the immigrants who don't/won't work. The man is poor and head of household so he not only doesn't pay income taxes, he gets a huge earned income credit (which is NOT welfare, mind you). He thinks trump is the bees knees but he has never bothered to register to vote. Even if by a miracle we lured some of these folks to our big tent it wouldn't help win elections because they.don't.vote.
Just a sample. There are many "rural whites" and we can't lump them into any particular category to go win over. I don't propose ignoring voters who might be attracted to our message, but we are crazy if we alienate a big and growing part of our party to do so.