How to Democrat In the Age of Trump by Mike Lux

Author:Mike Lux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: progressive, election, clinton, grassroots, sanders
Publisher: Strong Arm Press

Social issues like guns, abortion, and LGBT rights drive the politics of rural America. Polling is conclusive on this issue: rural folks vote primarily on economic issues, not on the stereotypical hot button social issues. Given the levels of poverty, lower wages, and problems with rural health care and education, this is not a big surprise.

Attitudes on social issues do tend to be somewhat more conservative than in urban areas, but not radically so. For example, a lot more people in rural areas than in urban areas own guns (mainly hunting rifles), but they don’t generally own assault weapons and are fine with background checks to make sure criminals and dangerous, mentally ill people don’t get guns. Only the most hard-core NRA people vote exclusively on the gun issue.

Don’t forget my earlier points about Bill Clinton and Barack Obama: despite their liberal stands on social issues, despite the attacks from the NRA and Christian Coalition-style groups, they were able to do relatively well in small towns and rural areas in at least one election. Bill Clinton won West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas, after signing two gun-control bills. He prevailed because we kept talking to the folks in the countryside. Four years later, Al Gore was scared to talk about guns in rural America. He left the field to the NRA, and subsequently lost all those states. If we take progressive stands on issues like guns, we have to go explain to rural folks why we did. If we engage in that way, plenty of those voters will agree with us. There is no reason to think that being a progressive on these issues dooms us.

Just to underscore, if Democrats leave the field and don’t engage with people in rural America on why we believe what we believe, groups like the NRA and the Christian conservative groups will be the only ones talking with voters about the issues.

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