Check out Dave Neiwert's post
Back To The Roots. He's looking at how the Dems have basically abandoned rural voters and how that has hurt us in the last few elections. In 2000 and in 2004 both Gore and Kerry had good programs outlined for addressing the problems that rural America faces, but neither one pursued those programs in a way that engaged rural voters.
My family lives in a very rural area of Michigan and I was back in early October. The place was NOT wall-to-wall Bush/Cheney. There are Democrats there. And if we can figure out how to get the message across to them in an honest and sincere way, we can get more of them.
Here is probably the most hopeful thing I've read in the last three days. It comes from an article by John Nichols in The Nation from last year, quoted by Dave Neiwert.
Kaptur says that's because the party has been peddling gimmicks rather than populist substance. "Most of the people who run the Democrat Party, like [Democratic National Committee chair] Terry McAuliffe, they're city people," she says. "They think it's just a matter of tinkering with the party's image." Democratic consultants have created a mini-industry that tells candidates to go "country" by sponsoring NASCAR teams, joining the NRA or fuzzing positions on abortion or gay rights to mollify social conservatives. Rural folks just laugh. "You can be ardently pro-choice and support gay rights and still win rural areas if you have an economic message," says Rhonda Perry, a family farmer who is program director with the Missouri Rural Crisis Center. "I don't think too many people in rural Missouri sit up nights worrying about gay rights. But they do sit up nights worrying about how they are going to keep the farm or how they are going to get health benefits after the meatpacking plant shuts down."
The Kerry/Edwards campaign tried to address some of these issues, but they didn't make the efforts to connect that I think are necessary. We should start putting together a list of rural-farming-issues groups that we can network with and provide support to in order to lay the groundwork for retaking Middle America.