DiehardHeelFan
Esteemed Member
- Messages
- 592
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
As you've observed before, I'm a believer in revealed preferences. Don't ask me to construct a messaging campaign. But I can look at data, and I can see that the talk about economic anxiety simply does not comport with the actual election results. If you want to disagree, fine, but don't pretend I'm some idiot who has no understanding of the "historical and strategic depth."You’re setting an impossible standard here. Unless I draw the exact same fatalist conclusion you’ve drawn, that large swaths of rural America are unreachable due to unshakable racism, then my argument doesn’t “incorporate” racism?
You’re right that the New Deal was racially exclusionary in many ways. I’ve acknowledged that. I’ve studied it more than you have. That’s why I know the lesson shouldn’t be “never try again,” it should be: do it better. Expand the promise, don’t abandon it. For someone who constantly appeals to expertise, you seem surprisingly uninterested in the historical and strategic depth of the argument I’m making.
You also seem awfully confident about what rural voters “don’t want” while also saying you don’t know how to message to them and didn’t grow up around them. That contradiction matters. The alternative to trying isn’t safety, it’s continued political collapse.
And I’ll just add: if you genuinely think most rural churches are likelier to beat you up than listen to you, that says more about your assumptions than about the people you’re writing off.
This is badly mischaracterizing what I said (or at least what I meant). I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it's because I explained my point poorly.You close by saying, basically: yes, rural voters might respond to a message about rebuilding what’s been lost, but we shouldn’t give it to them, because that would be “pandering.” That’s not universalism. That’s liberal parochialism. You want to talk about solidarity, but only on your terms. And if people don’t share your assumptions about cities, education, and globalization? Well then, they don’t count.
I guess there's at least one thing that I've been trying to communicate but haven't done very well: not everyone is young. Meaning that you're up for a good challenge. You're chomping for a fight. That's good.That’s a challenge to organize better.
I don't know. I think you underestimate those people. I spent quite a lot of time around big money when I was working at white shoe law firms in New York. Even the NYC Jones Day office had majority liberals, I'd say. These rich liberals are often quite conscientious and go with principle instead of mere self-interest. I'm not so naive to think that their principles are unrelated to their self-interest, but I do think that they aren't necessarily determined by it. That is to say, a lot of the rich Dem donors are more interested in centrism because they want to win, not necessarily because they fear the left.Sure, cut the check. But let’s be honest: the Democrats who write checks don’t want to hear what I’d say once I got the mic. That’s the real problem, isn’t it?
Well, there are a lot of overlapping issues there. Israel/Gaza plays a big role. Most of the donor types I was referring to are Jewish.Idk man. These same Democratic donors are working overtime to discredit and destroy the Democratic nominee for NYC mayor. Doesn’t scream ‘tolerance of strong ideology’ to me.
Hopefully there is some relatively unknown Gov (Cooper, Beshars, whoever) that can speak plain and simple and old school Democrat stuffExactly. Mamdani didn’t run on nostalgia, he ran on basic needs: rent, buses, childcare. Real stuff that makes people’s lives easier. And it resonated.
Will his exact formula work everywhere? No. But the principle does: meet people where they are, organize around what they need, and, for the love of God, stop talking down to them.
I dont respect rural America. I dont value the opinions of rural Americans. And i dont have any wish to get to a place where I change myself yet again to create that respect or value.Rodo, I’m going to be blunt here because I think your post reveals the exact mindset that’s kneecapped liberal strategy for decades.
You dismiss the TVA and wartime mobilization as ancient history. But those aren’t nostalgia plays, they’re precedents. They’re proof that the federal government can dramatically reshape regional economies and working-class life when it chooses to. If we did it before, we can do it again. The barrier isn’t that rural voters are allergic to investment. The barrier is that no one has credibly offered it in a generation, and when someone does, they get called “delusional.”
The irony is, you admit that rural voters respond to culture war messages that offer meaning, pride, and belonging. Then in the same breath, you write them off for responding to the only people willing to speak to them like they matter. If that’s not a failure of imagination and leadership, I don’t know what is.
As for the notion that rural America has “disproportionate political power” so we don’t need to organize them? That’s a dodge. Their structural power is exactly why we need to win some of them back. You don’t get to say “they matter too much already” and then shrug when we lose the Senate again.
You close by saying, basically: yes, rural voters might respond to a message about rebuilding what’s been lost, but we shouldn’t give it to them, because that would be “pandering.” That’s not universalism. That’s liberal parochialism. You want to talk about solidarity, but only on your terms. And if people don’t share your assumptions about cities, education, and globalization? Well then, they don’t count.
What you’re calling “misperceptions” are, for many people, lived experiences of institutional betrayal, by both parties and by the systems they were told to trust. It’s not that they fear cities; they resent being told their hometowns don’t matter. It’s not that they hate education; they’re skeptical of a credentialing system that demands debt and relocation just to get ahead. And when they hear “globalism,” they’re not thinking about an abstract economic model, they’re thinking about the factory that left and never came back.
Democrats won’t win back rural America until they actually want to. Not abstractly. Not with vibes. But with respect, investment, and a willingness to lead, even when it’s uncomfortable.
As usual you speak from the heart so to speak. Thanks. I am also enough of a sap to hope one day the little ones in rural America don't have a shit govt that works against them ( like orangeturd) .And that requires , I think , some coalition with them typesI dont respect rural America. I dont value the opinions of rural Americans. And i dont have any wish to get to a place where I change myself yet again to create that respect or value.
And I say that as someone who grew up in the most rural of places imaginable, lived in the shadow of Jim Crow's massive influence decades after it was abolished, and have more of a "country" ethos than 75% of people who currently reside in rural America.
I didn't come to this conclusion lightly. It has taken literal decades of being viewed as evil, arrogant, and stupid by the very people I worked the hardest to help.
If politics is building a coalition with those people, then I don't want a political coalition.
That might make me all those things that those folks accused me of being for all those years, but I'm jusy being real.
If liberalism relies on those who have been staunchly engaged in the fight for the last 30+ years making peace somehow with rural America, then liberalism is dead on arrival.
That isn't pessimism. That's the God's honest truth.
Democrats shouldn't focus their message on rural Americans specifically because they should focus their message on everyone. You say you want a more universalist message but disagree with that proposition? I'm not saying we can't craft a message that appeals to as many people as possible, or that we shouldn't at least try to do that. I'm saying that if it proves impossible to craft a message that appeals to everyone across all demographics and constituencies (which I think it will - "big tent" has always been an issue for Dems) then prioritizing rural voters over much larger and more winnable voting blocks would be a mistake. Do you seriously disagree with that? That's not triage; that's just being realistic. I appreciate your idealism but even if you think there is a perfect message that will result in a populist Dem landslide across all demographics in the current political environment (I'm skeptical) you still have to have a Plan B. Like, if turns out that rural Americans don't react well to messaging about Medicare for All, robust union protections, universal free lunch, and cheap/free college for everyone, do you think we should cut those things from the platform to appease them? I don't.What I critiqued was the implication running through your post, not just one sentence.
When you say Democrats shouldn’t focus their message on rural Americans because it might come at the “expense of everyone else,” that’s not universalism. That’s triage politics. It assumes scarcity and reinforces the idea that rural needs are outside the circle of solidarity, not inside it.
You say we can’t promise to rebuild what was lost, and I agree we shouldn’t peddle false nostalgia. That’s what I’ve said in several posts up this point. I’m not saying bring back 1950s coal jobs. What I am saying is that we can invest in public works, rural healthcare, education, and infrastructure in a way that builds trust and creates opportunity. The TVA succeeded because it met people’s needs in a time of institutional collapse. That model still has lessons for today.
You also say rural voters “won’t vote for it.” But that’s not a reason to give up. That’s a challenge to organize better. And if we concede that challenge, if we decide not to even try because these voters aren’t “persuadable,” then yes, we’re writing them off, whether we say so directly or not.
As for this line: “Republicans haven’t won by telling them they’re as good as any city dweller or college graduate; they have told rural voters that they’re better than those people.”—I think that gets it backward. Trumpism taps into the fear that elites already see them as worse. That’s the wound being exploited. You don’t counter that by reinforcing the same hierarchy from the other side. You counter it by rejecting the whole idea that one set of people is inherently more deserving than another. That’s what real solidarity looks like.
I agree that rural voters shouldn’t count more than anyone else. But they also shouldn’t count less. If we want to build durable political power, we can’t keep approaching this from a posture of resentment. That’s the attitude that runs through many liberal arguments. And it shows.
You mean like how some progressives worked overtime to discredit and destroy the Democratic nominee for president? Is there honestly any difference in those things besides whose side you're on?Idk man. These same Democratic donors are working overtime to discredit and destroy the Democratic nominee for NYC mayor. Doesn’t scream ‘tolerance of strong ideology’ to me.
Who's making assumptions about people now?Sure, cut the check. Let’s be honest: the Democrats who write checks don’t want to hear what I’d say once I got the mic. That’s the real problem, isn’t it?
I’m actually comparing it to how some progressives acted toward Biden/Harris, in the 2024 election. Not anything from the 2016 election. And that 2024 effort could very much also be described as a “coordinated campaign.”Come on, Rodo. You’re really comparing grassroots frustration with Hillary in 2016 to what’s happening right now: a coordinated campaign by Democratic electeds, media figures, and donors to discredit a nominee who just won an election in the country’s biggest city?
Yes sirThe proof is in the pudding. When a socialist wins a Democratic primary in the biggest city in the country, donor-class liberals don’t say, “Interesting, let’s learn from what worked.” They go scorched earth. They fund opposition groups, run hit pieces, and signal to every other ambitious candidate that there’s a ceiling on how far you can go if you cross certain lines.