States containing 17% of American voters—most of them white and rural—are a Senate majority. This is a great injustice and an indictment of American democracy, but to fix that broken system, we need to win by its rules. That means re-learning to get votes in rural America.
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Those votes are available, because people's livelihoods have been looted by corporate multinationals, health care has disappeared into the cities, schools are deteriorating and you can't even buy fresh local produce in farm states. But we need to go out and pursue them.
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I think of this as a form of atrophy. Progressives have ideas that would connect well with rural voters if properly expressed, but they've forgotten how to convey those ideas in language and policy that isn't coded for a small college-educated elite with weird ideological quirks.
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Replying to @Pinboard
Wasn't this the pitch behind Iron Stache and the rural left attempts that fell flat on their face a few years back?
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Replying to @MoralHazardPay
That's kind of my point. We never got this right, and rather than address that, enthusiasm moved to the easier goal of winning intra-party primaries.
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Replying to @Pinboard
I think it might not have gotten right just because it's kind of wrong? There just isn't fertile ground there because they're often old communities with small c conservative values. Winning safe primaries and pushing left is probably a better return on your effort
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Replying to @MoralHazardPay
The only way to win a Senate majority is through rural America, so it's very important to find some common ground there. Democrats have a strong tradition of rural populism to draw on, but it requires abandoning some parts of left political discourse people have grown attached to
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Replying to @Pinboard
Sure, but what parts do you keep? Your Manchins and Bullock types seem to have a better shot at flipping those and I don't think anyone puts them on the left end of the party. Let the conservadems that don't backstab run there and the leftists grow the next leadership class
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Replying to @MoralHazardPay
Bringing in a leadership class that never learned how to win competitive elections is a recipe for a permanent minority. If the left can't get the poor and working class to vote for policies that allegedly benefit them, that's a crisis that won't be solved by capturing the party
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Replying to @Pinboard
If the question is how to flip those rural white elections then the Bullock options seems better than spending huge amounts of time and energy with lefty options? The Ds are a big tent, get people who you can trust even if you don't fully agree with to run there.
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