“The 2024 rural opportunity”
Until 2022, it seemed to many rural Democrats and progressive activists that the Democratic Party leadership was content to abandon these communities to Republican dominance. Especially after Trump’s rural dominance in 2020, the narrative that Democrats had given up competing beyond the suburbs had solidified among many in the party. Rural Democratic politicians, like Bullock, who lost a Senate election in 2020, were beginning to sound the alarm ahead of the midterms.
The former two-term governor now sounds a lot more optimistic when he talks about the future of rural Democrats. “We have a long way to go as a party, but I think that certainly we saw through the midterms that you can’t cede any parts of the country,” he said.
Take a Pragmatic Approach to Rural Values
What is required to build on those 2022 gains, Democratic sources told Vox, looks a lot like a mix of economic populism, boots-on-the-ground local organizing, and pragmatic pitches that take into account the way rural voters think.
Former Rep. Tim Ryan, who lost an Ohio Senate race to Republican venture capitalist J.D. Vance in 2022, sees this as a reframing of classic Democratic messaging. “Generally, I see a populism meaning that for most people, the economy is not working,” Ryan said. “You need to identify that, but there has to be an independent streak too. It’s not unique to rural voters, but it’s more pronounced in rural areas.”
Ryan said the right appeal to rural voters emphasizes a kind of matter-of-fact attitude that doesn’t mean always defending national leaders. “It’s important as Democrats are going to campaign in rural areas to say, ‘Look, I have honest disagreements with Joe Biden, I have honest disagreements with Chuck Schumer, but I have completely honest disagreements with Donald Trump too. And I’m not going there to toe the line for anybody. I’m going to toe the line for you,’” he said.
Ryan, who is now on the Natural Allies Leadership Council, a natural gas advocacy group, said that pragmatism extends to topics of vital importance to the Democratic Party, like the way they talk about immigration, manufacturing, clean energy and climate change, free trade, and even the debt ceiling and the deficit.
