Dem Rural Dilemma - Rage or Engage?

Backlash to a new book shines light on why the left has gone wrong in rural America

The book White Rural Rage has likely popped into your podcast feed or political reading diet since its release six weeks ago. The book argues that white rural voters are increasingly rejecting democracy and embracing political violence. Here’s the most basic summary:

A review in The Washington Post said the authors "stuff the chapters with empirical data, citing dozens of polls and studies" and "don't use a lot of lipstick", saying that "Next to their characterizations, 'basket of deplorables' sounds almost quaint, and many readers may find guilty satisfaction in that."

The book makes it plain that the blame for potential authoritarianism lies with rural voters in a way that the marketing team at Penguin Random House can maximize to incite liberals prepared to spend $32.00 (enough to qualify for free shipping!) on a book.

Here’s the problem: all those chapters stuffed with “empirical data” and “dozens of studies” are facing strenuous objection from … the people who collected the data and conducted the studies. Here is a not-so-subtle headline from Politico last week:

For a gutting breakdown, check out how Tyler Austin Harper described it in The Atlantic:

In the weeks since its publication, a trio of reviews by political scientists have accused Schaller and Waldman of committing what amounts to academic malpractice, alleging that the authors used shoddy methodologies, misinterpreted data, and distorted studies to substantiate their allegations about white rural Americans. I spoke with more than 20 scholars in the tight-knit rural-studies community, most of them cited in White Rural Rage or thanked in the acknowledgments, and they left me convinced that the book is poorly researched and intellectually dishonest.

White Rural Rage illustrates how willing many members of the U.S. media and the public are to believe, and ultimately launder, abusive accusations against an economically disadvantaged group of people that would provoke sympathy if its members had different skin color and voting habits. That this book was able to make it to print—and onto the best-seller list—before anyone noticed that it has significant errors is a testament to how little powerful people think of white rural Americans.

(Can’t Get No) “Guilty Satisfaction”

As the WaPo review noted, liberal readers may get some “guilty satisfaction” from the book, which drives home just how much the “In This House We Believe In Science” crowd may not believe in political science.

The latest from Pew Research on Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation adds another data point to Democratic deficits with rural voters. And just how costly this perverse sense of satisfaction has been.

Little has changed over the past fifteen years in the aggregate among urban and suburban counties, with Democrats maintaining a roughly twenty point urban advantage and Republicans a narrow edge in the burbs.

The lines on the rural breakdown look like someone opening a hedge clipper wider and wider. Democrats were even with Republicans in rural counties less than two decades ago. Now the ceiling on Democratic support has been sliced off.

And how low that ceiling is matters. Margins matter, even when you lose. Biden won the White House by losing rural voters by less, as the most rigorous analysis of the 2020 election (from the data firm Catalist) shows.

Candidates Matter

Back to the Politico essay, from the political scientists and author of The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America. Nicholas Jacobs is of the researchers taken out of context in the best-selling book. Here’s his (actual) expert take:

I wish there was a trick to solving that political problem. I’m not a political strategist or a communications expert. But I believe that the first place to start is acknowledging that the divisions between rural and urban America are more than material ones. Look at Democratic candidates who are successful in rural communities — Jared Golden, Tim Ryan, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. They do not just talk about rural deprivation and rural impoverishment, as real as it often is in their states. They celebrate rural communities’ resiliency; they acknowledge the pride of place that is present throughout rural America; they see different values that are not reflected in opinion polls and snappy campaign slogans, but rather speak to different ways of living that draw some people to the countryside, problems and all. It helps that they are authentically rural and do not pretend to be something they are not. Candidates still matter, even in a highly nationalized campaign environment.

If you want to send $32.00 to Penguin Random House, you can find a link to buy White Rural Rage yourself. If you want to support the candidates who engage rural voters with empathy and authenticity - instead of just raging from across the MSNBC screen - you can go to our Win The Middle slate here. Free shipping!