Democratic Comeback: What--and Who--Could Beat a Republican in a Rural District

Saturday, February 11, 2017


Can Democrats win Rural Areas?    Maybe the right Democrat can.

(Explanation to readers around the country:  Greg Walden is a Republican incumbent congressman from an archetypal "red state" rural and agricultural part of Oregon.  He was Chair of the GOP committee to elect Republicans to Congress and his reward by GOP leadership was to make him Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.   He has a safe seat, or thinks he does, measured by the fact that Democratic opponents have won about 30% of the vote in their token opposition to him.   He has a big rural district, invaded by enclaves of city folks in upscale resort and medical centers and college towns including Bend, Medford, and Ashland.)

The Washington Post has an article saying it is pretty much hopeless for Democrats.   In the Senate Idaho and Wyoming have just as many votes as do California and New York.  In the House Democrats are strongest in compact districts--cities--where they can easily be gerrymandered into "wasted" votes.

Democrats have become an urban party of knowledge workers.   That is a problem for them. The archetypal--and therefore caricature--Democrat is a professional woman who went to an elite college and lives in a big city or college town and has a desk job with a multinational company.  She hates guns, she likes mass transit, she drinks expensive coffees, buys food she think is "organic", she reads the NY Times, listens to NPR, watches Rachel Maddow, and she doesn't know anyone who listens to Country music or watches Fox News.   There are not enough of these people to win national elections and there are nowhere enough of them in about 250 of the 435 congressional districts.

The Washington Post is right if the notion of being a Democrat does not change.  But it can change.    If the kinds of policies Democrats stand for are purely defined by a primary electorate that accepts only certain values as "pure enough to be a real Democrat" then Democrats are doomed to lose.  The Party cannot just be the party of Cambridge, Mass. and Silicon Valley.