November, 2018
Washington -- The 2018 mid-term elections are nearly over (a few contests are still in doubt). The question that remains is whether the results constituted a Democratic blue wave or a more modest blue ripple.
My conclusion is that Democrats underperformed and will have to modify strategy for 2020 if they hope to take the the Senate and the White House. Democrats in 2018 did well in urban and suburban areas, but showed deep and persistent weakness in rural areas.
Democratic victories for governorships in Kansas and Wisconsin were exceptional, but attributable to voter aversion to Republican candidates Kris Kobach and Scott Walker more than a rejection of Trumpism. Democratic senators Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, and Claire McCaskill all lost badly after Donald Trump went into their states and brought out the rural vote against them. Jon Tester survived in Montana only because he is a farmer himself and has a certain immunity from claims that he is out of touch with rural America.
I am far from alone in this reading of the election returns. David Leonhardt writes: "Democrats don’t need to win in most rural areas. But they do need to avoid losing by 50 or 60 percentage points....The Democratic Party simply cannot write off nonmetropolitan America — and try to overwhelm it with a rising urban and suburban coalition."
Michael Tomasky writes similarly: Democrats "need a rural policy...including an emphasis on exports, economic diversification and conservation." Not to mention opioids, nutrition, and broadband.
E.J. Dionne suggests this: "For the longer term, Democrats need...a new agenda for rural, small-town and small-city America. Confining opportunity to the large metropolitan areas will deepen national divisions and, by the way, foster long-term Republican control of the Senate."
The Guardian quoted Tom Vilsack about the "failure of the Democratic party, particularly its national leadership, to offer a vision to rural voters who feel the party has little to say to them and is focused on urban supporters."
As if to hammer this lesson home for Democrats, there were a few House candidates who went after the rural vote and won. Lauren Underwood in Illinois went door to door to farmers who said politicians had not done that in years, and she won. Three Democrats in Iowa held their rural losses down by reminding voters of the effect of the Trump tariffs on commodity prices, and they won.
Contrast this with the Claire McCaskill debacle in neighboring Missouri. She went into rural areas actually campaigning against "crazy Democrats" and, to no one's surprise, was defeated badly. If she had had a Democratic platform for rural America, the outcome might have been different. Likewise, Iowa Democrats could almost certainly have defeated Kim Reynolds and Steve King had there been any national Democratic leadership on rural issues.
This is ironic because there is great discontent in rural America and Senate Democrats wrote a decent 2018 Farm Bill – blocked by Trump – that they could have campaigned on. It was an opportunity wasted.
There are voices counseling otherwise, of course. Some are saying that Democrats can win only by exciting the urban and suburban base to ever-higher turnout and that it is a waste of time to try to persuade rural America to give Democrats a look. This is foolish and will lead once again to Democratic underperformance. Why not both high turnout and persuasion?
