December, 2022
Lincoln — It's time to match up my election predictions with reality. Before the 2022 elections, I made two predictions.
The first prediction:
Democrats will lose races they should have won.... Their failure to be competitive in culturally rural precincts will doom many of them. It is not that they will lose in these areas, but that they will lose by such wide margins that they cannot make up for the losses elsewhere.
I talked to two Nebraska congressional candidates about this, months before the election when they still had time to do something about it. Tony Vargas, in the 2nd District, and Patty Pansing Brooks in the 1st, were both excellent candidates and each listened carefully, even though their purpose in calling me was fund-raising.
Tony Vargas said he agreed on the importance of the rural areas and that he was going to make a special effort in Saunders County to cut the size of his expected loss there, as well as in the rural parts of Douglas and Sarpy Counties. He quickly said, however, that he was going to win because of his large margins in North Omaha and particularly South Omaha.
I replied that he needed to lose only 40-60 in the rural areas and anything exceeding that would result in a defeat. Also, we discussed how Republicans were making a big effort, especially in South Omaha, to lose by less than expected.
After the votes were counted, Tony Vargas won Douglas County by 52-48 but lost Saunders 25-75 and Sarpy 35-65. Had he lost Saunders and Sarpy by 40-60, he would not have won as I predicted, but it would have been extremely close and he would have won had he been able to do slightly better in urban Omaha. In other words, it was the Republican strategy to cut losses in South Omaha that worked better than the Democratic effort to cut losses in rural areas.
Patty Pansing Brooks also agreed that cutting her losses in rural counties was important — I offered the 40-60 goal. She said that she was searching for a way to reach it. I said that showing up in those counties and listening was absolutely necessary, but she also needed a message that would resonate with rural voters. She asked what I thought that could be, genuinely interested in getting campaign advice beyond the sources who seemed to be telling her that she could win by maximizing urban, pro-choice votes in Lancaster and Sarpy Counties.
I said rural voters would respond to a candidate who was truthful with them about the failure of Republicans' get-big-or-get-out agriculture policy, how a half-century of it has depopulated rural Nebraska, closed schools, hospitals, and nursing homes, polluted soil and water, destroyed supply chains, and tragically increased rural deaths-of-despair to alarming levels. And that she would try to reverse it, starting with bold and creative proposals in the 2023 Farm Bill. She probed my advice on how to reach rural voters with several good questions, apparently because she had not heard this before from within her campaign and its supporters, either national or local.
Patty Pansing Brooks lost counties other than Lancaster by 29-71, dooming any hope that big wins in urban areas could pull out a win for her. Even losing 40-60 in those counties would have left her about 13,000 votes short.
The second prediction:
[P]ost-campaign analysts and pundits will either blame other factors [for losses, beyond the failure to compete for the rural vote], such as not campaigning more ideologically to the left or to the right, or that it is impossible to compete for such votes anyway.
Almost on cue, Nebraska Democrats started a public squabble about ideology after the election, with arguments about Democrats' campaigns being too far left on an ideological scale to win. Of course that was the Republican argument, so it seems counterproductive for Democrats to concede it without pushback.
But most voters aren't steeped in political theory and don't know right from left as much as they care about what's happening in their own lives. What too many voters in culturally rural areas perceive is that Democrats don't care and have nothing to offer on any scale.
Democrats have not helped themselves post-election by skipping over the heartland in their choices for House leadership posts. Democrats are signaling that rural policy doesn't matter by demoting the Iowa caucuses in the 2024 presidential race. Republican elected officials at federal and state levels are doing great damage to rural America, but Democrats have lost their voices, and it doesn't look as if they'll be getting them back soon.
I wish my predictions had been wrong. Tony Vargas and Patty Pansing Brooks are experienced state senators, outstanding persons and candidates, and one or both should be in Congress. If only national Democratic leaders cared more about rural collapses, across many states, Democrats would have a sizable House majority.
