Some Democrats in rural Pennsylvania are beginning to speak out what they have been afraid to say.
The Democratic Party is so toxic in the small towns 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, PA. Some liberals have even removed their number stickers and yard signs; refusing to acknowledge publicly their party affiliation. The Democratic Party in this area are becoming outnumbered, just like many other places amongst the U.S., and the Democrats are feeling increasingly isolated and unwelcome in their communities.
“The hatred for Democrats is just unbelievable,” said Tim Holohan, an accountant based in rural McKean County who recently encouraged his daughter to get rid of a President Biden bumper sticker.
The climate across rural Pennsylvania is symptomatic of a larger political problem threatening the Democratic Party heading into the November elections. Beyond losing votes in virtually every election since 2008, Democrats have been effectively ostracized.
The shifting climate, helped Republicans limit Democratic inroads in 2020, the GOP actually gained House seats despite Donald Trump’s presidential loss. A year later, surging rural support enabled Republicans to claim the Virginia governorship.
A small but vocal group of Democratic officials now fear the same trends will undermine their candidates in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, states that will help decide the Senate majority in November, and the White House two years after that.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party continues to devote the vast majority of its energy, messaging and resources to voters in more populated urban and suburban areas.
The Democratic Party’s struggle in rural America has been building for years. And it’s getting worse.
Barack Obama won 875 counties nationwide in his overwhelming 2008 victory. Twelve years later, Biden won only 527. The vast majority of those losses, 260 of the 348 counties, took place in rural counties.
21 rural counties in Michigan flipped from Obama in 2008 to Trump in 2020; Democrats lost 28 rural counties in Minnesota, 32 in Wisconsin and a whopping 45 in Iowa. At the same time, recent Republican voter registration gains in swing states such as Florida and North Carolina were fueled disproportionately by rural voters.
Rep. Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat who recently announced he would not seek reelection to Congress this fall, warns that the party is facing extinction in small-town America.
“It’s hard to sink lower than we are right now. You’re almost automatically a pariah in rural areas if you have a D after your name,” Jim Cooper said.
Even if Democrats continue to eke out victories by piling up urban and suburban votes, former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota fears her party will have “unstable majorities” if they cannot stop the bleeding in rural areas.
“Democrats have the House, they have the Senate, the presidency, but it’s an unstable majority. By that, I mean, the narrowest kind, making it difficult to advance ideas and build coalitions,” said Heitkamp, who now heads the One Country Project, which is focused on engaging rural voters.
She criticized her party’s go-to strategy for reaching rural voters: focusing on farmers and pledging to improve high-speed internet. At the same time, she said Democrats are hurting themselves by not speaking out more forcefully against far-left positions that alienate rural voters, such as pushes to defund the police.
“Most Democrats have changed their minds after Biden obtained office, they are trying to get the message out, they don’t stand with the far extreme liberals. They are just normal people who want similar things, such as; good healthcare, good education for their children, and an affordable economy,” stated Heitkamp.
To help win back rural voters, the Democratic National Committee has tapped Kylie Oversen, a former North Dakota legislator, to work with rural organizers and state-party rural caucuses as the chair of the national committee’s rural council. The DNC also says it’s sharing resources with people on the ground in rural areas to help improve training, recruiting and organizing.
It is very difficult to repair a car that has been driven off a cliff. It seems that is what at least some of the Democrat Party is doing.
The Democrats have survived other crisis. Like the crisis of the slaves being emancipated by a Republican President [Lincoln]. When they briefly tied their ‘wagon’ to the KKK they found realized that wasn’t a long term solution so they learned how to DECEIVE people to win elections [they deceived the blacks that they were on their side while MURDERING/aborting their children to maintain white control {most of the Democratic leadership is white} and ‘harvested’ their votes to stay in power]. It’s very likely they will weather this storm also.
Democrats push against us citizens us workers and pushing socialist agenda against freedom and constitutional rights. The corruption election fraud and constant lies deserve banishment