Introduction

Our nation’s deep divides, along lines of race, class and geography are getting stronger, more intractable.  Prosperity and economic security remain out of reach for most Americans, student debt overshadows the prospects for millions of young people, and enormous, long-standing problems, from climate change to structural racism are ignored or exacerbated by people in power.   This has pushed a large portion of the electorate to either drop out of the process or align themselves with Trump and the extreme Right.

Racism plays a substantial role in this alignment, as both world view and motivator.  At the same time, it’s also true that many people feel that their grievances have been heard, finally, by Trump, that on many levels, he ‘gets’ them.  How has a billionaire, elitist New Yorker persuaded so many working people, especially in rural areas, that he is their champion?  In part because the Democrats and the liberal media establishment have demonstrated how clueless they are about the struggles of everyday folks, and how committed they are to elite-driven incrementalism, even as people and the planet cry out for deep and transformative solutions.

 All of this is particularly true for rural communities, who believe, with justification, that they’ve been dissed, marginalized and extracted from for decades.   And that liberal pundits and political leaders either don’t get that or don’t care.

As someone who has lived and worked in rural Appalachia for nearly 40 years, who counts among his friends and colleagues numerous farmers, loggers, miners and small business owners, and who has twice run for Congress as a Democrat, I have become convinced that overcoming the urban-rural divide is essential not only for rural America but for the future of our nation and world.  To that end, this Guidebook offers a framework for understanding and overcoming the urban-rural divide, growing out of my own experience, broadened and enriched by the thinking and writing of Arlie Hochschild, Thomas Frank, Sarah Smarsh, Erica Etelson, Ivy Brashear, Katherine Cramer and several others. While I hope that you’ll take the time to read all of the articles included in the Guidebook, you can pick and choose from among two dozen different authors and journalists, clicking on any of the links we’ve included.

One more thing:  This Guidebook does not include essays about Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell or the extreme right.  It does not catalog the lies and outrages of Mr Trump and his administration.  There is an enormous amount of readily available material on those topics.  Instead, the focus here is on how and where we’ve failed, in word and deed, and what we can do differently to overcome the divide and build a better world.

 1.  Our politics and economy have largely failed rural communities -and working people more broadly – under both Republican and Democratic presidents.

The past forty years of federal economic policy has fostered growth without prosperity, concentrating nearly all of the increases in income and wealth among the top 20% of wage earners.  The economy has grown nearly five times faster than the population, yet Incomes for middle and working class people have stagnated or declined.  At the same time, health care costs, college tuition, housing costs and economic insecurity have all skyrocketed. 

While this is true across the nation, it is acutely so in rural communities, particularly as fossil fuel jobs have disappeared, independent retailers and small town banks have been swallowed up by big box stores and mega-banks, and farmers have struggled through low prices, unpredictable markets and increasingly challenging climate conditions.

Republican administrations have pushed anti-union, anti-worker and pro-corporate policies throughout this period, without a doubt. But it’s also the case that Democratic administrations have supported bad trade deals, bank and Wall Street deregulation and middling policies on health care, taxes and rural development.  Anti-trust laws and enforcement have been gutted, including under Democratic presidents.  Policies enacted during both Republican and Democratic administrations have done little to stem the loss of wealth and opportunity in rural communities.

RECOMMENDED READINGS: 

• Matt Stoller, “Democrats Can’t Win Until They Recognize How Bad Obama’s Financial Policies Were”

• Catherine Tumber, “Land Without Bread:  How the Green New Deal Forsakes America’s Countryside”

• Anthony Flaccavento, “Trickle-down’s Failures Apparent to All but Those in Charge” 

• Elizabeth Henderson, “Unfair Food-Pricing is Killing Family Farms and Regenerative Farming”

• Clara Hendrickson, “Why Democrats Don’t Have a Plan to Save ‘Left-Behind’ Places”

• Robert Reich, “Democrats Once Represented the Working Class:  Not Anymore”

FOR A DEEPER LOOK, CONSIDER THESE BOOKS:

• Matt Stoller, Goliath:  The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, 2019, Simon and Schuster

• David Korten, Agenda for a New Economy:  From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, 2009, Berrett Koehler Publishers

• Nancy Isenberg, White Trash:  The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, 2016, Penguin Books

2.  In most rural communities, resentment of “elites” and distrust of government is now more deep and widespread than ever.

There is no question that resentment of people perceived as elites has been stoked and cultivated by right-wing media, pundits and politicians for decades.  President Trump’s enduring appeal to a substantial part of the electorate, particularly in rural areas, comes in no small part from his constant bashing of “elites”, melded into a larger narrative of defending whites and working folks as ‘real Americans’.   Racism is woven throughout this appeal.  Yet as Katherine Cramer put it, “racism is a part of this resentment, but we are failing to fully understand these perspectives when we assume that racism is more fundamental than calculations of injustice. The two elements are intertwined. The way these folks described the world to me, their basic concern was that people like them, in places like theirs, were overlooked and disrespected. They were doing what they perceived good Americans ought to do to have the good life. And the good life seemed to be passing them by”.

Across the nation, trust in the federal government has declined inexorably, from a high of 77% of people in 1964 to an all-time low of 17% in 2019.  While this mistrust spans both cities and the countryside, it seems clear that a large proportion of rural people distrust (or worse) the government and ‘elites’ more broadly.  To rural people, especially farmers, miners, loggers, drillers, factory workers and small business people, those elites are Democrats, academics, ‘experts’, politicians and government employees in general.  As Katherine Cramer demonstrates in The Politics of Resentment, these elites are understood to be out-of-touch with the concerns of everyday people, lacking in common sense, self-serving and intrusive.

An important component of the anti-government, anti-elite perspective is what I have called “regulatory aversion”, especially strong among farmers and others who work the land, as well as small business owners.  Regulations and those who promote them are seen as either unnecessary, intrusive or counterproductive.  Arlie Hochschild quotes the Louisiana man who believes that regulators will punish him for spilling a gallon of oil, but do nothing to the companies that spill hundreds of thousands of gallons.

For the last decade plus, Dems and liberals have been trying to tell rural and working folks that they have the best government policies, the ones that will most help those groups.  But if you utterly distrust the government and think it is the problem, not the solution, and believe that elites despise you, why would that be a persuasive message?

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

• Katherine Cramer, “For Years, I’ve Been Watching Anti-elite Fury Build in Wisconsin.  Them Came Trump”   

• Peter Kruger, “What Most Liberals Don’t Realize”

• Bryant Simon, “Terminal Whiteness”

• Anthony Flaccavento, “Regulatory Aversion”

• Erica Etelson, “The Big Question:  How Should We Treat Trump Voters?”

FOR A DEEPER LOOK:

Katherine Cramer:  The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, 2016, University of Chicago Press

3. Sense of alienation from mainstream culture, of being “strangers in their own land”

The concentration of college educated, culturally liberal people in cities, and the resulting ‘liberal bubbles’ in which rural people and working folks are utterly foreign is brilliantly described by Sarah Smarsh both in her book, Heartland, and in the article, “Country Pride”.  Elite liberal media, Smarsh also writes, has consistently been out-of-touch with rural people and their concerns, alternating between ignoring this swath of the country and badly generalizing and mis-representing it.

Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land describes this deep sense of alienation among people in rural Louisiana, in part because of their declining economic fortunes and sense of being ‘passed over’ by government elites who favor groups they feel are less deserving. 

Jonathan Metzl’s Dying of Whiteness makes clear the racial underpinnings of at least some of this grievance in his interviews with people in Missouri, Tennessee and Kansas.

Liberal, progressive and Democratic leaders frequently talk about our dynamic cities, with influential thinkers like Richard Florida pushing the notion of ‘cultural creatives’ flocking to cities seeking innovation, creativity and dynamism.  In Listen Liberal, Thomas Frank makes the case that urban innovation hubs have become central to the liberal imagination and to the culture and policies of the Democratic Party.  The message to rural areas has been that we’ve been ‘left behind’, that we’re stagnant, stuck in outmoded thinking, etc.  This overlooks a great body of innovation that is happening in many rural places, but even more to the point, it makes urban life and culture the standard, the benchmark, by which rural communities clearly don’t measure up.  Which then further exacerbates the anti-elitism.

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

• Arlie Hochschild, “I Spent Five Years with Some of Trump’s Biggest Fans:  Here’s What They Won’t Tell You”

• Sarah Smarsh, “Country Pride:  What I Learned Growing Up in Rural America” 

• Sarah Smarsh, “Liberal Blind Spots are Hiding the Truth about ‘Trump Country’” 

FOR A DEEPER LOOK:

• Arlie Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land:  Anger and Mourning on the American Right, 2016, The New Press

• Sarah Smarsh, Heartland:  A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, 2018, Scribner

 4. Attitudes, language of contempt from liberals towards rural, conservatives

In Beyond Contempt, Erica Etelson documents the dismissive attitudes and language of contempt so commonly used by many liberal people and groups towards rural conservatives, Trump supporters and others considered to be regressive or reactionary.  This includes everything from condescension to outright disgust. Contempt, according to Etelson, “plays right into the right-wing strategy of deflecting attention away from substantive issues…Contempt becomes the story”.

In this context, Hilary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” statement and Barack Obama’s description of people “clinging to their guns and bibles” becomes proof, in the minds of many, of liberal contempt.  So too the oft-heard refrain from well-meaning liberals, “Why do these people vote against their own interests?”.

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

• Erica Etelson, “How Liberals Left the White Working Class Behind” 

• Arlie Hochschild, “Think Republicans are Disconnected from Reality?  It’s Even Worse Among Liberals”

• Ivy Brashear, “The Lies We’re Told About Appalachia”   

• Ellie Mae O’Hagan, “The ‘Anti-woke’ Backlash is no Joke – and Progressives are Going to Lose if They Don’t Wise Up” 

• Anthony Flaccavento, “On Election’s Eve, More Losing Liberal Language”

• Erica Etelson, “Snarky Comments”

FOR A DEEPER LOOK:

Erica Etelson, Beyond Contempt:  How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide, 2020, New Society Publishers

 5. The long-term shift of the Democratic Party, from a focus on working people to a preoccupation with the “professional class”, leading to centrist, expert-driven incremental policies, and the “myth of the middle”.

Over the past forty years, there has been a fundamental shift in the Democratic Party, away from the concerns of working people to a preoccupation with, as Thomas Frank says, the professional class.  This is reflected in multiple ways, including the choice of cabinet officials and top advisors, the focus on meritocracy and education as the answer to poverty, and even the language and cultural affectations of liberals and Democrats.  This shift has also led the Party away from bold, radical solutions to a reliance on incremental changes, often highly complicated policies such as Dodd Frank and the Affordable Care Act. 

Simultaneous with this re-orientation has been the full-throated embrace of ‘centrism’ and centrist candidates, in spite of a poor record at the ballot box and tepid results when in office.  The idea that most Americans are in the middle between extremes of left and right, and that they prefer moderation and cautious tweaks to the system now dominates the Democratic Party and innumerable liberal pundits and media outlets.  Yet in Merge Left, Ian Haney Lopez convincingly demonstrates that most of the people in the political middle are not moderates looking for incremental change, but persuadable people holding views that are both right and left leaning.  What these folks want is respect for who they are and bold answers to their problems.

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

• David Wong, “How Half of America Lost Its Fucking Mind” 

• Matt Stoller, “The Hamilton Hustle” 

• Paul Rockwell, “A Look Back at Seven Centrist Defeats”

• David Leonhardt, “How ‘Centrist-Bias’ Hurts Sanders and Warren:  The Media Have More to Worry About than Liberal Bias”

FOR A DEEPER LOOK:

• Thomas Frank, Listen, Liberal or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? 2016, Henry Holt and Company

• Joan Walsh, What’s the Matter with White People?  Why We Long for a Golden Age that Never Was, 2012, John Wiley and Sons

 6. A Way forward:  Deeper understanding, straight talk and real action on the ground

What would it take to shift the debate in and about rural America, to overcome the urban-rural divide that underlies so many of our problems?  At a minimum, we’re going to have to shift our priorities (and the policies that reflect them), to dramatically improve our communications and messaging, and to support effective, tangible action from the bottom up.  In short, we need to think differently, talk differently and act differently.  Making these changes won’t happen overnight, but they are urgent nevertheless.

The starting point for this change, I’d suggest, is the recognition that rural America is not hopeless, economically or politically, as so many commentators suggest.  There is, in fact an extraordinary ferment of bottom up experiments in economics, culture and media, community development and civic engagement.  Most folks know nothing about this, nor about how bad national policy – including the demise of anti-trust efforts – have undermined these local efforts.  If liberals and progressives in particular begin to see the real and progressive change emerging in rural communities, the window for self-reflection and a new understanding of the urban-rural divide is more likely to open.

The other essential element of strategies to overcome the urban-rural divide will be the integration of race and class at all levels:  How we understand our problems, the policies and solutions we propose, the language we use to talk about it all, and the people doing the work.  Ian Haney Lopez’ work provides an excellent starting point for this.

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

• Ian Haney Lopez, “Beating Trump at His Own Game”

• Claire Kelloway, “How to Close the Democrats’ Rural Gap”

• Anthony Flaccavento, “Krugman’s Rural Despair Misses the Mark”

• Austin Frereck, “To Revive Rural America, We Must Fix Our Broken Food System”

• Anthony Flaccavento, “Three Ways Progressives Can Re-connect with Rural America”

• Jane Kleb, “Organizing on the Coasts Won’t Save the Planet”

• George Goehl, “If Progressives Don’t Try to Win Over Rural Areas, Guess Who Will?”

• Tara Ritter, “Commentary:  A Rural Community Considers the Complexities of Wind Energy” 

• Antonia Noori Farzan, “When a Deep-Red Town’s Only Grocery Closed, City Hall Opened its Own Store.  Just don’t Call it ‘Socialism’”

FOR A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING:

• Ian Haney Lopez, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America, 2019, The New Press

• Anthony Flaccavento, Building a Healthy Economy from the Bottom Up:  Harnessing Real World Experience for Transformative Change, 2016, University Press of Kentucky