How Democrats in rural America are making a mistake – by not showing up

Rickey Cole, 58, is a farmer and former two-term chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party. If anyone understands rural Mississippi voters – and their shift from the Democratic to the Republican Party – it's Cole.

“You learn from defeat,” said the lifelong democrat.

He should hope so.

In 2001, when Cole first became party chairman, Democrats controlled seven of eight state-level offices, including governor and attorney general, in addition to each houses of the state legislature. Twenty years later, Republicans hold all eight state-level offices and command massive majorities of 79-41 within the House and 36-16 within the Senate.

Mississippi, the fourth most rural state within the US, defines “rural” as any county with lower than 50,000 inhabitants or a city with 15,000 or fewer inhabitants. Election 202351% of Mississippi residents lived in communities that met this criterion.

While Democrats still have the sting in urban centers like Jackson and Vicksburg, the slow and repeated lack of rural voters is the foundation of Cole's problems.

“Losing her has been the theme of my entire career,” he told me.

A lost flood

Cole and Mississippi aren’t alone.

The Democrats were Loss of rural voters throughout the United States for the reason that Sixties. But since 2000, the party has lost these voters.

In 1992 and 1996, Democrat Bill Clinton won 49% of votes from rural areas in each elections. But by 2008, that number had dropped, when Barack Obama won only 43% of rural voters.

Four years ago, this number fell much more sharply. In 2020, Joe Biden won about 35% of votes from rural areas.

The collapse of the Democratic Party in rural America has fueled support for Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement.

Trump took 65% of votes from rural areas in 2020, up from 59% in 2016, in line with the Pew Research Center.

Overall, the Republicans won 71% of white voters from rural areas in 2020, an improvement of 9 points in comparison with 2016.

Although just one in five Americans lives in rural towns, Trump’s obvious monopoly routinely nearly two dozen states within the South, Midwest and Great Plains Out of range for Democrats.

One of them is Mississippi. In 2016, Trump received 59.3% of the vote, beat hard Democratic rival Hillary Clinton received 39.7%. Although Trump still won the state in 2020, its percentage fell barely to 57.6%, while Democratic candidate Biden received 41.1%, barely greater than Clinton did in 2016.

Only they themselves are responsible

As owner of MLB Research AssociateMatt Barron focuses on rural Democratic campaigns and is taken into account one in all the country's leading political strategists for the agricultural vote.

Beyond the political debates, Barron says the blame lies with the Democrats.

“They’re not even trying to compete in rural America,” he told me.

Cole, the previous chairman of the Democratic Party within the state of Mississippi, agrees.

In rural America, he explained, Democrats have stopped grassroots work and party constructing.

As Barron tells it, within the hotly contested Mississippi gubernatorial election 2023For example, the Democratic National Committee ignored local organizers and sent National campaign staff from Michigan and Ohio to canvass for votes in rural Mississippi.

As strangers unfamiliar with the realm, the employees needed a GPS to navigate the back roads. They were geographically lost, much more helpless strategically, Barron said.

The urban residents within the north lacked the knowledge to get Democratic voters to the polls. The result was lower thanexpected voter turnout In a alternative Incumbent Republican Tate Reeves defeated Democrat Brandon Presley with 26,619 votes, or 3.2% of the 820,000 votes forged.

Cole said the lack of Presley was an example of a much larger problem.

“Our politics has been nationalized by a group of professional agents,” he told me. “It has become a big industry.”

Cole explained that media consultants earn a percentage of all campaign promoting spending. They maximize their profits by spending their money in expensive urban markets and ignoring rural media. Predictably, Democrats will get a beating in rural America, and those self same strategists will then blame rural voters for being unreachable.

A grassroots campaign

Ty Pinkins attempting to reverse the Democrats' failure.

The slim and youthful 50-year-old African-American Army veteran is the Democratic candidate for a seat within the US Senate in Mississippi. To defeat his Republican opponent, Incumbent Roger WickerPinkins is working with Cole to “build a grassroots pyramid.”

The Bronze Star recipient has logged 70,000 miles in his Chevy Tahoe, canvassing 67 of the state's 82 counties. His goal is to have a campaign manager in every county and all 1,762 congressional districts within the state.

In Cole's view, Pinkin's grassroots campaign will last beyond the November 2024 election – and might be key to revitalizing the Democratic Party on the state level.

But campaigning on the grassroots level isn't easy—and getting lost in rural Mississippi isn't at all times what you expect.

One hot summer day, Pinkins took a flawed turn and located himself at an intersection next to a dilapidated old house. After knocking several times on the screen door, 85-year-old Miss Maggie finally got here out.

When Pinkins told her he was running for the US Senateshe smiled and laughed. Soon the 2 were sharing steaming plates of fried chicken, brown gravy and sweet potatoes. She said to the contestant, “Baby, now tell me about yourself.”

When Pinkins had finished, it was Miss Maggie's turn, and the 2 talked until dusk. Before he could leave, Miss Maggie went back inside. She got here back with a sack stuffed with coins.

“I don't have much time left,” she told Pinkins. “I'm 85 years old. That's all I have, and that's what I'm giving you.”

For Pinkins, reaching rural voters is just not an not possible dream – even when it means getting lost and talking for hours to win a vote.