To explain why rural voters have left the Democratic Party and joined the Republican Party, the legacy media insists that rural America has veered hard right. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Mark Yonkman is the founder of the newly created Super PAC Reclaim the Rural Vote and a rural vote messaging expert. Mark’s background straddles not only the rural and urban worlds but the black/white, gay/straight, and farm/professional worlds as well. Read more of his Rural Whisperer columns here.
After a career in urban corporate America, I moved back to the family farm when my parents passed away, just before COVID hit.
I immediately noticed that this was not the rural America that I had left years ago. Almost everyone had dramatically shifted to the left, meaning the center, where liberals used to be.
For most young rural voters, especially those who served in the military with gay soldiers, being gay and gay marriage are non-issues. It used to be that if someone was outed, you lost your job and your parents kicked you out of the house.
Almost unheard of today.
Twenty-five years ago, when a black doctor walked into an examination room, the patient might have gasped. My black physician friends say it is rare today in the rural Upper Midwest.
That isn’t to say that people still aren’t racist or homophobic. They are. Yet discrimination of all types is fading into a level of background noise, not outward hostility.
That is not where we need to be, but it is certainly dramatically more liberal than it was 25 years ago.
Rural voters are also more environmentally conscious than 25 years ago. Young farmers are working hard on sustainable and environmentally friendly farming practices. Most, including many factory farmers, have a very dim view of factory farming. Farmers use as much solar energy as they can and are eager for more.
Bill Maher hasn’t moved his position in the last 25 years, and rural voters have caught up
As I began to explore why so many formerly Democratic voters, who, despite becoming more liberal, had become Republican, many of my rural friends suggested that I watch HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher.
Indeed, Maher sounded very centrist to me. Rational, reasonable, and practical. Calling out the fringe on both sides and on the same page as many of my neighbors and friends. Centrist. Talks to both sides. Who wouldn’t like this guy?
Democrats’ problem with Bill Maher is that he doesn’t chant the slogans.
My father used to say that “Republicans were like the Soviet Communists, while Democrats were like the Chinese Communists.”
Under the Soviet communists, you were fine as long as you kept your mouth shut and did what they asked you to do.
For the Chinese communists, on the other hand, that was not enough. You also had the chant the slogans. If you did not, you might be put on a stage during a “struggle session,” shamed, and ridiculed. In our enlightened society, we have replaced shaming with canceling.
Bill Maher certainly doesn’t chant the slogans.
As he repeatedly points out, he hasn’t changed. The Democratic Party has.
Bill Clinton understood where Americans were on abortion
The Democratic platform used to say that it was the goal of the Democratic Party to reduce the number of abortions in the U.S., whilst keeping abortion safe and legal. From what I can discern, I suspect that 80% of Americans are on that page.
Hillary Clinton then ushered in a dramatic shift. Abortion was now to be offered on demand for any reason. It was also deemed a right to have it paid for by the government or your private insurer.
The language regarding efforts to reduce the number of abortions was deleted from the platform.
I rarely meet a rural Democrat who is comfortable with using abortion as a form of birth control or for eugenics.
For the first time, the DNC chair in 2024 refused to meet with Democrats for Life, a group focused on reducing abortions through birth control and other means.
Jimmy Carter would not be allowed to run as a Democrat today.
This was the Democratic Party turning hard to the left.
The Democratic Party used to honor the sporting use of guns
Previous Democratic platforms stated, “We do not support efforts to restrict weapons used for legitimate hunting and sporting purposes,” and “we will preserve Americans’ Second Amendment right to own and use firearms.”
Hillary Clinton abandoned all of this language, and by 2024, the Democratic platform spoke only of regulating and eliminating guns, with no mention of the sporting use of guns.
Democrats passed legislation banning the use of federal funds for school shooting sports and gun safety courses. Senator Tester led the charge to reverse this decision and, though successful, I believe it cost him the election. He was the messenger who highlighted how out of touch Democrats had become and how, in their zeal to oppose anything gun-related, Democrats were actually making gun ownership less safe.
California Gov. Newsom then passed an ammunition tax. An ammunition tax makes gun ownership less safe by reducing practice, works to minimize or even eliminate rural sports, makes it difficult to train for an Olympic sport such as the Biathlon, and is a transfer tax from the rural poor to the wealthy. It goes against everything that Democrats say they stand for.
Even advocates for the ammunition tax publicly stated that the tax would have no impact on shootings of any kind. Rather, it was a punitive tax designed to fund school safety in suburban and urban areas where school shootings occur.
Yet the people paying the tax will be predominantly rural, and most consumer ammunition is used in sports and target practice.
Advocates want the tax to rise to a dollar per round. We go through 500 rounds during an afternoon of skeet shooting. That would be a $500 tax on what we affectionately call rural golf. It would effectively eliminate our ability to have a skeet shoot. I can’t imagine anyone voting for someone who passed such a tax.
Democrats abandoned regulatory streamlining
The number one complaint I hear from rural voters is regulatory burdens and laws that do not make sense in the rural setting.
Virtually every Democratic platform, until the Biden-Harris platforms, talked about the need for smart regulation and eliminating unnecessary burdens. Rural voters fondly remember President Obama’s promise to eliminate one regulation for every new one he imposed.
Kamala Harris didn’t even try – her platform was notably missing any discussion of tackling regulatory burden.
This was leaning hard left into the regulatory state.
Salesman that he is, President Trump is telling voters that he will eliminate 10 regulations for each one that he passes.
As I hear rural voters state all the time, even though Trump might have a bad plan, they will take a bad plan over no plan.
In many ways, Upper Midwestern rural voters are right where liberals wanted them to be
The rural Upper Midwest is dramatically more accepting today than it ever was in the past. I have never heard a single person object to Pete Buttigieg, who lives 45 minutes from me, because he is gay. It is a non-issue. They might have other objections, but it isn’t about being gay.
Much of rural Michigan voted for Obama. President Obama intuitively understood the personality of the rural voter in the Upper Midwest.
Those rural voters want their politicians to be authentic, the United States to be strong and resilient, and people to be hardy and self-reliant. His platform spoke to this and was as good as it gets. And he won all 8 Homesteaded states in the Upper Midwest.
In 2008, President Obama’s party platform included 36 items that responded to the concerns of rural voters. By 2024, the Democratic platform had little left that spoke to rural voters in the Upper Midwest.
Bill Maher is spot on when he says he hasn’t changed. It was the Democratic Party that did.
Upper Midwesterners are now where Maher is – and it’s the Democratic Party that has shifted.
