Let’s Get Rural: Middle America Wants Less Establishment, More Populism
Next week, I take over as Chair of the Nebraska State Democratic Party. Yes, this pipeline fighting, populist and proud Democrat takes the reigns for a rural state that most folks give a standard reply when I explain where I call home, “oh, I drove through Nebraska once.”
Back in 2006, I followed a ranch-hand to Nebraska from DC where I was living as a single mom and running the Young Democrats of America. Nebraska is our home where Scott and I are raising our three girls and our three-legged dog. We live in rural America, a place that Democrats have largely ignored and forgotten.
As a proud Democrat in a “red” state, I support Rep. Keith Ellison for the DNC Chair. It’s not just that he’s the only DNC candidate to visit Nebraska for party-building this year. It’s not just that he led with a small handful of heroes on the Hill the opposition to both Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines on grounds of climate change but more importantly to us in the Heartland property rights of ranchers and Sovereign rights of Native allies. It’s not just that he has, time and time again in his role on the Financial Services Committee, stood up against Wall Street when Republicans (and many fellow Democrats) would not. It’s because he actually understands our rural identity and gets how economic populism can help Democrats win in all states including the Heartland.
While the middle of the country looks very red on all the electoral maps, we are fighters here on the prairie. We look to our neighbors to help get cattle back when a fence breaks or pick up our kids at daycare if we are running late. Our sense of community runs deep. We hate Big Corporations. Water is cherished. Families have a tradition of hunting. And while cliché for some at this point, reality is many rural voters simply do not trust Democrats will protect Second Amendment rights and yearn for stiffer backbones when standing up against the establishment.
Let me have Randy, a cattle auctioneer on the frontlines of the Keystone XL fight tell you his perspectives on the election. He changed his lifelong party affiliation from Republican to Independent during the 2016 election because of the Republicans undying commitment to the risky pipeline and their utter failure to protect or respect individual property rights. You see, rural America — just like urban America — hates “big.” Whether its Big Oil, Big Corporations or Big Banks. While focus groups can help us understand what went wrong this election cycle, we can also just start asking people like Randy:
We are still in a state of disbelief over the election. I have to say that for the first time in my life I am ashamed of our country and it has truly shaken a lot of the core beliefs I have always held about America. Just to share a couple of my observations from conversations I have had with rural Nebraskans.
People are scared to death that Democrats want to take away their guns, and personally I thought Hillary did a very poor job of laying out her position on the 2nd Amendment, in fact I have always thought most Democrats have failed to make a clear and precise case on guns and gun control. People were absolutely convinced that Obama was going to take their guns and many people I talked to thought Hillary would do the same.
Another observation was that most people I visited with had a profound hatred for Hillary, so profound I guess that they were willing to throw their so called Christian principals under the bus and vote for a conman like Trump. Of course we can’t forget that racism seems to alive and well throughout our state and the country, and I don’t see any easy solution for that problem.
From my perspective it appears that the Republicans have been tremendously successful by holding President Obama hostage for 8 years by opposing everything he wanted to do. People somehow blame him instead of a do-nothing Congress for the lack of any meaningful legislation being passed, and people are tremendously frustrated by that lack of action from the very people we pay to do a job.
Randy speaks for a lot of folks in the Heartland. He captures the mood better than any pundit. There are a couple of things about my home that most of my friends in blue areas don’t quite get. I sit in lots of meetings with national groups. Nebraska and other red states are rarely on the short list for resources for candidates or issue campaigns. Folks in DC usually look at the surface for check boxes like registered Republicans or Democrats or can a candidate “self-finance.”
What establishment types don’t get is in rural America, we deeply believe when you stand up and fight, you win.
Nebraska is the birthplace of the modern Democratic Party. It was William Jennings Bryan in 1896 that introduced populism into the Democratic Party, fought the banks, and laid the basis for the New Deal and the 20th century’s strong American middle class. Farmers, ranchers, small businesses, and community banks built the Democratic Party. It was a movement of populists, a movement of people who went to the farm auctions run by Big Banks during the Great Depression and figured out a way to save the family farm together. Willie Nelson did something similar in the 1980s with his first Farm Aid showing how Big Banks were screwing family farmers. It’s time for the Democratic party to do our part and to start building political power in rural America.
A movement of We the People, in the Heartland of America, still exists and is one of the big reasons we stopped a pipeline while everyone in DC told us we would fail.
At a basic level, people vote for those who offer them something. In Nebraska, we have a lot of farmers and ranchers. Democrats simply do not do enough to protect our water and property rights — an area where Republicans are chosing Big Oil over families. Michael Moore recently pointed out, in our rural towns baseball caps are part of our uniform. We like to vote for people who can come out here and not look awkward in a ball cap or boots. Some farmers turned to Trump, not just here, but everywhere. There still is a chance to bring rural voters into the blue column by showing up in our small towns, standing up for our property rights and basically telling us you give a damn about us even though we are “red” and “small” in numbers compared to the coasts.
Over the years, Democrats have unfortunately been offering unequal politics. Identity is not just your gender or race, it’s how you engage in commerce, it’s your economic relationships, and your job — whether that is climbing into a combine or putting on a suit. When Democrats sneer at farmers or rural areas, it’s an attack on our identity. An attack on who we are as people. You may not believe that party leaders sneer at farmers or rural areas (think about the campaigns against beef or ethanol), but they do all the time, and we hear it loud and clear.
I beleive if Democrats stood up and fought alongside us to protect our land and water, you would see a more purple rural America. A quick reminder for anyone naysaying this is possible. Democrats once held statewide and national offices in places like Nebraska. Moderate Democrats like Ben Nelson and populist, progressive Democrats like Bob Kerrey. Both ensured the state’s economic base was equal and that urban voters had just as much say as rural voters. Folks who live in small towns were not told to go sit at the kids’ table, we were at the main table treated as equals.
To win, Democrats must reform and expand our party. Yes, we have to compete everywhere, and put up candidates at every level. Yes, we have to organize. But it’s more than that. We simply cannot win if people at the top of the ticket ignore something that cuts across all identities — economic populism. We cannot win if the same circle of consultants and pollsters that live on the coasts tout the same tired messages and the same tired tactics of TV ad buys. We cannot pass off the governance failures as messaging or candidate failures. The big tent that Democrats talk about has to be accessible for those of us with cowboy boots on instead of Prada heels.
Democrats are often out talking about the latest tech tool and how some voting algorithm is the silver bullet to winning elections. Technology is critical. So is old-fashioned relationship building with people at their doors and where they hang out. So is inviting people to come to the DNC and state party meetings we hold throughout the year so it is not some secret cabal. So is actually giving budgets to the College and Young Democrats and various caucuses so long-term organizing is happening that is also institutionalized and lessens the “hair on fire” plans to “target young voters” or target some other constituency group that a consultant writes a plan for and pays people who have no long-term connection to the party.
We have to look at the collapse of our party over the last eight years not as a repudiation of the values of equality, justice, and liberty, but as the American people firing us because they saw that we did not stand for those values. As Democrats, we have a lot of work to do. The first step is to recognize what went wrong (and no it was not just Comey) and then we must rebuild on fundamentally different foundations than what we have right now.
All of this starts with putting a genuine populist, an organizer, in charge of the DNC. That’s why I support Keith Ellison for Chair and see him as the only choice to bring our party together and forward. I encourage anyone who wants Democrats to win elections, and who wants a more progressive and populist America, to join me in the streets and in the voting booth because that is how we will show folks in rural America we are finally ready to give a damn.
