Democrats Have Losing Strategy for 2018 Trump Played Them Again
New Glarus, Wisconsin (CNN)It was the moment the lifeless body of a 1,500-pound steer was hoisted in the air, blood pouring from its neck, that Mandela Barnes knew he was a long style from his comfort zone.
Built-in and raised in Milwaukee, Barnes' political upbringing is intertwined with Wisconsin'due south urban heart, a place that could not have been more different to the scene at Hoesly's Meats here in rural New Glarus. Every bit the still steaming bovines were candy, the state's lieutenant governor turned to a few aides, his eyes the size of saucers. This was new for him, he afterwards admitted.
The terminate was 1 of many for Barnes over a weeklong swing concluding month through rural counties ahead of Wisconsin'southward Democratic Senate master this summer, the forerunner for one of the political party's best chances to flip a Senate seat in 2022. It was evidence that Democrats realize that the path to unseating 2-term Republican Sen. Ron Johnson will require winning back at to the lowest degree some of the rural voters who fled the party to dorsum Donald Trump.
Barnes is far from the only Democratic Senate candidate looking to activate these voters: Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry has held events touting his program for rural Wisconsin; state treasurer Sarah Godlewski, who was born in Eau Claire, has made appealing to rural voters central to her entrada; and Outagamie County executive Tom Nelson oftentimes argues he is the just candidates from a rural role of the state.
A contempo Marquette University Police School poll found the Autonomous race to take on Johnson broad open, with 48% of Democrats and independents who lean Autonomous undecided. Barnes had xix% to xvi% for Lasry, 7% for Godlewski and 5% for Nelson.
For Barnes, part of the trip was admitting that while he is somewhat politically out of place in stretches of rural Wisconsin, he is willing to listen.
"Some people think you lot buy a Carhartt jacket and some boots, take a couple pictures on a farm, then that's your appeal. It's mode deeper than that," he said after a 90-minute roundtable with farmers, some of whom previously voted for Johnson. The farmers and Barnes spoke virtually issues Democrats are likely to face this year, including inflation, cost of fuel and a misunderstanding of the farming style of life. In reflecting on the roundtable, Barnes added, "People don't feel like their voices are existence heard."
For years, Democratic candidates -- especially on the statewide and national level -- have been rejected past voters in less populated areas, with every 2 years bringing a new rock lesser for the party'southward continuing outside its urban and suburban comfort zones. The tendency began with the rise of the tea party in 2009 as a rejection of then-President Barack Obama but was accelerated by Trump's power to pit urban Democrats confronting those he branded the "forgotten" people. The break was aided past a growing belief that Democrats cared less about the rural way of life than they did about more than liberal urban center dwellers -- something amplified by a abiding drum beat of talking points from bourgeois media outlets.
That dynamic has led to the political map of Wisconsin, like many states beyond America, condign a series of blue islands in a body of water of red. When Obama carried Wisconsin in 2008, he did so by winning 59 of the state'southward 72 counties. Twelve years subsequently, Joe Biden carried the country by winning just 14 counties -- an uptick from the 12 Hillary Clinton won while she lost the country in 2016.
This is non a new problem for Democrats, either.
Obama, in the wake of Trump's 2016 win that underlined the party's rural trouble, warned Democrats of becoming a "coastal liberal latte-sipping" party, total of "politically correct out-of-touch folks." But the party has continued to struggle.
In 2018, Democratic Senate incumbents in North Dakota, Missouri and Indiana were drowned by the Trump-propelled rural surge, losing reelection despite increased turnout in suburban and urban areas amongst that twelvemonth's blue moving ridge. The trend connected in 2020: Biden'southward support from suburban and smaller metropolitan areas helped deliver him the White House, just Trump sustained his strong rural margins. And in 2021, Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe faced intraparty criticism for substantially ignoring rural voters in his gubernatorial loss to Republican Glenn Youngkin, who managed to better on Trump's rural margins from just a twelvemonth earlier. McAuliffe and his top aides believed the party had hit rock bottom in rural America -- an supposition that was proved wrong on Election 24-hour interval.
Today, Democrats concord only three of the twenty Senate seats in the land's ten most rural states -- Jon Tester in Montana, Patrick Leahy in Vermont and Joe Manchin in West Virginia -- with two rural-state independents caucusing with the party. Of the 30 seats in the United states Business firm from those states, Democrats only hold half-dozen.
"Nosotros've got work to practice out here," said Wisconsin state Sen. Brad Pfaff, who is running to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Ron Kind in a district that includes much of the country's pastoral southwest. "Every bit a national party, nosotros've moved abroad from the basics. ... I know that people out here feel overlooked and left backside. I hear that every single solar day... and they have a reason to be."
He added: "As Democrats, we accept missed it."
'That'due south how we lose'
For Democrats, the focus is no longer about winning rural counties. It is about keeping the margins down so that the party'southward dominance in urban areas and newfound success in suburban communities can propel them to victory.
That'south the playbook Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin wrote in winning a second term in 2018.
"Voters of Wisconsin do take some independent traditions, and especially in rural areas, showing upwards matters, listening matters, putting in the work matters," Baldwin told CNN, adding that the all-time affair Democrats tin can exercise is point out what they are fighting for and what Republicans are standing against.
Baldwin is the exception, all the same. Republicans, especially since Trump's first run for president, have dominated rural areas and many Democrats are publicly and privately wondering whether it is possible for voters who backed the onetime President to be brought back to supporting Democratic candidates.
Barnes drew scorn in 2018 when he said "Yous tin can keep them" about voters who backed Obama merely and so voted for Trump and still supported the Republican President. He attempted to clean upward the comment -- "I could have been more clear," he said at the time -- but when pressed on the issue recently, he didn't back abroad from the broader idea.
"It depends on if they think the election was stolen or not," he said about winning over a two-time Trump voter. "For somebody who thinks the election was stolen, that is going to be an almost incommunicable sell, merely at that place are even so people effectually who just truly feel like they've been forgotten."
"But I truly push button back on this notion that we can't exist competitive in rural parts of Wisconsin," he added. "Practice I call back we're going to win a agglomeration of rural counties this election cycle? No. But nosotros're going to make a dent, a substantial paring. We are going to lower these margins."
As for whether a 35-year-old Blackness human from Milwaukee is the best candidate to cutting into margins in predominantly White and older areas, Barnes laughed: "Obama was our high-water marking. ... From Chicago and an fifty-fifty more complicated proper noun than mine."
Barnes' opponents mostly say the same thing on reaching out to rural voters -- they program to evidence up, listen and learn. Candidates such as Godlewski and Nelson tout their own rural credentials by noting their ties to areas beyond Milwaukee and Madison. But whether that outreach volition mean slimmer margins in rural counties is some other question.
"That'due south how we lose," Godlewski said of the idea that Trump voters aren't winnable for Democrats. "What we have failed at in the past is nosotros only bear witness up a few months before the election and await them to say, 'Oh, swell, thank you for showing up. Now yous care about me' and actually, they're similar, 'Where accept yous been?'"
Godlewski admitted there is a "sure segment that you're not going to exist able to change," who will just "fall on their sword for what they believe in." But she said there is a large centre in Wisconsin "looking at who is the best candidate, that's going to really work for me and deliver for me and, quite frankly, gets me."
Lasry said many rural voters were swayed past Trump "showing up" in Wisconsin -- countless land Democrats accept derided Clinton for non doing the aforementioned in 2016 -- but added that many of those voters remain winnable.
"If you voted for Obama, Trump and Tammy, that ways that you can be brought dorsum into our fold," said Lasry, who sees the race against Johnson equally "change versus the establishment" with the two-term senator representing the establishment.
He added: "Before someone started voting for Trump ... they voted for Tammy Baldwin and [Autonomous Gov.] Tony Evers. It is not similar this was decades or ages ago where we were winning in the rural parts of the state."
And Nelson, the underdog candidate, said Democrats are currently being punished for taking rural voters for granted.
"Democrats are always on defense (with rural voters). They respond to the Republican playbook. They play into their hands," Nelson said. "What you got to do is you lot come back to your message, y'all come back to what the Democratic Party is all virtually ... the art of the possible."
'I don't know where the bottom is'
Rural America is hurting -- and non just in Wisconsin.
Towns have been hollowed out, with Chief Streets crumbling as pocket-size-business growth in rural counties has slowed and store fronts sit empty for years. Younger generations accept left for bigger cities, leaving populations markedly older -- a specially significant problem as rural hospitals across America close. And family farms, once the lifeblood of many rural communities, have become increasingly dominated by big corporations and Large Ag.
Information technology's a dynamic that state Sen. Jeff Smith -- i of the few Democrats still able to win in rural Wisconsin -- knows well.
Every few days, Smith drives his 1999 Dodge Ram pickup to a role of his district, climbs onto the bed and hoists up a large sign: "STOP & TALK -- Senator Jeff Smith".
So he waits, until voter after voter -- many of whom have long left the Democratic Party -- come to pepper him with questions. Non all the queries are easy, but Smith engages with his constituents, hoping that even if they don't similar his party, they will like him plenty to back him in November when he's up for a second term.
"I don't know where the bottom is," Smith said of Democrats' standing with rural voters during a recent Stop and Talk event on the outskirts of Eau Claire, i of the bluer parts of his district. "I thought we hit bottom in 2010, then I thought it was '12 and 'fourteen.
In the eye of relentless 45-degree rain, right off a pocket-size highway in front of an Accelerate Auto Parts, Smith spoke with a scattering of constituents, taking in their thoughts and their concerns. He does this regularly, he said -- so much so that his pickup has 209,000 miles on information technology.
And his difficult-earned communication to Democrats is elementary: Mind, don't think you are doing plenty past only having a rural plan, and be who y'all are.
"What people really want is a choice," said Smith, who has endorsed Godlewski in the Senate chief. "If their simply choice is a real bourgeois and a fake bourgeois, they see through that. If we treat people like they are stupid and they recognize you aren't real, they are going to vote for the real one. We accept got to exist authentic; we have got to be who we are."
On whether Trump voters will ever vote for Democrats once more, Smith added: "Nosotros are non that far separated (from) when they voted for a progressive Democrat. In that location is no reason to believe that if they have something to vote for, they are not going to vote for that person. ... I grew upwardly in a Republican household. So, I have a pretty good understanding that people can alter."
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/politics/wisconsin-democrats-rural-voters-senate/index.html