Deep Dive with Shawn C. Fettig

Trump Country: Are Democrats Cosplaying Rural America? (w/ Dr. Nicholas Jacobs)

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What drives the deepening political divide in rural America? In this episode, Dr. Nicholas Jacobs from Colby College, and co-author of the book The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America discusses the cultural and economic threads that intertwine to bolster Donald Trump's appeal among rural voters. We examine the evolution of historically Democratic regions as they increasingly align with Republican ideologies, challenging the conventional narrative of rural resentment and highlighting the unique stories and perceptions that have taken hold.

We look at preliminary data from the 2024 election showing how demographic shifts, including a surge of first-time Latino Trump voters, are shaking up traditional voting patterns in rural areas. We discuss Kamala Harris's struggles to resonate with rural voters in key swing states, analyzing how the Democratic Party's approach may have missed the mark in addressing their core concerns. We also talk about the longstanding trends that have cemented Republican loyalty among non-college-educated and working-class voters.

Finally, we unpack why rural voters might support Democratic policies but balk at Democratic candidates. From the effectiveness of federal programs to the disillusionment with long-celebrated reforms like the Affordable Care Act, we explore the disconnect between political accomplishments and voter expectations. We close by discussing the broader implications of this urban-rural divide on the future of American democracy and how both Bernie Sanders and Trump have tapped into the sentiment of a broken system.

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Dr. Jacobs:

This is about partisanship and it is about partisan competition and partisan control of government and attitudes towards political parties and the leaders of political parties. In terms of an ideological worldview, we can get into this, and I don't think rural people are. People are conservative extremists, distracted uniquely by culture war issues. I think what explains more of this divide is a narrative that rural people tell themselves about why rural areas, in comparison to other parts of the country, are doing worse off and, in particular, the Democratic Party and the federal government's contribution to that relative deprivation.

Shawn:

Welcome to Deep Dive with me, se C Fettig, in this 2024 election. Early returns show that support for Donald Trump in rural areas was higher than in either of his previous elections, while support for Kamala Harris was higher than ever for a Democrat in urban and suburban areas, underscoring a shift that's been occurring for decades but has become, maybe, a permanent fixture in our politics, an enduring manifestation of the differences between urban and rural Americans. This transformation is not merely a reflection of changing demographics, but is deeply rooted in economic, cultural, social and technological changes that have reshaped rural communities. Changes that have reshaped rural communities. Historically, rural areas were bastions of Democratic support, particularly in the post-war era. However, recent elections reveal a stark contrast. For instance, counties like Mullenburg in Kentucky, once solidly Democratic, swung overwhelmingly to Donald Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024, in each year his support greater than the last. This shift can be attributed to a combination of factors, including economic dislocation and a growing perception that the Democratic Party no longer represents rural values or interests.

Shawn:

My guest today is Dr Nicholas Jacobs, assistant professor of government at Colby College, specializing in American politics, with a focus on federalism, rural politics and public policy. He's co-author of the book the Rural Voter, the Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America, which examines the growing political divide between rural and urban America, and co-author of the book Subverting the Republic, donald J Trump and the Perils of Presidentialism. We discuss who the rural American voter is today, how this identity has evolved, how the Republican Party has won this voter over, how the Democratic Party has failed them, and what this means for American democracy. Alright, if you liked this episode or any episode, please give it a like, share and what this means for American democracy. All right, if you liked this episode or any episode, please give it a like, share and follow on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom. Let's do a deep dive, dr Jacobs. Thanks for being here. How are you?

Dr. Jacobs:

Oh, thanks for having me. I'm doing well today.

Shawn:

Good. So the political, social, economic and cultural divides in the United States today are really striking and they're particularly evident in the growing difference between rural and urban voters, especially in this Trump era. And I guess I'm curious about what drives this division and where and why it's most pronounced. We've seen in the last handful, probably at least a couple of decades. We've seen rural counties and states like Ohio and Wisconsin shift significantly toward Republicans, while urban areas like Atlanta and Detroit have become much more supportive of Democrats. And I want to understand why rural voters seem drawn to populist messaging and cultural conservatism in ways that I think urban voters aren't really responding and instead are increasingly prioritizing things like progressive values and instead are increasingly prioritizing things like progressive values. And then how these differences are influencing our politics, our voting patterns, maybe broader social and cultural trends, and then I guess ultimately what this means for the future of America as we know it.

Dr. Jacobs:

So this is your wheelhouse, so I'm glad to have you here to maybe make it all make sense to me. Well, no, I'm glad to be here. I think a lot of those questions sit at some of the most problematic features of our politics at the moment. We're having this conversation two weeks after an election. That was, as many recent elections have been, incredibly divisive. I think elections tend to amplify the disagreements we have in this country, but those disagreements nevertheless are there. We're still trying to make sense of this most recent election. But I guess at the outset, what I do in my work is I try to situate our current political moment and long-term trends. And in long term trends things are more deeply rooted and candidates come and go and personalities, you know, ultimately exit the political stage at some point.

Shawn:

Right, but I think a lot of these things that you just spelled out and that we're going to unpack a little bit are longstanding features of American politics. So you're actually touching on something that I think I've been thinking about but haven't given any real thought to. But that is, you know, it's a feature of elections is that there's a lot of red meat thrown to the voters on both sides, and then typically the theory is that after the election then everyone just goes back to governing right, everyone kind of settles back to the norm. But I've been wondering if in recent years, that red meat that politicians or folks campaigning for office are throwing to their base is actually priming and forming the electorate in a way that doesn't regress to the norm after the election and that that in and of itself is driving some of the division. Have you given any thought to that before?

Dr. Jacobs:

Yeah, although I haven't seen any predictions or analyses of the 2028 presidential contest, I would imagine we're going to see at least one, or I'll read one prior to the end of the new year. I think there was always an element of our politics that was forward looking, meaning you know the next election is begins the day after election day. But myself and other scholars who have written more specifically on the idea of a quote permanent campaign do note that that historical comparison does fall flat. We are living in a moment where the boundaries between campaigns and elections and governance are slipping and I don't think this again. This is a slippage that's been long in the making. But Donald Trump in 2017, inauguration day on 2017, becoming the first president to announce his reelection campaign on his first day in office. That sort of evidenced the moment that we're in. Joe Biden actually similarly did the same thing in 2021.

Dr. Jacobs:

And governance when we used to make this distinction between governance and campaigns, I mean governance was the boring part. Governance was the details, it was the compromise, the log rolling. Really, I think that begins to change, not only with Trump. But you can look at how Barack Obama kept into his administration his campaign organization. So he in 2008, rather atypically actually uniquely at the time kind of created a standalone campaign apparatus, divorced entirely from the DNC. He maintains that during his first and second terms of his administration. He maintains that during his first and second terms of his administration, renames it and relies on it to generate what they would call grassroots support for his initiatives in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, quickly making issues of national security and terrorism campaign issues, but under the guise of national interest.

Dr. Jacobs:

And you know, I remember books being, you know, that were written in the 1980s, about how the growth of presidential power, the increasing centrality of presidentialism in our politics, all of that is going to blur this line. So I think it's entirely fair to say that that line is almost non-existent and it's dangerous. Writing almost 200 years ago. We cannot miss the opportunity to quote Alexis de Tocqueville, but Tocqueville called elections in the United States, elections in general, periods of national crisis, precisely because of this red meat that we know that politicians are going to throw to us. It amplifies our divisions, it creates divisions, amplifies our divisions, it creates divisions, but at least at a certain you know, in the 1830s they subsided.

Shawn:

People were allowed to go back to normalcy Not anymore. I want to zero in on the rural voter, which you've spent significant time kind of studying yourself, and I think there's this narrative that's probably ultimately true if you're looking from 30,000 feet, which is that you know it's pretty linear that that rural voters are just becoming more and more conservative. It feels like that might be the general direction, but it does feel like it's a bit fluid in a way. So, like in 2016, rural areas and rural voters turned out for Trump in large numbers, but that did shift a bit in 2020 and moved a bit towards Biden, but I think we'll see that that's swung back to Trump this year. So, you know, this doesn't seem to be a monolith, while we can draw a general trend line, but I guess that does make me wonder who the rural voter is, what is their identity, what's influenced that identity and the vote? And then how does it explain their political preferences and where do you think this is going?

Dr. Jacobs:

Yeah, I think you raise good points and there's always going to be exceptions to trend lines, right. Things are going to deviate above and below the average. You're absolutely right that Joe Biden's campaign in 2020 closed the margins in some rural communities, right, so closes the margins in rural Michigan and rural Wisconsin by double digits in some instances, but actually doesn't move the needle in rural Pennsylvania at all. In 2024, and this is very preliminary analysis it looks like rural areas, on average across the nation, went back to Donald Trump to the level that they were in 2016. But a lot of that movement seems to be partly, you know, bringing, you know the sort of bringing back the people that went to Trump, then went to Biden and now back. That's part of it, but some of it is a reflection of rural, of the rural electorates, increasing demographic diversity, and some preliminary numbers that I've been looking at suggest that a lot of the gains in rural areas the seven-point shift back, it seems like on average, was being driven by first-time Trump Latino voters, when the majority of the Latino vote outright in rural communities. So once you start digging in and it's important to dig in rural America is vast. About one in every five Americans lives in a rural community. It's a similar percentage of the electorate, that's a minority of the electorate, but it is just vast and diverse, I would argue diverse in a sort of underappreciated way, and so there is nuance. At the same time, I do think you can talk about something called the rural voter and the rural vote, because it has been the case that for the last four decades, although not monotonic, right, there's been ebbs and flows in the trend, but rural voters have increasingly voted for Republican candidates, not only at the presidential level, but for US Senate, for members of Congress, for state elected offices. So all down the ballot and that trend you can draw a trend line.

Dr. Jacobs:

One of the many, many figures in my book is a trend line that goes all the way back from 1824 until the present day, and the rural and urban divide.

Dr. Jacobs:

And even though rural politics has always been important to the politics of this country, I'll confess I was genuinely surprised that there was never in our country's history a prolonged division between rural and urban areas nationwide.

Dr. Jacobs:

Not in the late 1800s, where you have this populist unrest, not during the New Deal, when you have this dramatic change in the relationship between rural areas, agricultural areas and the federal government. This is a divide that emerges in 1980 and has continued ever since, and I would use the word Republican. I think you're right to make that distinction between conservative and Republican, because this is about partisanship and it is about partisan competition and partisan control of government and attitudes towards political parties and the leaders of political parties. In terms of an ideological worldview, we can get into this, and I don't think rural people are conservative extremists distracted uniquely by culture, war issues. I think what explains more of this divide is a narrative that rural people tell themselves about why rural areas, in comparison to other parts of the country, are doing worse off and, in particular, the Democratic Party and the federal government's contribution to that relative deprivation.

Shawn:

I think you're touching on the overlooked or left behind or the forgotten America to some degree, and a lot of folks political scientists and sociologists have studied this. Arlie Hochschild comes to mind as somebody who studied this and I think full disclosure I come from a blue city in a blue state, although I didn't always, you know. I grew up in relatively rural Wisconsin. But it's really hard for me, you know. I don't live that, that experience of being left behind or being forgotten or overlooked by, I suppose, the government. So it's hard for me to tangibly understand what that looks like. So I guess I'm wondering how real that is versus how much of that is a generated construct to help explain grievance that is otherwise inexplicable.

Dr. Jacobs:

There was once a point where I would go pretty hard and heavy into these debates over whether or not rural communities objectively get more than they than they pay in taxes, which I think is responsive to your question in this way, like one way in which you could solve this dilemma of rural resentment or rural grievance or the feelings of left behind is to point to some statistics and say this is objectively false. Look how much urban areas subsidize rural areas. It's not the case that they're being left behind. You know this is all just smoke and mirrors, false cognition. You know this is the line that Paul Crudman will deliver every couple of months when he feels like writing about rural rage. And it dawned on me that this is such a poor way of thinking about our politics and thinking about our political divisions, stressing the divide between peoples and communities.

Dr. Jacobs:

My realization came was in thinking about, you know, paul Krugman, as he often does, pointing to farm subsidies, pointing to transportation, you know building roads, and objectively he's absolutely right. Right, like those things come into rural communities. Rural communities on their own would not be able to afford them them. But it always struck me as really odd that this Nobel laureate, who wrote books and taught a class literally on inequality, would point to programs like that and never see how those programs have fundamentally driven inequality in rural communities, how those programs exacerbate the wealth dependent upon the cheap food and exploitation of rural lands as much as it does rural people.

Dr. Jacobs:

And I just sort of became grossly dissatisfied that not only would we ever not be able to come up to an answer to whether or not they really have been left behind, but in trying to seek out positive affirmation of either side, we're really misdescribing politics and the stories that people are telling themselves about how they fit in this world or don't fit in this world. So I I'm, you know, as a social scientist. I'm not, I'm not here to justify the, the story of rural resentment. I'm here to understand why it's grown into such a a a force in our politics and, interestingly, why, why it's taken on force nationwide, where we've, I think, always had divides between rural and urban areas, town and country, city, mouse, country, mouse sort of thing, court and court and country in Britain, but it was always experienced in a very hyper-local sort of way.

Dr. Jacobs:

And the fact that it now has explanatory power at the national level. I think really interesting and I don't think it can be all sort of chalked up to a mythology or sort of a distraction. I think you know. I know as somebody that lives in a rural community and you know just as I'm embedded in my rural area and as a scholar of rural politics, you know in the last 10 years surveyed over 35,000 rural people, that you know whether it's an answer to a survey question or it's it's a story that I'm I'm hearing at the town dump, like these beliefs are real and they're deeply felt.

Shawn:

So when we think about that divide between I suppose, republican let's just say policy and Democratic policy and how that impacts rural America, I think in our present moment, when we think about Republican policy, we have to kind of place that on the shoulders of Donald Trump and what he's selling, and that, you know, there's kind of two.

Shawn:

I mean there's many avenues here, but there are two that really I think are primary, and one is his economic messaging and the other is this kind of cultural and identity politics messaging and I think for I'm going to say urban America, but maybe I'll just say you know, for myself it's really difficult for me to distinguish one from the other when one is so repugnant and that's the culture and identity politics, and I think then it's hard not to project onto the rural voter that supports people like Trump that cultural and identity component that is so repugnant, despite the fact that maybe this is more about economy or a failed government, and this is really an oversimplification. So feel free to unpack that the way you want to. But I'm wondering if this is more about, or the attraction or the movement towards Republicans, is more about Republicans doing the right thing, more about Democrats failing and doing the wrong thing?

Dr. Jacobs:

Yeah, I'll be. I'm always, I'm an open book.

Dr. Jacobs:

Um, I don't have the final word on a lot of these issues, just a set of initial thoughts and I go back and forth on on that last question you pose, and because I go back and forth, it means that it's pretty much, from the evidence I've seen and how I interpret my data, as well as the results of other wonderful analysis analysts, that it's both, I do think.

Dr. Jacobs:

I know. I know that in rural communities Donald Trump had a certain appeal and enthusiasm, this sort of energy that Mitt Romney wasn't able to generate because of his base. Appeals to white identity, nativism, a nostalgia for the past, of a more homogenous America. I don't think that that is a phenomenon exclusive to rural America. I know you will find it in the suburbs of Long Island, orange County, california, as well as among millions of people that call urban America home, are vastly more populous and we make up a larger percentage of Donald Trump's base. I don't know what the right way of cutting the data are, but just sort of an interesting one that I always think about. If you were to look at the indictments issued by the rioters of January 6th and geocode them, they come in equal proportion from every community in America 40% were from big cities, 40% were from suburbs, 20%. You know that sort of extremism that I think the things that worry us all the most about what a second Trump presidency could bring on that cultural nativism lines.

Dr. Jacobs:

that is a toxin that permeates throughout American society. It cannot explain, though, the divide between rural and suburban and rural and urban areas in their support for Trump, I think, in addition to the Democratic Party's missteps, faults and, quite frankly, just being the party of government, when rural people feel that whenever government gets involved, it's when things up.

Dr. Jacobs:

That's sort of just like guilt by association. I get it, but it is guilt by association, I think, with Trump. I'm not also going to diminish that he has a certain appeal and I think what your preface to your question had got me thinking about was the ways in which we do try to divide politics and political messaging between the economics and the cultural, and I think this is true of many people, but I can only specify why. It's true for people I study and communities where I live, study and communities where I live. But that divide is not helpful in studying rural politics, because the economy is cultural and so much of rural culture is tied up to the specific economies that define rural communities.

Dr. Jacobs:

When you start thinking about why a coal miner in Appalachia is going to quote vote against their self-interest by trying to elect a man whose economic policies or just general policies like repealing the Affordable Care Act, why they're voting for something like that, you have to also recognize that Donald Trump is giving them something that the other candidate is not, which is dignity and respect and an acknowledgement that a certain way of living still has and a certain way of doing work has deep meaning, not just at the present moment, but in the history of these communities, and I think that's where culture and economics intertwine and it's hard to suss out and therefore we cannot. I think if there's one thing I hope to impress upon anybody who reads my work or talks to me, it's that you cannot define people's self-interest from afar. People make sense of what's in their self-interest in complicated ways. The easiest way to complicate that definition is by saying that what is economic is also cultural and what's cultural is economic.

Shawn:

So if we consider that and then we also lay over that some of the conversation that we Trump voter, I think we talk about Trump as the anomaly, but I'm starting to wonder if Obama was the anomaly here, and then what's packed into that? So that's one thing that I'm interested in. But then the other is you know, if we fast forward to this year and we think about this as a trend that's been relatively gradual but then somewhat accelerating, and we consider Trump as the candidate that rural voters seem to be largely all in for, it's really hard to imagine how Democrats ever get that voter back at this point or anytime in the near future.

Dr. Jacobs:

Yeah Well, it is an interesting thought with Obama. Yeah Well, it is an interesting thought with Obama. You know, do not accuse me of a false equivalence, because I will. I recognize the limits of such a comparison, but I have written about, and I am willing to at least draw this comparison, that Obama and Trump shared a certain belief that their campaigns were movements. Right, these were not ordinary presidential campaigns, these were movements, new coalitions, markers of the future, in a way that george w bush he, yeah, he won a presidential race but never, I think, held up his campaign or his vision of a compassionate conservatism as a, as a movement, which I think is the democratically polite way of talking about revolution in society. You know, same with Bill Clinton. You know, yeah, I mean the third way, conservatism was something new, but it was styled not as a movement but, as you know, a rational response to how Democrats need to compete in the age of Reagan right. And Obama deeply personalized the 2008 presidential way and was the change candidate.

Dr. Jacobs:

And I will say and I'm happy to be disagreed with on this point I don't know what to make of 2020. I mean, 2020 was such a you know, I want to talk about anomalies that's the anomalous presidential year global pandemic, huge social protest over the summer, donald Trump in office. So I don't know what people thought. With Joe Biden, this sort of belief about Trump as the change candidate reemerged. It didn't reemerge as strongly as in 2016. There was a substantially larger number of not ambivalent but unenthusiastic Trump voters in 2024 in comparison to 2016.

Dr. Jacobs:

So I do know a lot of people went back and were either voting against Harris or lesser of two evils sort of thing. I mean I'll say anecdotally, central Maine is a sort of a bellwether county. I live in one of the only 19 rural counties in the country that went county I live in. I live in one of the only 19 rural counties in the country that went for donald trump in 2016, went for joe biden in 2020 and then went back to trump, but there were no barns painted with with trump. There were very few flags. It was actually hard for to see a yard sign and then support Trump. So a lot of it was. You know, people talked media, I think, made a big to do about the secret conservative Harris voter. I think that's the sort of secret Trump voter that bit their tongue. So that that's that's sort of my, my, my, my thinking about Obama, and you're going to have to remind me your second question.

Shawn:

I'm sorry, yeah, what you're telling me is they were distinct questions, given who Trump is and the message that he's sold and just how much he has kind of solidified support for not just himself but like, as you said, a movement of sorts, if Democrats in the near future have a shot at rural voters.

Dr. Jacobs:

Yeah, well, that is the million-dollar question. I mean, if I had an answer to that, the Democratic Party would give me a million dollars. I mean, I think we learned one thing out of 24, although, as I wrote before the election, I didn't think we really needed to learn it. I think we already knew You're not going to win any rural voters back by simply putting grandpa walls on the ticket and focusing it up and raising money off of a hot dish recipe and camo hats. I thought that was such a simplistic and, quite frankly, in retrospect, almost insulting way to think about the rural electorate.

Dr. Jacobs:

And I say that in deep recognition that many people I know, both professionally in my community, who are progressives, finally felt seen by that decision and were enthusiastic. Actually, we'll have hard data on it in a couple of months but but I would not be surprised at all if rates of of participation in in the presidential campaign, either by giving money or putting a sign in your yard. Historically, democrats in rural communities which there are many, even in a 60-40 race it's still a lot of Democrats. I mean 70-30 at the highest, 80-20 in some parts. There's still Democrats in the countryside but their rates of participation have been non-existent, almost ostracized. I would not be surprised if it was substantially higher and I do think Walls contributed to that, but he didn't bring in new voters. I don't think the lesson there is to not try.

Dr. Jacobs:

I think the Democrats have often, when it comes to rural candidates and rural campaigns, promoted the losers and looked to the losers for lessons. I mean God bless her. I think she was a smart representative, was doing great work, including work on understanding the rural-urban divide. But Heidi Heitkamp lost, claire McCaskill lost, but there's Democrats in office right now. You could look at for lessons on why they win Amy Klobuchar on the same ticket as Tim Walz when Walz first ran for governor. Walz loses the rural vote. Klobuchar wins it, democrat. Why She'll be the first to tell you. I travel to every county I meet and if anybody that's ever met Amy knows she remembers everybody. She is cut from a different sort of era. Tammy Baldwin I mean her Michigan numbers aren't as through the roof as they once were but gets close to winning a majority of the rural vote in our states.

Dr. Jacobs:

Jared Golden, who's right next door to me, has won three times now a district that goes pretty strongly for Donald Trump. Not even a question that Donald Trump will win Maine's second congressional district and he wins an outright majority. And I think they show sort of a different approach. Klobuchar and Baldwin have never really fought against the party. They've carved out a very distinctive brand. They talk about rural issues. They genuinely know rural issues.

Dr. Jacobs:

Tammy Baldwin will talk to everybody about rural healthcare, which is actually the issue that rural people rank highest, not immigration, not abortion, access to healthcare. Can we please get a primary care physician? I do think they acknowledge government missteps without playing into grievance. Golden's tack has been to run against the party a little bit more and stake out his political independence. The lesson I would bring from just you know. There's numerous other candidates, including in the South, that run in more racially diverse rural districts and districts that are split of Trump, are just so deeply dissatisfied with partisan politics at the moment and will be willing to express their independence when given the chance. The fact so Osborne I just said, don't focus on the losers, but the fact that this guy, Dan Osborne in Nebraska, cuts the margins, cuts the margins so substantially against a two-time Deb Fischer incumbent, republican incumbent, I think, is evidence to that point too.

Shawn:

I want to go back to the earlier part of your response when you mentioned Walls and the camo hats and his appeal, or at least the assumed appeal, and the camo hats and his appeal, or at least the assumed appeal. And something's kind of dawning on me and that is I'm wondering if what Democrats and I think about this campaign Harris-Walls what Democrats have been doing that they're unaware that they're doing is almost a bit of cosplay. What it did is it allowed progressives and center-left folks to put on camo hats and pretend that somehow this meant that they identified with the rural voter and that in a way, that was one missing the point but too offensive or off putting maybe to to rural voters. But the other thought that I'm having here is obviously, this is what you've studied, you have you've surveyed folks.

Dr. Jacobs:

You've surveyed folks and I guess I'll just jump to the question which is, given that were you surprised by the 2024 outcome? And I suppose you. I never saw one in. I never saw a camo hat. Rural Harris Walls camo hat in Vassarboro.

Shawn:

I mean that's fascinating, because I saw them in Seattle.

Dr. Jacobs:

Or nearby, but I only saw them when I was traveling well, in Portland, yeah, and then when I was out in Portland, oregon, this campaign cycle, you know, walking through the airport, and I don't know where those people were from, but I have my suspicions.

Dr. Jacobs:

And I don't know if those people were from, but I have my suspicions. I don't know if other people found it insulting, so I am editorializing on that, but I'm surprised. I will admit that there were parts of the election and we're all still trying to figure out the narrative. That was surprising. I knew the Harris campaign was struggling in Wisconsin and was prone to lose Wisconsin. I didn't think that the Harris campaign ever really had North Carolina in play and I think they knew that pretty early on and just had so much damn money to burn that Harris was going up against substantial headwinds. She's not seen as the change candidate. I don't think she ever would have stylized herself as the change candidate.

Dr. Jacobs:

Voters did not buy that at all, which I think is reasonable. Even her supporters didn't really even buy it. And people were dissatisfied with the current administration, in which case the incumbent always loses. Prices are still high, economic evaluations certainly had a certain degree of partisan rationalization but were nevertheless negative. So headwinds were there but were nevertheless negative. So headwinds were there.

Dr. Jacobs:

But at the same time, you know, this long-term trend of losses among non-college-educated workers or less than college-educated workers, is just also an equal part of the story. And you know Barack Obama won a majority of self-described working class voters in 2012. Harris, depending on how you measure it, depending on Harris might have lost it by 30 points. That's, that's pretty. That's. That's a big leap.

Dr. Jacobs:

I think that dovetails with a lot of what we've been talking about in rural communities. I think ruralness and rural politics gives us a lens to understand some of those developments, but they are distinct. If you were to look at a snapshot of the rural electorate and I'll have to use 2020 numbers, because I don't want to project without hard evidence and we don't have the evidence at this moment but if you were to look at 2020 numbers, college-educated voters in rural America voted the same way as non-college-educated voters in rural America. Rural Americans making less than $40,000 a year voted the same in rural America as rural Americans making over $120,000 a year. So there is no class divide in rural America, but to the extent that rural identity, it rhymes with a sort of class dynamic at the national level. I think that's where the long-term trends in rurality give us some insights on maybe this emerging class divide in national level politics that moved big cities and suburbs just as much as it did rural places.

Shawn:

You mentioned a couple of things that to me feel like they could be well, they could be in concert, but they could be in contradiction to each other or at least challenging to each other earlier. So one is that, again back to the general trend line that rural America is trending Republican. But I think it's fair to say that there's something unique about Trump. We've talked about the movement, but there's something unique to Trump that really taps into a fervor and a loyalty to his supporters, many of which are rural voters. I guess that makes me wonder how flexible the rural voter may be in moving on to another candidate post-Trump and maintaining the same level of loyalty and fervor.

Dr. Jacobs:

Well, I guess this presupposes an answer to a couple of questions, the first being just how large is the loyalist camp? Just how large is MAGA, as has been used to describe the fervent base of Donald Trump? I mean, if you go, one possibility is you look at the small percentage of Americans that vote in the Republican primary and then you look at the pretty small, at least by 2016 standards. Maybe that guy surely did get bigger in 2024. And maybe that's reflecting the reality. You know that the support that he got right. So in 2016, at least, he averaged about 40%, that's 40% of minorities. So they're loyal 're loyal, say. You look at it more expansively and say that it's the percent of Trump voters that say they're voting for Trump as opposed against Harris. It's a small majority, but a small majority nevertheless. So it does. I guess I think one's answer to the question is filtered at least by how long you think of, how big you think of that coalition. The second thing I'd say is what is it about the loyalty and the steadfastness that seems to be royal in our politics? Because I have not seen evidence. I'm more than willing to be proven wrong, but I have not seen evidence to suggest that the you know. However you define it, however large it is that the core MAGA that core MAGA voted for anybody but Mitt Romney in 2012, or John McCain in 20—these are Republicans through and through, and I have not seen evidence to suggest that even the new voters that were part of the electorate in 2016 and 2020 were necessarily those that were again core MAGA. So that's not saying that. Oh, this is the first time I've ever attended a rally. This is the first time I've ever been enthusiastic for a candidate. I think those people are there and they are engaged in a new type of politics, but when it comes to the single power of their vote and the way that the voting coalitions are transformed, I don't think they're in the pivotal spot. If that makes sense. They're not in the tipping point. I think that's a very different set of voters.

Shawn:

So I want to talk about.

Shawn:

I want to go back to this discussion that we had a little bit earlier about this narrative that Trump supporters probably writ large, but we can limit this somewhat to perhaps rural voters are voting against their interests, and there's been quite a bit of energy around this narrative that rural voters are voting against their interests, and there's been quite a bit of energy around this narrative that rural voters actually support democratic policies but they don't support Democrats.

Shawn:

And, foregoing how true or the depth of that fact, it is true that a lot of these voters, if we could compare them to voters in like the 1930s and maybe even to some degree the 1960s, they really were New Deal and Great Society voters as well, but yet they're supporting Donald Trump. So that has something to do with federal programs and how they're administered, but if it's not necessarily the candidate, then it really comes down to it's either the messaging or it's the implementation of these programs that has failed, or it's the design of our federalist system itself that is somehow failing, and I get that this is. It could be a bit of all of that, but what do you think it is that is causing voters to turn so strongly against policies or candidates that support policies that ostensibly they would have supported in the past.

Dr. Jacobs:

Yeah, well, I do think it's a little bit of everything, depending on on who you're talking to, and I and I also do think, well, I would say that I and the sort of on the spectrum of giving voters no credit to viewing them all as little you know philosophers, I actually probably lean closer to the viewing them all as philosophers At least I you know. I approach my analysis with a sort of a better reputation among the mass public than I think many scholars do. I actually think that when you see a majority of rural people want to increase the minimum wage to $15, when a majority of rural people and urban people to similar degrees want to give citizenship to immigrants that hold jobs that they really do believe in, like, I don't think these are artifacts of the survey environment. I don't think it's people giving answers to stuff they have no idea about. I think people actually can make sense of complicated policy. I mean to put the self-interest question bluntly. In 2024, I think I understand. In 2024, I think I understand. I always understand why a progressive would say what the hell Did you not see that Joe Biden oversaw the passage of trillions of dollars in federal spending and federal investments?

Dr. Jacobs:

Did you not know about the CHIPS Act, which is going to bring back manufacturing? Did you not know about the infrastructure bill? What about the inflation reduction? The amount of spending is nuts. So I understand why we gave you the money left behind people, which is, objectively true, a disproportionate amount of funds. Last time I counted around 30% of funds from those three projects are going to rural areas when they account for 20% of the population. It's disproportionate. Or I hear we gave you broadband. Why won't you give us your vote? I think that's a fair question.

Dr. Jacobs:

My thoughts on that question are one when we ask people not about the policy but about how those policies are in action in their communities, people do not see it. That might be messaging, that might be a sort of structural flaw in our governmental system, where so much of government is contracted out or is, through grant processes, distributed through state and governments, local governments, nonprofits, and so when it comes to getting credit for stuff, I think there's both some messaging faults and structural faults that limit people's like. You have to be a real hard-nosed policy wonk to match changes in your community with actual policy. That probably is expecting too much, but I think that would be expecting too much of students in my classroom. Sometimes I struggle with it. The other thing I'd say about those most recent ones and this is also part structural is a lot of that money hasn't hit communities, so it was announced.

Dr. Jacobs:

But a lot of that I mean there was just a report out of the brookings institution. Great, great scholar tony pippa said that there is there are projects in the the trillions of dollars of funding. There are programs that will not spend a majority of their funds until 2030. It's sort of like, I don't know, castigate anybody for not being immediately grateful for programs. I think that's a bit unfair. Yeah, the final thing, and this would probably be the harshest take so you did a lot, democrats. You passed a lot of new programs, you celebrated it. You got some things done that people have been wanting done for years, like infrastructure, even if a lot of that money hasn't hit the asphalt. But she didn't do the stuff we were asking you to do.

Dr. Jacobs:

Meaning, I've always had a hard problem with Democrats being so darn celebratory of the Affordable Care Act, not because I think it was bad policy, not because I don't think it was a good thing to do bringing millions of people into the insurance pool, but if you look at why people wanted healthcare to be Barack Obama's number one priority in 2008, 2009, it wasn't on insurance, it was price of premiums Didn't do anything. They told us we could keep our doctor. We couldn't. The price of premiums went up. So, yeah, I mean the Affordable Care Act. Yeah, you can sit there and, I think, rationalize all you want that. It was a great policy, a good policy, a necessary policy, but was it the policy that voters wanted? No, I don't think that's voting against your interest because you didn't reward the Democrats, because you didn't reward the Democrats.

Dr. Jacobs:

I think about the first two years of the Biden administration, where they got so much done. They got so much done and yet did they really do what people wanted them to do? When it came to economic reforms, I think you could make the argument that no, they didn't, and some of that was absolutely internal politics. That gave the Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from Arizona a veto over everything they wanted to do, like child tax credits. That was the big one. I get that. I get that. But that's also, you know, that's not the voters' fault. I guess I'm so tired of analyses that try to think that the rot of our politics is in voters or anything systemically flawed in our politics is the fault of voters. When Joe Manchin's resistance wasn't the voters' fault, that was an institutional problem.

Shawn:

Okay, so this is something that I've been kind of knocking around for a bit and it seems like you might be the right person to ask. I've really been wondering if Bernie Sanders and the message he was selling in 2015 and 2016, bernie Sanders and the message he was selling in 2015 and 2016,. If that had succeeded, if that would have ultimately neutralized the Trump train or at least the worst aspects of it, that really cultural identity part of it that's taken hold over the last eight years. If that would have brought in a lot of what would become Trump voters into the Sanders fold and cleaved off that worst excess of the cultural and identity politics component of it.

Dr. Jacobs:

I think a tentative, in part because I do think what Bernie Sanders offered to a lot of voters, including a lot of rural voters who supported him in his primary campaign against Hillary, was a politics of recognition, a politics of you can live a different type of life, and that can be a life of a Seattle Washingtonian or that can be a life of a hillside Vermont farmer. I think Bernie Sanders, for as much as he was he was critiqued by conservatives for this point he's too divisive. He's dividing us into the 99 and the 1%. But when I talk about a politics of recognition, it was a political message that spoke to people's sense that something is profoundly unfair in American society right now. People are winning while I am losing, and that shouldn't be happening, shouldn't be happening. And you know where.

Dr. Jacobs:

Donald Trump put the blame on immigrants and the deep state. Bernie Sanders, you know, put the blame on corporate elites and the 1% big finance and money. And you know, however simplistic either of those two views are, it does tap into people's belief that the rules of the game are broken. Mainstream Democratic candidates have not spoken to that. Ironically, it was Hillary Clinton, in the lead up to her deplorables comments, seemed to recognize that that was going on, but offered no alternative to it. The board never said we need to fix the system, however painfully vague I know it is to hear that. But when people, when voters, are telling you they feel the system is broken, politicians that respond tend to do curious things with partisan allegiances. Tend to do curious things with partisan allegiances.

Dr. Jacobs:

The congressman that represents Silicon Valley in California, ro Khanna Indian American, I think, second generation, but like Obama, funny sounding name to most Americans actually has traveled around the country. He didn't write this in the Atlantic but I remember the coverage of it Goes back to his hometown in Pennsylvania, talks to his former high school teacher, is a Trump voter and he kind of can't believe it, and he leaves Pennsylvania simply with the acknowledgement. Like we got to stop calling people who vote differently from us bad people, and I think that's a politics of recognition. You can have your vote, it doesn't make you evil. He is a Bernie Sanders progressive, so I think there's something to that. I do think it's complicated. I mean, Bernie Sanders struggled in the primaries with racial minorities who did not find his messaging to be inclusive, and struggled again, in the aftermath of the protests over George Floyd's murder, with creating an inclusive presidential campaign. I guess that was actually prior to that, in the winter of 2020. And I think that's also important to attend to.

Shawn:

Okay, final question. You ready for it?

Dr. Jacobs:

Yeah.

Shawn:

What's something interesting you've been reading, watching, listening to or doing lately, and it doesn't have to be related to this topic, but it can be.

Dr. Jacobs:

Oh boy, that's like the hardest question. So I live on a very we call it farm-ish. I'm not a farmer because I don't. My wonderful teaching job subsidizes my exploits on the land. But I just built a new hen house and that was a fun. That was a humbling experience building a hen house on rolling hills and, uh, it is mostly square. So that's what I've been doing. That's been interesting.

Dr. Jacobs:

Lots of broken thumbs and youtube videos building rafters, and so I built it from scratch no kit so that was new actually the one of the more interesting things I've read recently is I do try to read fiction this, I guess, is an odd coda to our conversation, but I think it's two or three years old now but I read Julia, which is 1984, but from the perspective of the female protagonist, and I think you know many people who read 1984 in high school. You don't need to reread it to really understand the depth of this. But there were two things that struck me as particularly interesting by this retelling of 1984 from Julia's perspective. One was in ways that Orwell never would have originally been attentive to, was how politics of sex and gender hierarchy fit into his dystopia in ways that are both predictable but also, I'm willing to admit, sort of. I needed the book to really reveal for me was how gendered that totalitarian state is and the power that it derived from those gendered relationships.

Dr. Jacobs:

But then the other thing I'll say that was interesting, that speaks directly to our conversation, is I won't give anything away but Julia Julia is from rural Oceania or a rural part of the empire, and 1984 takes place almost entirely within the city. There's hikes and whatnot, very staged and sort of, you know, recreational, exploitive use of rural areas. But so not only does the retelling sort of center it on femininity and womanhood, but it centers part of it at least, in how rural communities fit into the rise of totalitarianism, and, I thought, provocative and insightful ways. So I'd recommend that book.

Shawn:

I actually have that book, but I have not read it yet. I have towers of books that I intend to read, but you're actually reminding me that maybe I could move that one up a few.

Dr. Jacobs:

I would would it's very good.

Shawn:

I do want to ask really quickly about the hen house. So we have played with the idea of doing the same thing, but I've gotten mixed messaging from folks like some folks that love it and other folks that say it's just. It is a lot of work and takes much more time and dedication, not just the building of it but the maintaining of the chickens themselves. And well, how many are you thinking?

Dr. Jacobs:

about I'm up to 25.

Shawn:

Oh my God, I was like maybe eight.

Dr. Jacobs:

It's still a good number. It's still a good number.

Shawn:

But it's like daily, like you can't leave them for a day, right?

Dr. Jacobs:

Well, probably not so. So we free range our birds with the rooster and and so, um, you know, in addition to clean water and feed, we do have to lock them up every night. Yeah, predators, foxes and weasels will get in the hen house, which is never a fun. Yeah, that that's the daily routine. But and I wouldn't advise leaving too much food out unless you want rats to come in, and that is a thing in the seattle area for sure oh yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jacobs:

So rats will find standing food. But uh, you know everybody jokes about what we call your first thousand dollar egg. So after you invest all this money, you know you get your egg. But uh, I, nothing tastes better than an egg that just laid. So it's good work.

Shawn:

Yeah, it is work I don't know if we'll do it, but I did bees for a while. That's a lot of work too. It's like not a lot of work throughout the year, but there are very specific periods of time in the year that is a lot of work yeah, there's something very humbling about stewardship in that way.

Dr. Jacobs:

I we're in maine, we're always looking to the first snow, you know, and it's only when, only when the threat of that first snow arrives that it really kicks you into gear and reminds you how much you have to do. And it's humbling, and I like being humbled by the weather.

Shawn:

It's a good note to end on. Dr Jacobs, thanks for the conversation. You've definitely given me a lot to think about, probably more than I want to, but it's a lot to think about, thank you.

Dr. Jacobs:

I really appreciate the opportunity to join you and to hear your questions. Thank you so much.

Shawn:

Understanding the urban-rural divide in America is crucial. The shift of rural America towards conservatism isn't just a political trend. It's a reflection of deep-seated economic, cultural and social changes that have reshaped communities across the country. And while Republicans have capitalized on this division, democrats should not cede ground here. Taking rural voters seriously is not just a matter of electoral strategy. It's essential for the survival of American democracy.

Shawn:

Rural America, while pretty strongly conservative these days, is not monolithic. Many rural voters feel neglected by both parties, believing that their specific needs and concerns are overlooked. By engaging with these communities, democrats can tap into a significant voter base that is often swayed by economic and social issues rather than strict ideological divides. By recognizing and appreciating the factors driving this divide and taking seriously the complexity of rural voters' perspectives and concerns, maybe we can better address the unique challenges faced by both urban and rural communities, while staying true to democratic principles of equity, opportunity, dignity and community.

Shawn:

Bridging this divide is essential. We are a fractured country at each other's throats and barreling toward a dangerous undoing. To avoid this, we are all barreling toward a dangerous undoing. To avoid this, we're all Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal going to have to lay down our arms and engage with each other. Among many things, acknowledging and addressing the urban-rural divide will be key to creating a more inclusive and representative political system for all Americans. All right, check back next week for another episode of Deep Dive Chat. Soon, folks. Thank you, thank you.

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Shawn C. Fettig

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