Musings from Numbers: Rural Votes Propel Republicans to Victory

This article from the BBC echoes what I was thinking on the night of Ron Johnson's victory in Wisconsin. On election day, Feingold overwhelming won Madison with 70% of the vote and decisively carried Milwaukee with 60% of the vote. Based on those numbers from the state's capital and the state's largest city, you would have to assume that either Feingold won or Johnson won a very close race. Neither would be true. Johnson did not win in a landslide by any means, but he did win fairly comfortably (53% to 46%).

How Johnson won, of course, lies in the fact that he carried the rest of the state outside of the capital and largest city. In other words, mostly the rural vote, with a few smaller cities like my hometown of Oshkosh thrown in.

While this is interesting in and of itself going forward into the future, it occurred to me while analyzing it that this isn't actually anything new. Far from it. Cities traditionally identify in what might be considered a more "liberal" fashion, while the countryside typically votes conservatively. In the same way that many rural people in the 20s and 30s viewed New York as a despicable den of Catholicism, overrun with Irish and other untrustworthy immigrants, conservative rurals today often equate Los Angeles as a crime infested mess, overrun by Spanish speaking immigrants (even worse, of the wrong skin color). I'll never forget how on a flight from Appleton to Chicago, en route to eventually Los Angeles, a man asked me where I was travelling to. I told him my final destination was LA, to which he responded, quite seriously "Well I'm sorry to hear that. That whole place is pretty dangerous with all the Mexican gangs running around." I was a bit shocked, but managed to respond, simply saying that most big cities have serious crime problems.

So this is nothing new, and brings me to another historical comparison that the Democrats can use if they want to recover from the defeat the Republicans have inflicted on them in these midterm elections. If Democrats want to regain lost ground, they need to more effectively position themselves as populists. Populism, a derivitative of late 19th and early 20th century progressivism, has historically been the bridge between liberals and rural people. It's what allowed FDR to win election after election while carrying urban New England as well as the rural South. It's what helped define Teddy Roosevelt's trust busting, nature loving presidency (Teddy Roosevelt would appropriately later run under the Progressive Party's ticket in 1912, losing to Woodrow Wilson).

Democrats need to better position themselves to withstand attacks from Republicans about their "Wall Street bailout". They should point out that it was under Bush that the bailout money was first issued, under TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Progam). They need to point out that instead of somehow costing the middle class and working class more money through higher taxes and government healthcare, that they are actually these classes' best friends, through the form of tax cuts that target the middle class as well as a greater propensity to work towards job saving measures. They need to make it clear that they support capitalism and that they aren't socialists in order blunt the effectiveness of claims like Johnson, who said "creative destruction" is just a part of capitalism, as if Democrats can't accept that or want something altogether different from capitalism. Democrats need to show that this aforementioned creative destruction isn't 'creative' at all, and that while jobs and companies closing will always be the case, and rightfully so, in a market economy, that sometimes the government needs to step in to curb the most drastic of these tidal waves of destructive, lest they overrun the nation or seriously damage the economy. This is analagous to the breaking up of monopolies, something that involves quite a bit of government intervention, to actually help further the spirit of capitalism in the form of increased competition and better economic health. Democrats also need to better defend themselves with respect to the debt, showcasing the fact that the healthcare reform should in the long run actually save the U.S. money through lower insurance rates. They should point out that Obama's law allowing young adults to stay on their parent's health insurance plan until they are 26 is the epitome of the Democrats helping the middle and working class save money.

Of course, if the Democrats really want to swing the pendulum back to their side, it would be helpful if Obama could provide some foreign policy victories. So far he hasn't been very succesful lately after some initial victories (such as the Russian nuclear arms reduction treaty). He failed to secure a trade deal with South Korea at the G20 convention, and so far Israel has been making the U.S. look foolish with their refusal to stop building settlements in Palestinian territory. Obama needs to have a firmer hand in diplomacy. Basically, he needs to deftly remind Israel that U.S. support is crucial to Israel maintaining a strategic advantage over their Arab rivals. Or perhaps he should just go for the blunt, George W. Bush like approach and tell Netanyahu that unless he freezes settlement construction the U.S. will withdraw their support of Israel and laugh as Arab countries line up to wipe Israel off the map, all the while removing one of the major qualms that terrorists hold against the U.S. (their support of Israel). But I digress...