Thanks for posting this, RPannier. Thank goodness for people like Senators Heitkamp and Donnelly.
From an Axios article I saw on the website,
Dems plan to teach 2020 candidates how to talk to a Trump voter:
Former Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly, who both lost their 2018 re-election races in North Dakota and Indiana, respectively, are launching the One Country Project to help their party win back rural voters ahead of the 2020 cycle.
Why it matters: Their team looked at rural votes by county and state from 2000 to 2018 and found that if Democrats don’t break their performance with rural voters, they’re projected to once again win the popular vote but lose the electoral college in 2020.
“Culturally, they’re focused on faith and family and country, and Donald Trump tells them all the time that we’re not, even though we are.” ...What they’re saying: “What we heard on the ground is that the Democratic Party no longer speaks for the entire country,” Heitkamp said. “They’ve forgotten the middle of the country and forgot to even show up. Even past Democratic voters didn’t recognize the Democratic Party of 2018.”
True or not (a lot of rural areas went pink in 2018 when Democrats did show up), most believe it and that's all that matters.
And about the DNC:
The DNC has hired Liberty Schneider, who served as Heitkamp’s 2018 re-election campaign manager, as its new director of rural outreach and engagement, which has not been previously reported. Her main role will be to engage and mobilize rural voters for the 2020 cycle.
“Our party is at its best when we are connecting with people from all across the country, from Boston, MA to Bowbells, ND, and the DNC is committed to a 50-state strategy that helps us win up and down the ballot in 2019, 2020, and beyond,” Schneider said in a statement to Axios.
“Under the leadership of Chair [Tom] Perez, the national party has made extensive investments to make sure we are connecting with folks in rural communities and talking about our shared values.”
So our party knows we could once again win the nation but lose control of the government.
Analyses I've read of 50-state strategies that invested in solidly red areas showed very marginal wins over losses in the
Great Plains and West, where ideology is somewhat more libertarian. The wins disappeared, spectacularly in 2010, when the heavy investment was withdrawn. So those pinkish areas that were created by investment in 2018 (and presumably reaction to Trumpism) could turn solid red again without. As we move toward 2020, they'll have even more Trumpism as a push and perhaps with some Democratic pull those 2018 wins out west could grow to become game-changing.
Btw, as a Georgia resident, I'm sorry to say that in spite of 50-state efforts the south, with its more religiously based conservatism, had strong and increasing losses as the long trend of the southern conservative wing of the Democratic Party moving to the Republican continued.
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