Democrats and President Biden himself ain’t gonna win much there….
But he and his party are mounting an effort to at least squeeze some more vote’s out those regions….
Biden & Co. with the last Congress DID send BILLIONS across America for jobs, capital improvements and things like broadband boosts…
But?
THAT has been a secret…..
On the heels of Biden’s visit to Northfield, Minn., a dozen Cabinet secretaries and other administration officials are fanning out to rural communities across the country. Democrats’ vote share in these places plummeted in recent decades, hitting historic lows in the last presidential election: Former President Bill Clinton won about half of the rural counties in 1996, totaling more than 1,100. Former President Barack Obama won 455 in 2008 and President Joe Biden won 194 of them in 2020. Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, pulled out new voters in rural America, winning them by even wider margins in 2020 and deepening the urban-rural partisan divide.
But Biden’s path to victory in 2024 cuts through these rural counties, where the Biden campaign must make “sure the margins stay close,” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who’s scheduled to appear alongside the president on Wednesday and grew up in a town of 400 people.
“We just need to go out there and be proud of the things we’ve done,” he added.
Losing by less matters in a slew of battleground states, from Georgia to Pennsylvania to Arizona, where Republicans can overcome leads Democrats may build in urban and suburban centers by blowing them out in small-town America. It’s a perennial challenge for Democrats, as their losses have meant fewer rural representatives in the party nationally. In a segmented media landscape, it’s harder to reach rural voters through traditional media, while the broader party brand deteriorated there in recent years…..
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That concern is born out in public polling, where even as top-line numbers for the economy show it humming along, voters aren’t yet giving Biden credit for it. And more than half of those surveyed in an October Economist/YouGov pollsaid the economy is getting worse….
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Biden and congressional Democrats have pushed through billions in new spending — via legislation and executive action — that targets the vast rural stretches between the coasts. Senate Democrats argue that they’ve delivered for rural people, and they just need to brag about it.
Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who is up for re-election this year, said the administration and congressional Democrats delivered an “overwhelming record of investments in rural communities.”
“Not a single Republican did that, we did that,” Casey said. “You gotta go there … and you don’t just go there to talk about a record, you go there to listen and learn and to do everything you can to be responsive to their needs.”
The Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ marquee climate change law, poured nearly $40 billion into rural clean electricity projects, climate-smart agriculture, support for indebted farmers and efforts to prevent wildfires. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will rebuild thousands of miles of crumbling rural roads, bridges and waterways, while spending tens of billions building out broadband access for millions without high-speed access. And the American Rescue Plan bailed out rural hospitals stretched thin by the pandemic, while pouring hundreds of millions into expanding small and local meat processing plants — an industry dominated by large corporate interests.
In other words, Biden and Democrats have rained money on rural America….
image…President Joe Biden speaks as he visits O’Connor Farms with owners Gina O’Connor (second from left) and Jeff O’Connor (left), Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (second from right) and Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) on May 11, 2022, in Kankakee, Ill. | Andrew Harnik/AP