Has Trump’s Anti-Rural Agenda Handed Democrats an Opening in Red America?

President Trump’s feckless trade war is bludgeoning the bottom line of the Republican Party’s reliable rural base. But the party’s disregard for the economic interests of its own constituents goes well beyond barriers to Chinese markets. Small towns and rural areas, along with some Rust Belt metros, are falling ever […] Read more »

Trump’s Rural Stress Test

… Trump’s immigration and trade policies have set many agriculture leaders to grinding their teeth, albeit through a forced smile. Yet his support has been steadfast. Could any of it ever cost Trump some of his support among farmers and across small-town and rural America? … If any Democrat is […] Read more »

How the Rural-Urban Divide Became America’s Political Fault Line

It’s true across many industrialized democracies that rural areas lean conservative while cities tend to be more liberal, a pattern partly rooted in the history of workers’ parties that grew up where urban factories did. But urban-rural polarization has become particularly acute in America: particularly entrenched, particularly hostile, particularly lopsided […] Read more »

The Democratic Party is being transformed. These House votes show how.

The decisive House of Representatives vote last Friday barring discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity marked a milestone in shifting American attitudes toward gay rights. But it also represented a landmark in the evolution of the Democratic Party into an urbanized coalition centered on the voters and communities […] Read more »