Pitting rural against urban in transportation policy and politics

A few days ago, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas pulled a Donald Trump when he vilified downtown/urban living (remember Trump's urban "American carnage" from his inauguration speech--that is, one of the things Trump said he'd end).   Cotton made these comments on Fox News, and they went viral on social media.  Here's the full quote:  

[Democrats] want to make us all poor.  They want to make you live in downtown areas, and high-rise buildings, and walk to work, or take the subway, or ride an electric scooter, or whatever it is that Pete Buttigieg takes to work.

And here's a screenshot: 

You can see the Fox News chyron is "Dems Push Green Deal amid Skyrocketing Gas Prices." 

In response to Cotton's urban-bashing, Huffpost published a piece headlined, "Twitter Users Think Sen. Tom Cotton's Vision Of A Dystopian America Sounds Wonderful."   Here's one of the responses highlighted there, from Keith Olberman, a reminder of the conflation of urban with elites.

And here's one, retweeted by the Arkansas Times, that highlights the irony of (1) Arkansas's rural poverty and (2) that Cotton has abandoned his hometown, quasi-rural Dardanelle, Arkansas, population 5,000, for a condo in Little Rock (to maintain some residency) and the home where he lives the vast majority of the time, in suburban Virginia. 

And here's one from John Brummett, a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, with some similar sentiment grounded in a dig about the problem of rural poverty in Arkansas.   

In short, Cotton looks disingenuous in his disdain for urban and purported support for rural.