The book Dirt Road Revival: How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why Our Future Depends on It, by Chloe Maxmin and Canyon Woodward, will be released in a few weeks by Beacon Press. I can't wait to read it. Meanwhile, I picked up these nuggets from the authors' interview with Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker podcast.
First, on urban arrogance (and attendant dismissiveness of the rural), there's this:
[The national Democrats] totally abandoned grassroots organizing in these spaces and that was reflected at the highest level of party leadership. But, you know, folks like the chair Tom Perez, that you can't door knock in rural America and Chuck Schumer's that, you know, for every blue collar that we lose in Western Pennsylvania will pick up two in the suburbs of Philadelphia and largely Democratic leaders were nowhere to be seen in rural America.
We weren't listening. We weren't cultivating relationships of trust. We were not telling a story that spoke to the sharp pain and struggles of the rural working-class and. So that just created a huge void and into that the young, contested battlefield crushed right wing activist groups, media personalities and that's what led to the rise of Donald Trump and the capture of state legislatures that we're experiencing today.
To this, I'll just note that ceding door knocking in rural America is like saying we can't be bothered to provide broadband or a quality education or a rural hospital because you can't achieve economies of scale in places with sparse population.
And on that note, second, I was interested in Maxmin's estimate that you can knock on about 100 doors a day in rural Maine, where she won a state senate seat that included the place she grew up, Nobleboro, in Lincoln County:
I think you know it sounds so basic, but it's the most human and humane thing we can do is just go talk to people, go have an honest conversation about why we're failing, why people don't believe in us and see if there's any space to repair that relationship.
It's simple in theory. You know, putting it to practice can be tricky because it has been under 200 doors a day and it's easy and are distracting, not to take away our drive from end to end and you know 100 doors a day is what someone can manage. So, it requires more time. It requires more investment, more volunteers, more resources. But we just can't take the easy way out. We keep doing that for too long, we are facing incredibly dire consequences. So, we just got to go talk to folks and make sure that what we hear is being reflected and how we campaign, how we message, how we serve and office.
Third, there is this, connecting to what is happening in other states:
And I think of Beto in Texas and Stacey Abrams in Georgia are key examples of that where it's all about people power campaigns and building these huge communities of volunteers that feel excited and motivated to go out into their communities and do this. Not all canvassing is created equal.
You know, I think oftentimes when we've seen, you know, the party establishment come out in the rural areas and with clipboard wielding very generically trained folks or kind of whacking people over the head with policy and reading a script that that doesn't resonate and so not. It's not all created equal, but it is really all about having strong grassroots people powered campaigns.
I like to say that things move at the speed of relationship in rural America. And that's just like an essential part of life and our culture. And it's got to be in the central part of our organizing. If we're going to succeed, if the Democrats of all kinds appear to agree that the party is in need of some very serious soul searching.
Don't miss the interview, which you can hear in its entirety here.
Related posts are here and here--and really every post under the "rural vote" (422 posts in 15 years!) or "rural politics" label.
Postscript: On May 2, this essay by Maxmin and Woodward appeared in the New York Times. The headline is "How Two Democrats Fought and Won in Rural America" and "What Democrats Don't Understand About Rural America." I'm going to excerpt here some of the more practical aspects of the piece.
In our two campaigns, we turned down the party consultants and created our own canvassing universe — the targeted list of voters whom we talk to during the election season. In 2020, this universe was four times larger than what the state party recommended. It included thousands of Republicans and independents who had (literally) never been contacted by a Democratic campaign in their entire time voting.
Our campaign signs? Hand-painted or made of scavenged wood pallets by volunteers, with images of loons, canoes and other hallmarks of the Maine countryside. Into the trash went consultant-created mailers. Instead, we designed and carried out our own direct mail program for half the price of what the party consultants wanted to charge while reaching 20 percent more voters.
Volunteers wrote more than 5,000 personal postcards, handwritten and addressed to neighbors in their own community. And we defied traditional advice by refusing to say a negative word about our opponents, no matter how badly we wanted to fight back as the campaigns grew more heated.
Also of interest are some of the voice memos Maxmin made to herself as she canvassed. Here's that context:
Chloe has knocked on more than 20,000 doors over the last two cycles, listening to stories of loss and isolation. One man told her she was the first person to listen to him; most campaigns, he said, didn’t even bother to knock on his door — they judged him for what his house looked like.
* * *
When we first embarked down this road, the path was rocky. Chloe came home from canvassing distraught one day and dictated a voice memo to herself: “I talked to a lot of people I’ve known my whole life, and they wouldn’t commit to vote for me.” They knew she was a good person; the only reason they refused to support her was that she was a Democrat.
Another day she met a couple who thought people should be able to snowmobile and hunt and fish and ride ATVs on protected lands. Chloe told them she agreed; while she considers herself extremely progressive, there are some things she thinks the left is too rigid on.
Here's another interesting observation:
What much of the party establishment doesn’t understand is that rural life is rooted in shared values of independence, common sense, tradition, frugality, community and hard work.
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