We say very clearly that rural America is hurting. But we refuse to justify attitudes that some scholars try to underplay.
Something remarkable happened among rural whites between the 2016 and 2020 elections: According to the Pew Research Center’s validated voter study, as the rest of the country moved away from Donald Trump, rural whites lurched toward him by nine points, from 62 percent to 71 percent support. And among the 100 counties where Trump performed best in 2016, almost all of them small and rural, he got a higher percentage of the vote in 91 of them in 2020. Yet Trump’s extraordinary rural white support—the most important story in rural politics in decades—is something many scholars and commentators are reluctant to explore in an honest way.
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What isn’t said enough is that rural whites are being told to blame all the wrong people for their very real problems. As we argue in the book, Hollywood liberals didn’t destroy the family farm, college professors didn’t move manufacturing jobs overseas, immigrants didn’t pour opioids into rural communities, and critical race theory didn’t close hundreds of rural hospitals. When Republican politicians and the conservative media tell rural whites to aim their anger at those targets, it’s so they won’t ask why the people they keep electing haven’t done anything to improve life in their communities.
Your hatred has blinded you to objective reality. Either Biden or Trump will be president. There is no third option in our current system. Which is the worse choice?
I will vote for neither. I will be voting 3rd party. I will not reward the people who keep forcing me into deciding between two steaming shitbags. Don’t like it? Do better next time.
You make things better by voting for the better of the two options. Pretending there is a third option is just ignorance.
Biden hasn’t made things better. He’s made things worse at a slower speed. The only people benefiting from that are Boomers who don’t understand the urgency of turning things around. All they want is for us to prop up the status quo until they can die peacefully. They don’t care what happens to the rest of us.
That doesn’t change the fact that there are only two choices. Which is better, Biden or Trump?
I don’t care. You want my vote? Get a better candidate through the primaries next time or at least someone who’s willing to make material compromises with leftists and progressives.
I didn’t vote for Biden in the 2020 primaries. How he does in the general election isn’t my responsibility. Ask the people who voted for him in the primaries what their plan was.
So you have no preference to whether Biden or Trump is president?
I’m saying I’d rather die than make that choice.
That is the choice we have. That is the reality. Vote however you want, but I think you know in your heart that one of those choices will be much worse for the country than the other. Sometimes all you can do is minimize harm.