If Democrats are frustrated by rural voters, it’s because they don’t know them, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) says.
Khanna represents Silicon Valley, but travels the country, showing his face in places like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Appalachia Virginia.
A progressive, he talks about bringing tech education to small-town and rural America. People in those places want jobs and a future, he says. And they listen to him.
He wants to cure his party’s rural malaise, and thinks he knows how. “What are we going to do for folks to bring economic opportunity? What are we going to do to bring manufacturing back? What are we going to do to bring the technology and prosperity in my district to places that have been left behind?” he asks.
Khanna, 46, isn’t running for president. He’s backing Biden. He explains, “Why I want President Biden to succeed is because that makes a progressive movement more possible,” and thinks “we’re going to see for the next 20 years, after Biden, progressive nominees of the party.” Read story in The Hill here.
It’s fundamental in politics, if you want people to support you, then you have to show up. A companion article in The Hill (here) points out that Trump, who’s leaving potential rival Ron DeSantis in the dust in early endorsements and polls, has mastered the personal touch:
“As president, Trump would invite members of Congress to fly with him aboard Air Force One when traveling to their states or districts. When Trump endorsed a lawmaker for office … he would frequently try to call or meet with them …. If something happened in a member’s personal life, Trump would often reach out. Last week, when Trump attended a Republican National Committee (RNC) retreat in Nashville, he sat for three hours with Tennessee’s two GOP senators and four members of Congress ….”
Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020 by millions of votes, but coasted to an electoral college victory in 2016 by going after voters who felt they were being ignored and left behind. He lost in 2020 to a veteran politician, Biden, who’d been winning elections for half a century, because he knows how it’s done.
In both elections, the electoral counts were nearly identical, 304-227 in 2016, and 306-232 in 2020. The difference was Biden flipped Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, mostly by talking about the things Khanna does — jobs and economic opportunity.
While social and “culture war” issues loom large in the consciousness of liberal and progressive voters, Biden and Khanna talk to working-class voters in the language Trump used to peel them away from a Democratic Party that to many seemed obsessed with things they don’t care about. What’s important to them is putting food on the table and financial security for their families.
I’ve been watching politics since I was a teenager over 60 years ago. I’ve seen American voters flip-flop from LBJ to Nixon, from Reagan to Clinton, from Obama to Trump. Democrats, especially progressives, get hung up with social justice issues, but elections are nearly always decided by bread-and-butter issues. Biden understands this, Khanna does too, and you’d better believe Trump also does.
Democrats won’t defeat Trump in 2024 by prosecuting, convicting, and throwing him in jail, even though he’s lawless and deserves it. Voters, at the end of the day, want to know just one thing: “What are you going to do for me?” Trump knows how to answer that question. So do Biden and Khanna. Obviously, so do many other Democrats who’ve won elections. But Democrats haven’t been winning in the places Khanna is visiting. He just gave them a roadmap showing them how, if they’ll read it.
Related story: An MIT study suggests voters with party loyalties are more persuadable than generally believed (see article here).
Photo below: Rep. Ro Khanna (left) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (right) meeting in May 2019 with voters in Iowa, a state with 6 electoral votes that Trump won by 9.4% in 2016 and 8.2% in 2020. The big states aren’t enough; a smart Democratic candidate would go after those 6 electoral votes by showing up, as Khanna and Sanders did, and giving voters like these a reason to vote for them.
