Democrats in rural areas of the country admit that they feel their party has become so toxic that they will completely disappear outside the big cities.
The Associated Press recently spoke to Democrats in rural Pennsylvania who said that they feel they are about to become extinct.
Per the AP:
“The hatred for Democrats is just unbelievable,” said Tim Holohan, an accountant based in rural McKean County who recently encouraged his daughter to get rid of a pro-Joe Biden bumper sticker. “I feel like we’re on the run.”
The climate across rural Pennsylvania is symptomatic of a larger political problem threatening the Democratic Party heading into the November elections. Beyond losing votes in virtually every election since 2008, Democrats have been effectively ostracized from the overwhelmingly white parts of rural America, leaving party leaders with few options to reverse a cultural trend that is redefining the political landscape.
The GOP has been gaining House seats in Washington for a decade and there doesn’t seem to be a thing the Democrats can do to stop it.
The AP added: “Barack Obama won 875 counties nationwide in his overwhelming 2008 victory. Twelve years later, Biden won only 527. The vast majority of those losses — 260 of the 348 counties — took place in rural counties, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.”
While the big cities and the counties around them continue to float Democrats, the news is not good in the rest of the country.
Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, who recently announced he would not seek reelection to Congress this fall, warns that the party is facing extinction in small-town America.
“It’s hard to sink lower than we are right now. You’re almost automatically a pariah in rural areas if you have a D after your name,” Cooper told the AP.
Even if Democrats continue to eke out victories by piling up urban and suburban votes, former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota fears her party will have “unstable majorities” if they cannot stop the bleeding in rural areas.
The AP found it happening over and over again in nearly every state.
America is breaking down into two countries. The heartlands where Americans still hold to the traditional American ideals of rugged idealism, and the cities which are turning increasingly to communism and the big government nanny state.
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