ļ»æEpisode 36. A conversation about Democracy with Dee Davis
Michelle Rathman: Hello everyone and welcome to the Rural Impact. I'm Michelle Rathman and I mean it when I say thank you so much for joining us for another conversation on a podcast that works hard to connect the dots between policy and rural everything and welcome to our new set. It's wonderful to be here with you.
Now today is the 2024 election and I'm actually recording this introduction today with you on Thursday, which is the last day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. And, you know, I think we could all agree, these are some fascinating times to be sure. And it can be challenging to focus on policy.
I think, especially when mainstream media would much prefer us kind of stay fixated on personality. And that's one of the reasons why I am so excited about this episode and the guests that I'm going to introduce to you. And I'm sure many of you of our listeners out there know this name.
And I'll just tell you this. He is the Founder and President of the Center for Rural Strategies, a frequent contributor to the Daily Yonder. If you're not a subscriber yet of the Daily Yonder, I encourage you to do that today. And also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship.
That is the one and only Mr. Dee Davis. And again, I'm so grateful that he's added his voice to this continuing courageous conversation. I did have an opportunity to interview Dee during an election year, sometime ago. And again, really just grateful for him joining me again. So, without further delay, it's that time when I invite you to sit back, get yourself in your podcast headspace and listen to my conversation with Mr. Dee Davis.
Are you ready? I sure am. So let's go.
Michelle Rathman: Hey, Dee Davis, Founder and President of the Center for Rural Strategies and a regular contributor, then I follow them there too on the Daily Yonder. Thank you so much for joining us, Dee. It's been a while, but I'm glad to have you on the Rural Impact.
Dee Davis: It's nice to see you again, Michelle.
Michelle Rathman: You too. You know, as I said, now we are in this will be our third in our series called, "Courageous Conversations about the 2024 Elections."
And yes, I dare go there because I just, I think it's, it's good for us to have courageous conversations. That sure is better than screaming at each other over social media. So Dee, you know, we've talked around elections before, and if anyone's followed my work, you have participated in many elections over the years. And I wonder if you would be so kind to share your wisdom and talk to our listeners about the stark differences you see in the 2024 election compared to the 2020, uh, where rural is concerned.
I don't think we need to go way, way back, but if we need to, we can do that too.
Dee Davis: That's right. I think I was working elections as a teenager. I kept passing out cards. And I think shortly after I started to vote, I was named the Republican Precinct Cabin and Head of the Young Democrats in the same election. So, I thought that I, I've been around it. I haven't always been on top of it, but I've certainly seen a lot, and this one is doozy, isn't it?
So, yeah, I think that you observe things, you have these rules and then the rules change, right? That for most of my life and, and the decades before, there was a coalition, a New Deal Coalition that came out of inner city and rural voters coming together to put in New Deal Democrats and they, they pretty much controlled things up until the Reagan era.
And they, for 40 years, they, they controlled the House of Representatives until Gingrich got in during the Clinton Administration. So there, so, at that point, there was, the factor was urban and rural on one side and chiefly suburban on the other is as suburban population began to emerge.
And now, whereas 100 years ago, half the country was rural, has maybe a 5th and, 60 percent of the country is suburban. So just those geographic shifts have changed the politics in major ways. And how each side gets into those constituencies, suburban, urban, rural, and metro, then that determines how the elections are going to come out and Clinton and Gore were able to win the rural vote barely.
But they won that, and
they had a strategy that included moving, creating messages and policy that work for rural. Then with Gore came, there was a shift in the political leadership and an idea that the changing demographics of the country, we're going to quickly affect elections.
And so, they began to concentrate more on metropolitan centers and moved, moved away from investing in rural campaigning. And then that was a pretty much a razor thin or a tie election in 2000 and since then, you've seen different oscillation back and forth, but, but the rule always has been since those, that time that if Democrats compete, keep it fairly close in rural areas, then they win the presidential election.
If they get shellacked, then they lose. The election can be close, but they'll lose. And then that changed slightly under Biden in 2020, when we saw up until the last election, the last week of the election, he was very close in rural, but then the voters moved toward Trump in that week and but he made up for it by flipping Trump voters in the suburbs, particularly white male voters in the suburbs who moved from Trump to Biden. And those are considered swing voters. And, and he was able to make a significant enough change to win those swing states.
Michelle Rathman: You know Dee, I want to ask you, gosh, there's so many questions I want to ask you and this next one I put out there because you, I think you teed it up perfectly. We are really good at compartmentalizing, you know, rural, urban, suburban, white, non-white, what have you.
And in April of this year, you authored a book review of something that enraged me as well, "The White Rural Rage, the Threat to American Democracy." And your headline of this particular piece reads, "Book on Rural Rage is a Grindstone in Search of an Axe. White Rural Rage is a smug misdirection of the threat to American democracy." Let's dive right into that Dee, because again, I mean, what did the authors get wrong?
And, you know, why is it so dangerous for us to go down this path? Although we, we know that there are certain, the numbers don't lie. There's percentages and whatnot, but to just classify all of this as white rural rage continues to be dangerous in my mind.
Dee Davis: I was, I was remembering this line from a John le Carre novel where they're in a rare bookstore and George Smiley reminds someone that Barabbas was a bookseller. I think that these guys needed to write this book and, and they, I think they had like eight stops and, and most of what, their premise was that there's this amazing full of rage, white rural voter out there that's changing things.
So, it doesn't mean that they were never right. But it was also, I mean, Trump got 73 million votes in 2020 when he lost. If you write off 73 million voters as, as anti-democratic, it's very hard to have a democracy, right? If it is, if we're together because of just consent of the governed, then we've got to find strategies that bring people together.
And I think there were several things that got wrong. One particularly is that most of the members of Congress that rural people vote for are urban or metro. They don't live in rural areas anyway. So, to say that they are anti-cities when they're electing urban congressmen is a kind of one specious part of their premise.
But I think that, more than anything, it was just that they were interpreting things going wrong in rural, people being upset. Everything is rage and putting a racial filter on everything. Of course, this country, there's a lot of racism. There's racism in, in rural areas,
Michelle Rathman: We are recording this podcast on the 31st of July, racism alive and well, sorry,
Dee Davis: lots of places. Right? And so,
Dee Davis: But what it does is it feeds into a kind of a meme that is circulate where, where people fear others that they assume that people in rural areas who are not doing as well, financially or, or not getting the same jobs, that the economy is created. And not getting the same kind of health benefits that they can be resentful.
They can, they can want to be part of a better outlook, but that doesn't mean that they're full of rage and they hate the country and they hate everyone. I think that what our polling and survey showed is that really that rural voters wanted to be part of, of the whole country, that what they longed for was the time when they were fueling and feeding and taking care of everybody.
And that they very much wanted to be part of it and the, and what the resentment we saw in our, in, in what we were looking at was often, anti-corporate, people who were upset about the price of eggs. Sure. But also, the price of insulin, the price of gasoline, and they felt like nobody cared that that they were just superfluous to the American experiment.
And I think that this was a recurring theme that a lot of rural voters just felt left out.
Michelle Rathman: And maybe even exploited just some, because you tap into you tap into it and you can expand it. And, you know, so even behind my shoulder, I have the book, unlike white rural rage, our political scientist, Nicholas F. Jacobson, Daniel M. Shea gave us their book, "The Rural Voter, The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America," and they focused their work on helping readers really differentiate between politics of metropolitan, non-metropolitan places, and they did so by drawing from the largest survey, as I understand it, ever conducted with a specific aim of understanding rural voters and the, as they say, rightward shift of American countryside.
So, what are your thoughts on this body of work in contrast to the, the book that we just spoke about.
Dee Davis: Yeah, I think that there's been some decisions made that the Democrats decided to focus on college educated metro voters, and, and as they have moved in that direction, it's opened up some of their old-time supporters have moved to the right. And I was at a symposium that Nick and Dan held at Colby College in Maine, and I was interested we see everything through the filter of Trump or through views of the U. S. political dynamic.
But one presenter showed that throughout Europe and Japan, Australia, the Western democracies, that this same kind of rightward movement in rural areas has been occurring. So, so I think in every nation, except Sweden, you had a demonstrable shift to the right in rural areas.
And why is that? I'm not sure if those people feel left out or undervalued, if there is something in the air or the water. But but what we see is a theme as we move as globalization begins to really take hold. Right? In the last 20 years people in, rural areas that used to farm or cut timber or mine have been replaced by the system, right?
You need fewer people, or you don't need those jobs at all because they're competing globally. Well, it's, it's shifted the dynamics in a lot of rural communities. And so, I don't have a linear link to why this is happening, but I know that you juxtapose what's happened with global economies and what's happened in rural areas in this shift rightward.
Michelle Rathman: You know, do you make me think of something and this morning, and as I, as I was preparing for this conversation, this came to mind. And so, I just want to share this with you. For many, many years in the work that I do, I talk about the fact that as human beings our behaviors are in large part, you know, driven by how we feel.
So, we think certain things, we know certain things, and then we feel. And I, we act on things that we feel strongly about. What I find concerning is that we also say on this podcast, all roads to quality of life are paved by policy. And so, I wonder if you, if we could kind of shift the conversation to policies of both parties.
And, you know, I know once we get past, I mean, we are talking so much about big, big concepts, like saving our democracy at the end of the day, policies about roads and infrastructure, transportation, the food security, our, our health care systems in rural places, economic growth, access to capital.
I wonder if you could kind of think about that for a moment and share. How do how do we shift the conversation to talk about policy? So that. Instead of basing our casting a vote based on how we feel about an emotional thing, but to really based it on informed knowledge. Do you know what I mean?
Dee Davis: Well, I think I do. I've been around for a minute, and I certainly worked in a number of campaigns and the things that mostly helping with media. And the thing I was always afraid to hear was someone say, well, the voters are with us on policy. The only thing worse than that was, if we can get our young voters out, we're going to win.
You know, those are two things. It's like, oh, no.
Michelle Rathman: Note to self.
Dee Davis: I mean, the reality is that people usually pick a side and then whatever that side is promoting is your policy. That's the policy they embrace. Now, I don't, so there are single issue voters, but there are not many of them. And people find different ways to rationalize.
Once they put on a uniform, It's very hard for him to switch sides. And so, but I think, I think 2020 there was there was some lingering resentment about the way COVID was handled. And that's definitely a health policy and that you know, roiled the election and it changed, it changed voters from one side to, to the other.
I think that we've never really had a situation where democracy was on the ballot. We've had plenty of times when people said democracy's on the ballot and people, you know, it's like, 'The little boy who cried wolf,' you know, over and over, ways to motivate people to come out this, you know, this is the existential, if we're going to keep the country office.
But, you know, there are some truisms about democratic institutions that are stressed and strained. And right now, what that means in the, in the coming election. And I, I think that oftentimes when we think of American democracy, we think of voters, we think of elections and, you know, how does that line up?
But I got a tutorial about two years ago. My, my region here went through a devastating flood. They said the thousand-year flood, but in these, just these four counties, 46 people died. Thousands were left without home. I think 1,400 people were rescued from the water. It was just, it was, it was severe.
And so, I live in a county that's probably three to one Democrat voted four to one for Trump. And, and so that's one framework to think about it. But also another framework is people acting with courage, going through muck and water to save sick and shut in, taking their, limited resources and sharing it with people who didn't have food, clothing shelter.
And over and over again, these acts of sacrifice and common good. And, and, and that's democracy too, right? I mean, democracy is not just I'm going to vote for mine. I'm going to take care of myself. I like this policy, and that's what I'm going to vote for. I don't want my taxes raised. I want more jobs.
Those are important issues and I'm, but I think that there are some underlying, underlining fundamental foundational questions about democracy that we never really had on the line. And they may be showing themselves now you know. Do we listen to the courts? Do we respect legislation? When a term's over, is it over?
I mean, there are some, some questions that we've never faced before, and we're getting ready to face them at a rapid speed.
Michelle Rathman: All right, so with that said, Dee you know, because I look at, you know, just the carrying on that point. I just look at the notion that we would, just eliminate so many jobs of civil servants. You know, I think about all the work. I was just out in Oregon touring a, and we'll be doing a series on this, but I was just able to tour a brewery that we received a million dollars in grants to put solar panels up on their roof. And of course, to improve efficiencies and so forth.
And another project that just got, they have a approval for a FEMA brick grant to build a tsunami resistant earthquake, resistant rural healthcare facilities. So, these are the kinds of things that I'm looking at. I mean, so when we think about what you just spoke up is very tangible and so too are the investments and the policy that that bears these investments and knowing that we might not be able to get through, you know, a policy conversation and have a really good you know, civil debate about it.
Let's just talk about words of wisdom that you can share about where to look for trustworthy information, because I am, you know, it's easy to gloss these things over, especially if you are not consuming information that is accurate, that is depicting things in the, in the reality base that we are living in.
How do we, what information can you share with us about where folks can receive rural voters as they contemplate these real issues, where to look for trustworthy information and, and what are the things to look for if they say if you could smell a fake, although you can't sometimes,
Dee Davis: I think in some ways, politics is cultural, right? That change is cultural. It's informed, you know. I think Biden had the idea that policy could be cultural. It could be cool. We could, we could emphasize policy shifts and that would, and that that sense of change would transform the way we think about politics.
That's kind of what happened with the New Deal. And it was kind of what happened in the Great Society, right? That we had so much change that people embrace the change. And for a while that, that changed, that transformed the culture in the country. And I think that was, that was planned, but it was a plan built on a different framework, a longer, longer term.
So, so now
There's a, there's a lot we don't know, right? We don't know. Certainly, Harris's underdog. She's got a climbable hill, hill, but it's a big hill. And it's been her job to talk about policy. But, you know, to talk about border jobs. But she's often talked about it. She's been the designated urban spokesperson, right?
She's gone in to younger audiences and to urban audiences with the idea that President Biden would, would make the case to the others in the nation. And now it's her job to, to break through and to create a knowledge centered policy conversation that people can feel culturally, feel in their hearts, feel, you know, that and people who wake up thinking about going fishing and people who wake up thinking about quilting and gardening.
You know, those people need to feel connected to this policy discussion for it to resonate. If it doesn't resonate, if there's not some traction for people in rural communities, then it's going to make that hill a lot tougher to climb. So, so I, I think that it's early days, right? Yeah. I think we'll know more in a month than we know right now.
Michelle Rathman: And I want to remind our listeners, I mean, obviously, we know this isn't just presidential politics, but obviously, you know, I read something this morning by, I don't know if you follow Brian Castrucci but, you know, he wrote a piece and on social media this morning, he said, life expectancy in the US is the lowest it's been in nearly two decades candidates, how will you add years to our lives?
And so you said something about kind of like post COVID and so forth. I mean, these are, these are real issues to talk about. How will we improve the quality of our lives and healthcare and public health is right at the center of that. These are the things, fundamental things that I think are really important for us to be thinking about and having conversations about.
The culture stuff, we can't, you can't, you can't grind away at that, but the tangible things like our access to healthcare. And, and the quality of our food and so forth.
Dee Davis: know I live in the Congressional District that is perennially the worst, you know, at the very bottom of life expectancy, health outcomes. And the other, the other county that's there at the bottom is Fresno, which is a metro county, you know, in, in California. And you think, well, there's certain some commonality between high agricultural area there, Fresno, and this place, this coal mining region in Kentucky.
And. and that they have a lot of common policy interests, but culturally, how do you have that conversation? You know, how do you connect those voices in ways that they can advocate for themselves and for their kids?
Michelle Rathman: Maybe, maybe the answer lies in us asking more questions of each other rather than accusing each other of, of being one thing and they're another. And I ask people, you know, just look around, ask the candidates. The quality of life in your, where you live, in your county and in your state, that's local.
And so, we have to take a look at those office seekers and office holders and ask them these questions. How will you improve the quality of my life? And make them be specific. Dee, I'm telling you, if we are so fortunate to still be here four years from now. And even before that, you know, I'm going to ask you back.
I'm always so appreciative of your time. And when time this drops, it'll be too late, but I've registered for the rural assembly, the Rural Everywhere tomorrow on August 1st. And so, I'm going to show up as much as I can. You guys are an outstanding organization. If you are not a subscriber to the Daily Yonder, I'm telling you got to do it and you have to support their work because it really, to me, this is a big, you know, an unpaid spokesperson endorsement here. I really do appreciate the work that you all are doing there.
Dee Davis: Well, well, thank you, Michelle. It's been fun working with you and yeah more to come.
Michelle Rathman: May the force be with us. I suppose. Listen, Hey, to all of our listeners, just a friendly reminder. I'm going to say it. Often check your voter registration, and if you are not registered, there is no time like right now to get it done. See where you can help out locally in your local elections. These are so important.
Civic engagement happens everywhere we turn. A special thanks to Brea Corsaro and Sarah Staub. I always have to say that for their great work on this podcast. And finally, be sure to subscribe to The Rural Impact on our website, because that's where you're going to receive recaps from each series, a preview of what's next, our resources and so forth.
And lastly, until we meet again, please take good care of yourself and everyone around you. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you the next time on a new episode of The Rural Impact.
