Populist Rural Voters Were Part Of FDR's Coalition-- Will They Be Part Of Bernie's

Jared Golden made history this cycle-- not just because he's a progressive Democrat who won Maine's second district and not just because prior to Poliquin's defeat no incumbent had lost an election for Maine's 2nd District seat since 1916, but because he is the first member of Congress who won election through ranked-choice voting. The working class whip of the Maine state House, formerly a front line marine, took out Wall Street-backed GOP incumbent Bruce Poliquin. Two years earlier Maine voters had approved the use of ranked-choice voting in a referendum. A long process then ensued culminating in a unanimous state Supreme Court ruling that ranked-choice voting be used to determine 2018 winners. The result:

Maine experienced something of a blue wave this month. Independent Senate incumbent Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats, was reelected against a Republican who only drew 35% of the vote. Democrat Janet Mills was elected governor over Republican Shawn Moody, replacing Trumpist oaf Paul LePage, who fled the state. Democrats flipped the state Senate from 18 Republicans, 17 Democrats to 21 Democrats, 14 Republicans and greatly increased their strength in the state House. Going into the election there were 74 Democrats and 70 Republicans. After the election, 13 Republican districts flipped and the new lineup is 89 Democrats and just 57 Republicans.

Maine has two congressional seats. The first district, represented by Chellie Pingree, is very blue and has a PVI of D+8. Hillary beat Trump there 54.1% to 39.3%. The relatively compact district, in the southeast corner of the state, stretches from Waterville and Augusta, through Brunswick, Portland, Kennebunk and Wells to Kittery and the suburbs of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It is primarily urban and suburban and very different from the 2nd district.

ME-02, the biggest district east of the Mississippi, is primarily rural (72%), has an R+2 PVI and gave Trump a 51.4% to 41.1% win over Hillary-- after having voted heavily for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Flipping it blue was no mean feat. The DCCC, which wanted Golden to join the Blue Dogs-- he joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus instead-- was not enthusiastic about his progressive record in the state legislature and his strong independent streak. They didn't back him against a richie-rich establishment candidate in the primary and allowed a GOP smear campaign to overwhelm their own spending against Poliquin. The measly $2 million they and Pelosi spent in Maine was nothing compared to the $3,467,925 from Ryan's SuperPAC, $1,089,171 from Trump's SuperPAC and $888,892 from the NRCC that slammed Golden mercilessly throughout the campaign with deceitful ads like this:



ME-02 is the exception to the rule of the 2018 wave narrative that has taken root this month, which is all about suburban women rejecting Trump. That narrative excludes all mention of rural districts like Golden's. But this morning, writing for Reuters, James Oliphant reported that Democrats actually did make inroads in rural America and among the kind of white working class voters that backed Trump over Hillary in 2016. Dems, after all, did win in rural districts in Iowa, Pennsylvania, New York and, as we just saw, in Maine's second district. "Democrats," wrote Oliphant, "increased their share of the vote in dozens of the country’s most rural congressional districts, a Reuters analysis shows." Looking forward, Democratic groups argue that "the party could reach working-class voters by focusing on economic opportunity for those without college degrees."

Compared to 2016 election results, they posted gains in at least 54 districts where the share of households in rural areas was at least 39 percent, or twice the national average, even though they only won a handful of the districts.

That could bode well for Democratic efforts to win the White House and retake the Senate in 2020.

In beating Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, with their combined 46 electoral votes, by less than 1 percentage point, or by a total of about 80,000 votes.

...Democratic officials were encouraged by the election of Democratic governors Tony Evers in Wisconsin and Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and Senator Amy Klobuchar’s victory in Minnesota, another state with a large rural population.

Whitmer, who emphasized fixing the state’s roads, won nine counties that went for Trump in 2016. Klobuchar, who may run for president, won more than 40 counties in Minnesota that supported Trump over Clinton.

Still, the road to Democrats’ new House majority mostly ran through cities and suburbs, while Republicans held on to the vast majority of rural districts they were defending.

Democrats lost two tight House races in Minnesota in largely rural districts and the governor’s race in Iowa, reaffirming Republicans’ edge in those regions.

Democrats say they will try to prevent that with new investments and organization in places they had once surrendered as unwinnable.

Officials at the Democratic National Committee say after Democrat Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, the party became preoccupied with defending so-called battleground areas at the expense of the rest of the country, cutting it off from huge swaths of voters.

Tom Perez, chairman of the DNC, said the turnaround began last year with the surprise win by Doug Jones in an Alabama special Senate election-- the first time a Democrat had won a Senate race in Alabama since 1992-- followed by Democrat Conor Lamb’s successful run earlier this year for a House seat in a rural Pennsylvania district long held by Republicans.

Those victories spurred greater investment in places such as Maine, where the party targeted the rural congressional district won last week by Jared Golden, and Georgia, where Democrat Stacey Abrams lost but ran a surprisingly competitive governor’s race.

Lamb’s victory provided a playbook for other rural Democrats such as Golden, Anthony Brindisi in upstate New York, and Richard Ojeda, who ran an underdog campaign in deeply rural West Virginia that drew national attention.

Although Ojeda ultimately lost, he generated the biggest pro-Democrat swing in the country for a House district from 2016-- boosting the Democrats’ share of the vote by 20 percentage points in one of the nation’s most ardently pro-Trump regions.

The candidates embraced some gun rights to avoid alienating rural voters, while advocating a working-class populism that argued the booming U.S. economy was not benefiting their regions.

Like Democrats in congressional races nationally, they supported coverage for preexisting medical conditions. The opioid epidemic was a prominent issue, dovetailing with voters’ concerns over a repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

And speaking about rural politics, it's worth noting that the harvest is in and crops are rotting, while Trump's trade wars are circling the drain. Trumpland is stinking of decomposing grain with no markets. Farmers are going bankrupt; grain storage facilities are cleaning up bigly.