"clear eyed reason" 
"'For the most part, Republicans rack up big margins in red areas by default,' says Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler. One of his goals when he took the helm of the party was to change its long term prospects in rural areas of the state by competing everywhere, and in 2022, for the first time in many years, Democrats fielded a state representative candidate in every district, even those where they had little chance of winning. Those candidates found a barren political landscape. 'Candidate after candidate would tell me they were working their socks off and never seeing evidence of a real campaign on the Republican side,' Wikler told us. 'And some of these candidates right before the election told me that they were really confident they'd win, because they knew their opponent had essentially done nothing, had barely filed any fundraising, had no meaningful field presence to speak of. And yet the Republicans would still win by these massive margins.'
"Nevertheless, when it comes to policy, Democrats at both the state and federal level never stop trying to help rural America, as politically unrequited their efforts might be. Every Democratic presidential campaign puts out some kind of rural agenda, full of policies and programs and economic development ideas. And when they take office, they back it up with dollars; when Democrats pass a big spending bill, it is likely not just to make a point of directing money to rural areas, but also to ensure that resources are in place to help rural communities access funding and navigate federal bureaucracies.
"You will search in vain for similar Republican initiatives to revitalize urban centers, yet nobody accuses the GOP of 'ignoring' urban America or demands that the party genuflect before the urban citizens who vote against it in substantial numbers"
Tom Schaller, Paul Waldman, "White Rural Rage"
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