Democrats Are Still Chasing Rural White Voters, and It’s a Strategy Doomed to Fail

Left-leaning political Twitter erupted in mockery on Thursday when the Democratic Party unveiled its cringeworthy new slogan: “A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages”, which was not only bad on its own but painfully reminiscent of the Papa John’s slogan. Despite the rush from many diehard Bernie Sanders acolytes to write off the slogan as neoliberal business-as-usual Democratic nonsense, the reality is that the slogan reflects Democratic efforts to incorporate the criticisms of those who argue that Democrats should abandon the emphasis on “identity politics” and instead try to woo white working-class voters with populist economic policies.

“Democrats jettisoned social and foreign policy issues for this exercise, eschewing the identity politics and box-checking that has plagued Democratic campaigns in the past, most recently Hillary Clinton’s. This will be purely an economic message,” writes Dana Milbank for the Washington Post. “This is meant to be a populist manifesto that doesn’t conform to the left/right debate but instead aims to align Democrats with ordinary, middle-class Americans fighting powerful special interests.”

It’s a tempting idea, of course: Just stop talking so much about racism and sexism so much and instead talk about jobs and wages (never mind that Hillary Clinton actually did focus more on jobs and wages than any other issue) and boom! Watch the white rural voters that handed states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan to Donald Trump come into the Democratic fold.

Who doesn’t want to believe liberals have that much control — that Democrats alone could make the cultural struggles tearing apart this country go away by putting the focus on jobs and other economic issues, and watch white voters return to the flock, drawn by all those progressive policies?

The problem is, and continues to be, that there’s no evidence for this. The roller-coaster politics around health care really drive home how much Republican base voters view politics through a culture-war lens. Progressive policy is, however appealing in the abstract, is a secondary concern to the desire of angry white conservatives to exert or reassert their cultural dominance. Which goes a long way towards explaining the loathing of Obamacare: It was the “Obama” part, not the “care” part, that riled up the GOP base. Now that Barack Obama is gone, anger over the health care bill is rapidly receding.

On Thursday, the New York Times published interviews with some of those rural whites in Pennsylvania who have become such desirable voters and found that the law they so loathed when Barack Obama was in office has, now that there’s a Republican in charge, stopped offending them so much.

“I can’t even remember why I opposed it,” said Patrick Murphy, who owns Bagel Barrel, on a quaint and bustling street near Mr. Brahin’s law office here in Doylestown. …

“Everybody needs some sort of health insurance,” Mr. Murphy said. “They’re trying to repeal Obamacare but they don’t have anything in place.”

The percentage of Republicans who want to see Obamacare repealed is declining. Over three-quarters of Republicans demanded repeal a year ago, but now fewer than 60 percent support the Republican plan to do so.

This rapid shift makes sense if one views conservative politics through a culture-war lens. The problem for Republicans with Obamacare wasn’t that it offended some sense of fiscal conservatism. It’s that it was President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, and many white conservatives hated Obama because — simply by being black and intelligent and urbane and a Democrat — reminded them of the declining cultural dominance of conservative Christian whites like themselves. Electing Trump has allowed this group of voters to believe they are culturally ascendant again — and repealing Obamacare, which was always mostly about sticking it to the liberals, has lot much of its salience as an issue.