Only it wasn’t.
In September we drove up to the Democratic Headquarters in Bloomsburg to pick up 100 “Rural PA for Hillary Clinton” yard signs. The signs were purchased by the rural caucus of the state Democratic Party; Carbon County is part of that caucus. While residents of Lehighton or Jim Thorpe might not feel rural, Carbon County as a whole is considered “rural.”
All across the country rural areas were a disaster for Clinton. In 2008 Carbon County voted for Obama as did the whole state of Iowa. In 2012 Iowa again went for Obama. Not this year. In Pennsylvania rural counties are expected to vote Republican. What was different this year was the margin by which they voted Republican.
As long as the Democratic Party fails to make inroads in the rural vote, the party will have a difficult time ever winning the Senate. Remember, Wyoming, with fewer than 600,000 people, gets two Senators, same as New York or California. The Democrats will also lose state legislative seats, and those Republican legislators will adopt gerrymandered districts and voter suppression laws.
A reader recently forwarded me a link to a Washington Post article that featured the views of Agricultural Secretary Vilsack. You may want to check it out. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/vilsacks-tough-message-for-fellow-democrats-stop-writing-off-rural-america/2016/11/27/6751f8b8-b31d-11e6-be1c-8cec35b1ad25_story.html?postshare=1371480431760218&tid=ss_tw>.
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