The Rural Power Behind Trump’s Assault on Blue Cities
About this episode
Suzanne Mettler, co-author of 'Rural Versus Urban,' traces how the rural-urban divide — absent nationally until the 1990s (a 2-point gap in 1992) — became American politics' defining cleavage. FDR built a Democratic coalition via farm programs and rural electrification, but the 1980s–90s farm and manufacturing collapse gutted rural economies. The divide is not about policy (rural and urban voters differ little on most issues) or reducible to racism — it grew before Obama — but about place-based identity, perceived disrespect, and being 'ruled from afar.' Educational polarization matters, but rurality persists. The divide is uniquely consequential because electoral institutions (Senate, Electoral College) concentrate all its advantages in one party. She argues Trump's troop deployments to blue cities are possible only via this chasm, and that the fix is long-term organizing — Howard Dean's 50-state strategy of 2006 and 2008 — plus costly signals of Democrats taking rural voters seriously.