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Commentary: Words Must Match the Actions [1]
['Christopher Chavis', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2025-04-10
I have never been shy about admitting that my number one criterion for selecting a candidate in a political race is their sensitivity to issues directly impacting rural working-class Americans. They have to be willing to not only advance solutions, but also make them a central point in their campaign messaging.
If the Democratic Party wants to solidify its standing as the party of the working class, it must prove it, not just in policy but in messaging, outreach, and priorities. It cannot afford to ignore the struggles of rural communities. It must speak directly to the economic anxieties that define so many Americans’ daily lives, offering real solutions.
Back in the day, John Edwards was the first politician that I remember actually believing in. The US Senator from North Carolina, he centered issues of poverty in his Presidential campaigns and brought forth the message of “Two Americas,” one for the rich and one for the rest of us.
In his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention, he advanced the radical idea that no one who works full-time in this country should live in poverty. As a high schooler in an impoverished rural community in North Carolina, I resonated with his message. Unfortunately, John Edwards was quickly out of the 2008 primaries and politics altogether, caught up in the dual waves that were the Barack Obama – Hillary Clinton nomination fight and his own substantial personal moral failings.
In 2016, I felt renewed hope when Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders burst onto the political scene and began talking about issues facing working class rural people, like college affordability, increased income inequality, and dwindling opportunities for upward mobility.
When Sanders began his campaign, I was a fresh law school graduate living in rural Maine and would often make the hours-long drive to New Hampshire to support the campaign. I held up signs and knocked on doors from the Upper Valley region bordering the Connecticut River in the western part of the state to the Seacoast region bordering the Atlantic Ocean in the southeast. I was willing to do whatever I could to move the Democratic Party in a direction that prioritized the issues that I cared about most.
Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary and generally outperformed Hillary Clinton in rural spaces throughout the country (as covered by The Daily Yonder here). However, due to a myriad of reasons, Sanders came up short in the 2016 primary.
Elections are won at the kitchen table. When Americans sit down with their bills at the kitchen table, that’s when they form their politics and make key political choices. In 2024, while Democrats were once again touting a strong economic recovery from the Covid pandemic, many Americans were struggling with inflation, paying for healthcare costs, and affording college tuition for their children. And the communities dealing with abandoned factories and corporate farms in 2016 were dealing with even more of them in 2024.
So when Democrats campaigned on “saving democracy” and held rallies with former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, they struggled to defend, in the court of public opinion, policies that help working-class Americans, like student loan forgiveness, expanding medicaid, or the Child Tax Credit. It allowed Republicans to frame them as giveaways to the elite or an undeserving group.
The Democratic Party must center the concerns of working-class people, rural or otherwise, in their messaging. Senator Bernie Sanders has started holding rallies again, as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, to spread his message. Other Democrats should be doing the same. Being in the political minority does not eliminate their pulpit. Take the message directly to rural working-class voters, be present, and let them know that you care.
The question isn’t whether the Democratic Party can reclaim the trust of rural working-class Americans. It’s whether it will. And if it doesn’t, it shouldn’t be surprised when those voters continue looking elsewhere. Winning elections isn’t just about being the lesser evil; it’s about proving to people, through both policy and messaging, that you are fighting for them. The Democratic Party has a choice: continue ignoring rural working-class voters and watch them turn elsewhere, or step up, fight for them, and prove that it still is the party of the working class.
Christopher Chavis grew up in rural Robeson County, North Carolina, and is a frequent writer and speaker on baseball history and rural access-to-justice issues. He is a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.
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