This piece was originally published in Barn Raiser, an source for rural and small town news

“The Democrats are stuck on this consultant-driven, top-down approach to campaigns that is not working.”

Johnson teaches political science part time at Monmouth College and lives outside Monmouth in Warren County, Illinois.

Barn Raiser spoke with him about last week’s election and why the Democrats are having such a hard time connecting to rural voters.

What stood out to you about how rural America voted?

I wasn’t sure Trump could do better as far as the share of the rural vote in 2024 versus 2020. But he did.

In my county, Warren County, Illinois, which is an Obama-Trump county, we had a 15-point swing toward Trump, the largest of any county in the state.

This election in some ways matched what’s happened internationally, where incumbent parties have lost everywhere. It’s a global trend that is partly due to the impact of inflation. I’m older. I remember the last time we had bad inflation was in the 1980s, and it was devastating. Trump was very aggressive in making that case on the economy.

But I put a lot of the blame on Democrats who have not invested in rural America. The Democratic Party is focused on doing things the status quo way, running TV ads and making a lot of consultants rich.

Whenever it comes to rural America, you’ve got big city consultants coming in and saying, “We know what to do.” Yet people out here who live in rural America understand the dynamics better, and they’re being passed over. The Democrats are stuck on this consultant-driven, top-down approach to campaigns that is not working.

Why has the Democratic Party become reliant on consultants who lack a track record of success?

I wish I knew. It’s very frustrating to see this happen over and over and over again.

After the 2016 election, I worked with my former Democratic congresswoman Cheri Bustos to visit hundreds of Democrats who had won in rural areas. We asked, “How did you do it?” These were the survivors, and in 2017, we published a 50-page report about their stories.

After I wrote the report, Cheri told me up front, “Robin, one thing I’m not going to do is raise money for PACs off of this.” They wanted her to raise money to give to them to do TV ads appealing to rural voters. It was like flies on shit. (Sorry for the barnyard comparison.) Here were people who had come for the latest trend just to make money.

Right now, a bunch of TV consultants are probably in the Bahamas, drinking tropical drinks from the money they made on the recent round of campaigning. What the Democrats need to do more than anything else is take a long, hard look at this model.

They need to start from the ground up. Sure, you need funders from the big cities. But it’s got to be done by rural folks. It’s been eight years since Trump was first elected, and there’s been no movement to do this the right way.

What does the Democratic National Committee have to do with that lack of progress?

The term I use is “failing up.” We have a lot of people that lose in rural areas, and then they’re promoted to the DNC’s Rural Council and are talking on TV. There are candidates who have actually won in rural America, but you never hear about them.

Here’s your spokesperson for rural Democrats, and it’s somebody that lost their last race. What the hell? It’s like in football. Instead of going to the Kansas City Chiefs to learn how to win, you’re going to go talk to my Chicago Bears.

He parks his old red truck, a 1999 Dodge Ram, on the side of the road and has a handmade sign that says, “Stop and Talk with Senator Jeff Smith.”

It’s not that hard. Go talk to people who win and ask them how they won. In 2022, I wrote a piece for Washington Monthly with the idea of putting people front and center that won their rural districts.

Take Jeff Smith, for instance. He’s a state senator from rural Wisconsin. He parks his old red truck, a 1999 Dodge Ram, on the side of the road and has a handmade sign that says, “Stop and Talk with Senator Jeff Smith.” There needs to be more examples like that. What Jeff Smith did didn’t cost a lot.

The problem with consultants is they don’t see any way to make money out of this unless it’s a TV ad. So they’ll come in and do your TV ads for you and get their 15% commissions.

What else needs to be done? Going out and training local people to knock doors—that’s a minimal cost. Buying some radio spots year-round. Doing more with social media and weekly newspapers, although there aren’t as many of those, that’s going to cost a little bit.

Instead, the Democrats’ current approach to rural has been, “Well, the election’s over, let’s turn the lights off and lock the door.”

That’s not what the Republicans do. They’re going every day, 365 days a year.

Would that dynamic change if Democrats, say, held their first primaries in battleground states or in rural states?

It was a mistake to take it away from Iowa. That sent a message: “We really don’t care about rural states.” I know Iowa’s not necessarily representative of the country, but it’s a rural state, and it prizes retail campaigning, which is what the party needs. With the caucus system, candidates to have to go out and meet people in their homes, in the American Legion Halls and churches and small groups.

Barack Obama won that way. It’s not perfect, but moving it to South Carolina wasn’t the best move. If they switch it to a state like Michigan, or even Illinois, which is more representative of the country, the temptation would be to do more TV ads.

TV has to be part of the equation, but Iowa forces candidates to have a ground game and person-to-person contact, which is ultimately the key to doing better in rural areas.

Is it true that what campaign consultants earn is dependent on how much money they decide to spend on TV ad buys?

It varies, but consultants typically get 10% to 15% of the TV buy. If they spend a million dollars on TV, then they get 15%, $150,000. That creates an incentive for consultants to tell you to use TV.

People might not remember Paul Wellstone. He was a Senator from Minnesota with a progressive populist appeal in rural areas. His TV guy was named Bill Hillsman. His theory was that if you do a really creative TV ad, you don’t need to run it a million times because people will remember it.

Nowadays, they run this mind-numbing bullshit on TV that you see 50 times a day. It drives the cost up and the fees up.

Trump had better ads this time, honestly. I don’t remember Kamala’s ads. I don’t remember Hillary’s ads. If you see Bill Hillsman’s work, you don’t need to see it 10 times a day to remember it. But Hillsman was frozen out of the Democratic Party because he represented a threat to the system. And that’s why we have what we have. We’re either about winning elections or making the consultants rich.

How do you think Democrats can best bridge the divides among the electorate?

The Democrats have basically kicked away a key component of the New Deal coalition.

I live in an area where a lot of factories have gone overseas and we lost jobs. I remember listening to Trump on satellite radio in 2016, and he was talking about trade and the disaster of shipping jobs overseas. And I’m thinking, boy, he’s going to appeal to a lot of people with that message.

But it’s not just economics anymore. It’s culture. It’s our whole attitude and how we talk to people.

Too many Democrats have a condescending attitude and basically call people stupid if they vote for a Republican or a Trump-type candidate. That’s the message that was delivered this time to Black voters. We’ve lost an ability to really listen to people and meet them on their own terms.

Here’s exhibit A of how damaged the Democratic brand is in rural America: look at what just happened in Missouri.

Missouri passes two statewide referendums, one on abortion rights and one raising the minimum wage. And several years ago, Missouri defeated a right-to-work amendment. Now, if you’ve got a candidate in Missouri like Lucas Kunce with those same policies, who is running for the Senate against Josh Hawley, how does Kunce end up with only 42% of the vote?

Don’t tell me voters in rural areas don’t back progressive policies. They do. But look at the numbers. When you put a D next to the name, they vote against it more. Why? Because they don’t like Democrats.

And I think it’s got a lot to do with the attitude of the party and a lot of these cultural issues that we’re forcing down people’s throats. I talked to so many people who said they didn’t really like Trump, but the Democrats have driven them away.

So, what is to be done?

Part of the solution is going to be remaking the face of the party. If the Democrats are going to rise back, it’s going to have to be local. The Democrats are going to have to go out and organize again and find people locally to be the face of the party instead of Nancy Pelosi or Kamala Harris or Joe Biden. That’s where it’s got to start.

One of the keys to people winning in rural areas is nonstop door knocking. In our 2017 report, people that won told me that not only is door knocking the best strategy to get to know people, it also provided inoculation against negative attacks.

When somebody hits you for being the antichrist or whatever in a TV ad, people would say, well, I know this guy. He came to my door. The key is to start from the ground up and make the effort year around.

Former congresswoman Bustos used to do a variety of events. As a member of Congress, it’s hard to go knock doors. And town halls became circuses with the right wing disrupting them. So she came up with new ideas.

One idea was a supermarket Saturday where she would go stand in supermarkets and talk to people. She also did job shadowing where she would go work different jobs and learn about people and how hard they work.

When’s the last time somebody did that?

I admire Jeff Smith up in rural Wisconsin. He’s making sure he stays in touch the old-fashioned way with people, face to face. We’re losing that through social media.

One of the biggest surprises in the last several years is a congressman from Silicon Valley who connected with me.

His name’s Ro Khanna. Here he is, an Indian American representing Silicon Valley. He took an interest in what was going on out here and wanted me to set up meetings the last couple of summers in factory towns in the Midwest. He flew out on his own dime. He wanted to hear from these people. And he listened.

This guy really gets it. He gets it better than a lot of Midwestern public officials do.

He came up with an idea of investing in American steel plants and putting them in these towns like Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or Youngstown, Ohio, that have suffered. He calls our trade policies one of the biggest avoidable policy mistakes Democrats have ever made. I agree. And we need to own up to it and try to invest more in these towns, places where people feel left behind. So Ro Khanna is someone I admire.

Believe it or not, someone who is never mentioned is Tammy Baldwin. She did well in rural Wisconsin in both of her elections. That was a shock to me.

I’m thinking, this woman is gay and you never hear her name. Did anybody ever go to her and ask, “Senator, what did you do? What’s the secret sauce in rural Wisconsin? How did you do so well?”

Prior to becoming chair of the Democratic National Comittee in 2021, Jaime Harrison was a corporate lobbyist. In 2020, Harrison, who has never held elective office, raised more than $130 million in his challenge to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and lost by more than 10 percentage points.

No. Instead, the media was chasing around Stacey Abrams, Beto O’Rourke and Jaime Harrison. And I’m looking at the numbers. They got killed in rural parts of their states.

But the media portrayed it as if they did really well. They didn’t. Not unless you define 30% of the vote as doing really well.

How do you see the current constellation of the Democratic Party—on the one hand the Clinton free traders who gave us NAFTA, and on the other those who are more radical on social issues—relating to rural America and their policies?

I don’t look at it that way. I look at who wins. Do you win or lose? I don’t want to hear about somebody who agrees with me on everything but loses. The Democrats need to rise above these ideological battles. If somebody needs to be pro-gun, pro-life and win a rural district, the party should welcome them. The party says it’s a big tent. It’s not. You’re not going to do well in rural areas unless you welcome candidates that may not agree with you on a lot of these issues. Identity politics is killing the party. I know that won’t make me popular in a lot of places, and that’s fine.

If a far-left progressive wins in a rural area, then great. Learn from it, see how it adapts to your local area. If the party can’t welcome diverse views, then you’re looking at semi-permanent minority status. A lot of people don’t want to hear that.

What do you think of Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington State?

It looks like she’s going to win again. And Jared Golden won in Maine. There are a few Democrats left who represent rural areas. A lot of the ones Bustos and I talked to who won in 2016 have now lost. You can’t build an enduring majority just winning cities, university towns and some progressive suburbs.

Nobody inside the party wants to hear this message.

That Senate race in Nebraska was interesting. I can’t wait to get the final numbers. That guy, Dan Osborn, ran without a D behind his name, and he outperformed the other Democrats on the ticket by six or seven points. There’s something to be learned there, if the party’s willing to listen.

Last year, I was listening to a session with some Democratic group, and they bring on this guy, and he’s trying to coach candidates in rural areas how to talk to voters. Think about that: teaching rural candidates how to talk to rural.

If a candidate came to me for advice and said, “Robin, what should I say to voters?” I’d say, you’re not knocking enough doors. Go knock on some more doors. You’ll be okay. Listen to what people say and how they say it.

The pollsters come in and test language to see if it resonates, and use that language in TV ads and print pieces. “Build Back Better”? Are you kidding me?

Here’s an idea:Deep canvassing. Why don’t we do more of that?

There’s not much money to be made by political consultants in canvassing, is there?

Bingo. That’s why it won’t happen.

People, not just rural voters, but all voters, have had it with the poll-tested language. That’s part of why Trump was popular—as well as Bernie Sanders. When people heard Bernie Sanders speak, they knew he didn’t have a pollster whispering in his ear. And Dan Osborn in Nebraska—watch him talk. That’s not a guy talking with poll-tested language. He came across as authentic, and that’s what people are wanting.

When I hear Kamala talk I didn’t know what she was saying. Hillary, I think, fell victim to that, as well. There’s value in just talking directly to people. As much as I disagree with Bill Clinton on NAFTA, he had that gift of being able to communicate complex policy issues to voters in a way that made sense.

I live out in the country. I have neighbors here who are Trump voters. I listen to them, how they talk. It’s not how the politicians talk.

My next-door neighbor is a Trump voter. He’s very conservative, a gun owner. We get together and have a beer on his porch about once a week and talk. When I go out of town, he comes over, checks my house out, helps himself to a beer. That’s the way it should be, but we’ve gotten away from that.

As a society, we’ve got to try to get that sense of connection back where politics isn’t everything. I remember a time when politics was boring, and I wish we’d get back to that.

Jaime Harrison, who is stepping down as the chair of the Democratic National Committee, is one of those Democrats who ran for elected office, the U.S. Senate in South Carolina, and lost and is now a rural expert. Do you have any advice for whoever the next chair of the DNC is on how to approach rural voters?

Jaime Harrison is a nice guy, but a lot of money was sent down to South Carolina, and he got clobbered. The Democrats, every cycle, have somebody they fall in love with and spend an inordinate amount of money on, and they don’t even come close.

If the DNC is serious about trying to do better in rural America, find somebody who actually won out there. The motto needs to be that of the old Oakland Raiders football teams of the 1970s, when Al Davis ran them. His motto: “Just win, baby.”

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