Biden understands rural resentment — sort of

In Milwaukee yesterday, President Biden announced his administration’s newest approach to helping communities “left behind” and “broken” by previous government interventions. While the focus was on repairing the damage in urban America, this new emphasis on “place-based” policymaking complements an earlier trip Biden made to the Upper Midwest last November.

Last fall, in the heart of Minnesota’s dairy belt, Biden spoke to the needs of rural “place-based” policymaking. Central to that approach is the fact that, among the billions of dollars flowing to places all over America, rural America stands to reap a considerable share of federal investments in infrastructure spending, CHIPS development and countless other grant programs.

These place-based investments not only make sound economic sense, they are also good politically. As scholars of rural politics, we’ve surveyed thousands of rural Americans to understand what they want when government shows up and says they are here to help. We know that many actually welcome the president’s concerns for building up places over more simplistic forms of individual assistance or job retraining. As Biden said, his “plan is about investing in rural America, but it’s about something else as well: it’s about restoring pride in rural communities that have been left behind for far too long.”

Place is more than just where rural residents call home. It is a part of who they are — which is why a “place-based” approach to policymaking makes sense to so many in the countryside.

Our survey data tell us that rural residents are proud of where they live and don’t want to leave. They think just as much about the future of their community as they do their own financial circumstances. This “shared fate” mentality is why even the well-to-do in rural communities often vote in lockstep with their neighbors who have borne the brunt of shuttered factories or consolidated farms.

Place-based policymaking presents a real opportunity to deliver a message to millions of rural voters who care about their specific communities. We repeatedly find that rural voters are especially attuned to the local forces driving economic change specific to their town. And localizing opportunities and impact is a great way to make a $5 billion investment in the abstract tangible to the needs and hopes of a specific rural hamlet.

But investment is not always a desirable thing in some parts of rural America. In Minnesota, the president repeatedly spoke about “transforming rural communities.” Rural residents, like everyone else, don’t want to be “left behind,” but they also see “transformation” as an opening for outside experts who often don’t get it. Simply put, rural economies are more complex than they are usually treated.

There is also a history to “transformative” policymaking gone wrong. Biden’s broadband investments, for instance, have in some cases squeezed out local efforts to expand internet access. Farm subsidies, the wonk’s favorite rural policy, are overwhelmingly paid out to a relatively small number of massive farms. While the federal government is dependent on grant-making to get money flowing, small rural governments often lack the capacity to administer, let alone apply, for federal programs. 

What rural residents want to hear is this: “make it possible for us to improve our communities ourselves.” Rural residents, more than any other group we surveyed, remain committed to American meritocracy — that if you work hard enough, you can get ahead. Like everywhere else, they’ll need investment to do it, but the current structure of rural assistance means that they may need someone to chop down the thicket of federal bureaucracy in order to build community as they see fit.

Unfortunately, the political success of place-based policymaking also runs up against an existing wall — the unpopularity of the Democratic Party in rural America. The key is to change attitudes toward Democrats, not just the president. While Biden and his advisors seem hell-bent on wrapping his rural initiative into the larger “Bidenomics” message, “Biden” has become a cognitive cue, a red flag of tribal opposition. 

Bidenomics will suffer a predictable fate. Democrats besides Biden need to show rural voters that someone is paying attention and that thoughtful, good-hearted politicians come in all stripes. Persuasion in politics is an art, not a slogan. Convincing rural voters that “Biden is making a difference” will be a tough sell. Showing that some Democrats in Washington “get it” is the first move.

This place-based approach also needs to speak to the fact that money alone won’t solve rural America’s problems. Economist Gene Sperling, the president’s senior advisor, has written eloquently about the relationship between work and dignity, how expanding opportunity will temper rural indignation towards Democrats, urban areas and bureaucrats.

But it’s not all about policy or economic dislocation. Rural residents who are doing just fine economically are also resentful. Rather, Democrats must understand that rural grievance extends beyond economic challenges. It stems from a history of government policy that has made rural areas bastions of inequality, a national media landscape less likely to pay attention to rural people, and an outlook towards rural people that questions the value of their contributions. (Remember Hillary Clinton seeming to relish the fact that she lost in the “places moving backward”?) 

How much will Biden and other Democrats acknowledge this past history, and the left’s general knee-jerk reactions rural America? If they want these investments to pay off on Election Day, they better reckon with this past as well.

While we hold our final judgment, we nevertheless applaud Biden’s acknowledgement that, despite the growing rural-urban divide, it remains the case that “when rural America does well…we all do well.”

Nicholas F. Jacobs and Daniel M. Shea are professors of Government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. They are the authors of “The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America“ (Columbia University Press, 2023).