Are Dems Ready For the Country?

Rural voters are listening to all comers, this is being made crystal clear by turnouts at rural campaign stops. The Reagan Democrats are returning to the fold as their concerns haven't been met by the Conservative revolution.


As the Rocky Mountain News pointed out:

Now, the Republican Party is saddled with an unpopular president with an unpopular war. And on top of that, the party's rural base now faces anxiety over home foreclosures, gas prices, job outsourcing, trade agreements, the growth of corporate agriculture and soaring health care costs.

Democrats see an opening. So they're trying to reconnect with working class folks in rural areas who, especially since the Reagan Administration, have been pulled into the Republican column over cultural issues.


The clamor by rural voters for someone who better represents them plays well to campaigners like John Edwards who spent last week courting voters in places like Lyon county.


Eunice McCarthy, a Democrat at a firehouse event where Edwards spoke, said."After all the things, they may be willing to listen at least. A lot of times you don't brag about being a Democrat, but it's getting better."

Again from the Rocky Mountain News

That could explain the elbow-to-elbow crowd that greeted Edwards at the firehouse -- and the grin Edwards had when he was talking to reporters afterwards."I do have to say, I was remembering the last time I was up here," Edwards said, thinking back to the 2004 campaign. "We had five, seven people..."Times have changed.

Follow-up to Scorning Corning:

The political snubbing for the good folks of Corning, Iowa is over, Joe Biden was there on Saturday and John Edwards will be there on Thursday at Corning High School (Home of the Red Raiders) at 12:15. Factoid: Edwards will have visited all 99 counties in Iowa with this trip--a first for all the candidates, Democrat or Republican.