Look More Closely at Rural America and What is Usually Thought of as the Core of Donald Trump’s Supporters—There is More There than Meets the Eye
American Eclectic
August 1, 2022
I remember years ago reading about what might be called a fable, either Russian or Polish, I can’t remember but it went:
A farmer is digging in his field and comes across a lamp.
He cleans it and a genie comes out and says he will grant him one wish for freeing him.
The farmer says that he has one cow, and his neighbor has two cows.
The genie says, “So you want another cow so you will have two.”
“No,” the farmer says, “I want you to kill one of my neighbor’s cows.”
This fable is something I thought about in reference to Donald Trump’s hard-core supporters. What do they want for America?
Two books come to mind when I asked myself this question: Katherine Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, and Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. Cramer’s book can be read as a prelude to Donald Trump becoming President, and Hochschild’s as a before, during and after his Presidency. Resentment is a good word, but nihilism and despair also come to mind.
There is a quote in Hochschild’s book that just made me stop and think:
Across the country, red states are poorer and have more teen mothers, more divorce, worse health, more obesity, more trauma-related deaths, more low-birth-weight babies, and lower school enrollment. On average, people in read states die five years earlier than people in blue states. Indeed, the gap in life expectancy between Louisiana (75.7) and Connecticut (80.8) is the same as that between the United States and Nicaragua.
My late wife was an OB/GYN and a Chief of Staff at a rural hospital so some of what Hochschild wrote about I am familiar with. I found the people I knew, and we knew quite a few nice, normal, and no different in their hopes, fears, and aspirations than people in urban areas. But I frequently heard expressions of being looked down up by people from the more urbanized parts of the states or urbanized parts of America. Having also lived in both urban and suburban areas, generally next to no thought was given about rural areas. Usually, if someone visited a rural area that was quaint or picturesque then remarks about where they visited were made. Looking down on rural areas by people living in urban or suburban areas was often more about a perception on the part of rural people. At the same time, I also heard expressions that might be called “country pride”—a belief of being better, or different, than urban folks. Sure, you can find anyone anywhere who will feel the need to criticize or even show contempt for people from another area. How much stock should we put into those remarks? It seems normal that human nature wants to generalize. Or worse some foolish individual like Tomi Lahren, who classifies herself as conservative and, most likely, wakes up each morning wondering what idiotic statement she can make without much thought behind it, does her worst to add fuel to the fire and never adds anything helpful or constructive.
In the case of my family, we were easily accepted. I remember going out drinking with this gentleman and he drove his truck to a field well away from any people and after pulling over, dropped the back of his truck and he set up a skeet shooting machine. Sounds very rural movie image with all its simplicity and, for a moment, it was. We drank a few beers and shot skeet. Somewhere between the beers he commented on what things he wanted the government to do or do better, but somewhere in there he commented about “big government.” I remember golfing with a gentleman who sold firearms but when he spoke, he never sounded like a stereotypical Second Amendment type. He spoke about the need to “keep firearms away from those people.” There was nothing racist here, he was thinking of unstable people and wife beaters.
President Biden and his wife need to visit rural areas and have conversations and they need to do it as more than just a photo op and they need more than just one visit. This is where Democrats do the stupid. It is not about simply trying to gain some increased percentage of rural votes. This is not about some speeches put together for each of them, it is them just talking—probably off-the-cuff remarks--which are, no doubt, a terror to many politicians, regardless of which political party they are associated with—but that is what they need to do. They need to show up and talk. Let people stand up and scream and yell at them. Let people express anger.
I have no hope for Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), the Speaker of the House of Representatives reaching out to rural areas. I believed the first pieces of legislation she should have focused on when the Democrats became the majority party in the House of Representatives with the 2018 Congressional elections were rural issues to clearly show a concern—with substance. I do not want to see that toothy smile and listen to carefully worded statements. An issue to address regarding rural America is the high suicide rate among farmers and rural residents. It seems difficult to put a precise number on these suicides, some of which comes from problems classifying a farmer or rural resident exactly, but rural suicides seem to be somewhere between one and half times to six times higher than urban areas.
The Republicans will never show a real concern for rural America—they figure they have the rural vote in their hip pocket. Compliancy breeds never having to think twice about the right thing to do.
Cramer in her book writes, “We may be in an historical moment when politicians have successfully melded distrust in government with support for cutting back.” This book was published in 2016, which might seem like an eon ago. This would be a disaster. Rural areas may resent what they see as food stamps going to inner city areas, but food stamp cross boundaries and permeate all counties within states. The Rural Health Information Hub, refers to a term “Food insecure,” which means that many rural households lack “access to sufficient affordable food at all times.” Poor health already is a problem that exists in rural areas and the life expectancy gap that Hochschild pointed to between Louisiana and Connecticut, might only widen. Inevitably whatever resentment exists in rural America would only grow, a Scott Walker or Donald Trump might be seen as better than the next cohort of politicians labeled as “populists,” who would be anything but.
The statistics listed below are from thirteen different states, twelve of those states went for Trump in the 2020 election, but, interestingly within those states, seven of the thirteen counties were won by Biden. Each of these thirteen counties is classified as rural. In Thurston County, Nebraska, Trump won the county vote but by a plurality (49.6% to Biden’s 47.2%) so it might be called a tossup. These thirteen counties were picked since they have the highest percentage of households receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in each of the thirteen states-food stamps. Notice that the statistics also show that people living with disabilities within these counties, for the most part, are higher than their state averages. In addition, all thirteen counties have a percentage of their populations that receive Medicaid that is higher than their state averages—in most cases significantly higher. Medicaid is a combined Federal/state healthcare program and, one must wonder, if the Federal government drastically cut back on its spending—which always seems the mantra of people who want to call themselves conservative usually without much thought behind it, what would state governments do to make up for the loss of Federal government money? As an average, about 57 percent of Medicaid funds come from the Federal government.
The farmer who wanted a neighbor’s cow killed would be played out by rural areas who want to celebrate cuts to food stamps because they would see them as affecting inner city recipients but did not take the time to wonder what it would do to their communities or what cuts to Medicaid benefits might mean to maybe himself as well as friends and family members.
Back to President Biden and his wife and their need to visit rural areas. This is about how the process of trying to bridge whatever problems exist in this county begins. The hate filled right-wing media that exists to dominate what passes for conservative will vilify both for having the nerve to visit rural America. So what? That is their market-oriented job: To be useless and as flame-throwing outraged as possible. Despite them, however, there must be steps that are taken to begin a process. A process that simply makes a stab at preventing worse. It is a President who needs to take those steps and, frankly, Joe Biden and his wife are just being part of blindness and indifference within the Democratic Party if they fail to travel to rural America. Again, do it now, do it more than once, this is no public relations stunt. Joe and Jill Biden, visit rural America and do it often.
Thirteen Counties in Thirteen States
1) Perry County, Alabama (2020 election, Biden got 73.8% of the county vote, Trump won the state with 62% of the vote)
33.4% (SNAP benefits) 13.4% (state average)
25.2% (people with disabilities) 16.3% (state average)
36.2% (Medicaid) 19.7% (state average)
2) Phillips County, Arkansas (2020 election, Biden got 58% of the county vote, Trump won the state with 62.4% of the vote)
30.5% (SNAP benefits) 11.7% (state average)
22.8% (people with disabilities) 17.2% (state average)
44.1% (Medicaid) 25.7% (state average)
3) Hamilton County, Florida (2020 election, Trump got 65.3% of the county vote, Trump won the state with 51.1% of the vote)
33% (SNAP benefits) 13.2% (state average)
22.6% (people with disabilities) 13.4% (state average)
30.2% (Medicaid) 18.4% (state average)
4) Randolph County, Georgia (2020 election, Biden got 54.4% of the county vote, Biden won the state with 49.47% of the vote)
36.5% (SNAP benefits) 12.2% (state average)
16.4% (people with disabilities) 12.3% (state average)
39.7% (Medicaid) 17.6% (state average)
5) Fayette County, Indiana (2020 election, Trump got 76.4% of the county vote, Trump won the state with 56.9% of the vote)
16.9% (SNAP benefits) 9.3% (state average)
18% (people with disabilities) 13.8% (state average)
22.5% (Medicaid) 17.3% (state average)
6) Logan County, Kansas (2020 election, Trump got 85.7% of the county vote, Trump won the state with 56% of the vote)
14.3% (SNAP benefits) 7.2% (state average)
14.1% (people with disabilities) 13% (state average)
16.5% (Medicaid) 13.9% (state average)
7) Lee County, Kentucky (2020 election, Trump got 81.1% of the county vote, Trump won the state with 62.1% of the vote)
38.1% (SNAP benefits) 13% (state average)
31.5% (people with disabilities) 17.4% (state average)
43.8% (Medicaid) 25.9% (state average)
8) Madison Parish, Louisiana (2020 election, Biden got 56.8% of the county vote, Trump won the state with 58.5% of the vote)
30.7% (SNAP benefits) 15.3 (state average)
14% (people with disabilities) 15% (state average)
36.6% (Medicaid) 25.1% (state average)
9) Sharkey County, Mississippi (2020 election, Biden got 67.1% of the county vote, Trump won the state with 57.6% of the vote)
37.7% (SNAP benefits) 14.6% (state average)
21.4% (people with disabilities) 16.3% (state average) (Sharkey-Issaquena County Health Department)
35.4% (Medicaid) 24.2% (state average) (Sharkey-Issaquena County Health Department)
10) Pemiscot County, Missouri (2020 election, Trump got 71.8% of the county vote, Trump won the state with 56.7% of the vote)
34.2% (SNAP benefits) 10.5% (state average)
26.4% (people with disabilities) 14.6% (state average)
35.3% (Medicaid) 14.7% (state average)
11) Glacier County, Montana (2020 election, Biden got 64.3% of the county vote, Trump won the state with 56.9% of the vote)
20.2% (SNAP benefits) 9.3% (state average)
11.3% (people with disabilities) 13.6% (state average)
27.3% (Medicaid) 18% (state average)
12) Thurston County, Nebraska (2020 election, Trump got 49.6% of the county vote BUT Biden got 47.2%, Trump won the state with 58.2% of the vote)
18.3% (SNAP benefits) 8.1% (state average)
12.6% (people with disabilities) 13% (state average)
26.6% (Medicaid) 13.9% (state average)
13) Halifax County, North Carolina (2020 election, Biden got 60.3% of the county vote, Trump won the state with 49.9% of the vote)
28.5% (SNAP benefits) 12% (state average)
19.2% (people with disabilities) 13.6% (state average)
28.3% (Medicaid) 18.3% (state average)
—All thirteen counties are classified as rural
—Trump won twelve of the states. In Georgia he asked (demanded? begged?) the Georgia Secretary of State as Trump put it, “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
—Seven of the thirteen counties Biden won, we can call Thurston County, Nebraska a tossup.
Notes
Data drawn from the following:
Michael B. Sauter, “The County Where the Most People Use Food Stamps in Every State,” 24/7 Wall St: https://247wallst.com/special-report/2022/07/03/the-county-with-the-highest-snap-recipiency-rate-in-every-state/5/
Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections: https://uselectionatlas.org. His county vote breakdown is very useful and easy to use. For any teachers (high school, university) reading this essay, his site can be easily used in a class, there are good graphics and information goes back to 1789.
Rural Health Information Hub. “Numerous federal and state-level definitions of rural have been created over the years for various programs and regulatory needs.” RHIhub (Rural Health Information Hub): https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/topics/what-is-rural#goldsmith
CountyOffice.org: https://www.countyoffice.org. In most cases I used “Perry County health department Alabama,” etc.
“Am I Rural?-Tool,” RHIhub, is used to classify counties as rural. A report can be accessed in which the Program Eligibility states YES for two programs: 1) CMS-Rural Health Clinics (RHC) Program, and 2) FORHP-Grant Programs: https://ruralhealthinfo.org/am-i-rural
Books and Articles:
Katherine J. Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2016)
Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York, The New Press, 2016)
Matt Perdue, “A Deeper Look at the CDC Findings on Farm Suicides,” National Farmers Union (November 27, 2018): https://nfu.org/2018/11/27/cdc-study-clarifies-data-on-farm-stress/
“Suicide in Rural Areas,” RHIHub, Rural Health Information Hub (May 9, 2022): https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/toolkits/suicide/1/rural
Brock E.W. Turner, “Suicide rates are 6 times higher among farmers and COVID is making it even worse,” Indiana Public Media (January 7, 2022): https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/new-program-aims-to-turn-tides-of-suicide-rates-among-farmers.php