Pushing Democrats to move beyond resistance

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Pushing Democrats to move beyond resistance
Rural Americans — and a Rural New Deal — could be the key to a new wave of economic populism

By Christopher D. Cook
Published December 20, 2025 9:00AM (EST)


(Salon) Although Donald Trump won a whopping 63% of rural American voters in the 2024 presidential election — up from 60% in 2020 — his approval ratings in the countryside are plunging amid the economic chaos and uncertainty caused by his tariffs, rising food prices and other concerns. Farmers are suffering huge losses even as their costs keep rising, and farm bankruptcies have increased by 56% from 2024.

Working-class Americans, another key source of Trump’s presidency, are struggling under the weight of soaring costs, layoffs and manufacturing job losses, and his evisceration of worker protections. Unemployment keeps rising, now at its highest since September 2021 amid the Covid-19 meltdown. Rural coal miners, many of whom voted for Trump, protested the president recently for failing to enforce black lung protections even as more (and increasingly younger) miners die from the disease. Many rural Trump voters have expressed buyer’s remorse over the Department of Government Efficiency gutting protections for public lands, parks, wildlife and other conservation enforcement.

Could these working-class and rural Americans be the key to toppling Trump’s reign of destruction — and delivering economic justice and equity? Could a movement of progressive populists, independents and rural communities go “beyond resistance” and help spur a new wave of economic populism?

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Bolstering this, a new autopsy report (authored by this writer) on the Democrats’ catastrophic 2024 presidential loss suggests the defeat came largely by leaning into corporate donor interests and abandoning working-class voters. The comprehensive report, published by RootsAction, urges the Democratic Party to “change course and embrace economic populist policies that inspire and help working-class Americans,” and “show voters that it has a spine and can stand up to corporate and big-money interests.” ......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/12/20/pushing-democrats-to-move-beyond-resistance/