Less than three weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-OH), are amplifying one campaign strategy steeped in a long conservative tradition, according to journalist and "White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy" author Paul Waldman.
In a Sunday, October 20 op-ed published by MSNBC, Waldman notes that, usually, "Democrats dominate in cities, while Republicans rule in rural areas." And while Vice President Kamala Harris, and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, "are working to attract rural voters and promoting policy initiatives to improve life for rural Americans," Trump and Vance are doing just the opposite.
The 2024 GOP nominees "are deploying a particularly nasty anti-urban strategy, seemingly driven by the belief that if Americans who don’t live in cities — or ever go there — look upon them with disgust and fear, then they’ll vote Republican," Waldman emphasizes.
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The "Boundary Issues" podcast host notes:
Conservatives have long portrayed cities as places of danger and corruption. Richard Nixon aired frightening ads focused on urban crime in his 1968 run for the White House. In 2016, Ted Cruz accused Trump of having 'New York values' (he didn’t say exactly what those values were, but they had to be bad). Conservatives celebrated Jason Aldean’s song 'Try That in a Small Town,' a warning to urbanites not to bring their crime and chaos to small towns.
Waldman also suggests:
We’ve gotten used to Republicans describing our cities as repulsive and frightening for so long that it no longer strikes us as unusual. When Trump says that in America’s cities, 'you can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot. You get mugged. You get raped,' it’s easy to dismiss the ham-handed hyperbole, but we know that millions of Americans believe it.
One could "assume goodwill on Republicans’ part if, like Democrats, they actually seemed interested in finding more votes in cities," Waldman continues. "Instead, they sneer at urban areas and the Americans who live there, hoping to generate anti-urban disdain and fear that will win them votes elsewhere."
The MSNBC contributor then suggests that the strategy typically doesn't fare well for conservatives.
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"Given that Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, the evidence for this strategy’s success is thin at best," Waldman writes.
Waldman's full op-ed is available at this link.