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Former MSNBC host Joy Reid spoke with the hosts of the “I’ve Had It” podcast about how Democrats need to change their strategy and pick up the rural voters that Republicans fail to serve.
As the Democratic Party struggles to discern a new path forward, many of its thought leaders have rallied around the idea that they must distance themselves from the cultural issues and identity politics of the last 10 years and focus on the affordability crisis. Reid made a similar appeal on Tuesday, arguing the party should seize on this idea.
“When’s the last time a Democrat was in Oklahoma, or Mississippi, or Tennessee, or when was the last time they spent real money to try to win races in these states? They’re absent without official leave in the whole South,” Reid argued. “And Democrats, first of all, they have to get better at just showing up. When’s the last time Democrats went into the hills of West Virginia?”
She went on to argue that poor White people have more in common with poor people of other races than they do with Whites from other economic classes, who, she says, cynically keep their poorer fellows in line.
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“Poor White people don’t vote. Poor White people, poor Brown people, they don’t vote,” she said. “They generally just sort of let it happen, right? But if you went into the We — I mean, Bishop William Barber goes into the hills of West Virginia. Those people want the same thing that we sitting around this table want.”
“They want a decent life,” she continued. “They want to be able to feed their kids. They want to be able to have a decent home that they can’t lose. They don’t want to, you know, go broke because they need health care. They would like to go to a doctor every so often, go to a dentist. They would like normal things. They don’t have them. And so, but they’re left out there, not just by Republicans who didn’t give a s— about them.”
She offered a grim theory as to how the Republican Party keeps their voters contained.
“As long as they stay racist and stay angry at gay people and the trans people they’ll never meet, they’re happy with them. Democrats just don’t go there at all,” she said.
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Reid went on to suggest that the Democratic brand is ultimately the problem preventing them from winning over these rural voters, not party policy, arguing that the brand has been distracted by divisive progressive cultural issues.
“The brand is the issue in a lot of these red states because they view the brand as associated, to your point, with these cultural things with gay marriage and with trans,” Reid said, who has recently expressed some uneasiness of transwomen and female lockerrooms.
“Pronouns,” host Jennifer Welch agreed in a humorous tone. “Black people.”
“Brown immigrant,” Reid agreed as they laughed. “They’re just like, ‘That’s that brand’ and so people won’t even hear you if you say Democrat.”
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