Pushing Democrats to move beyond resistance

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?

In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s remarkable election on Nov. 4 as New York City’s next mayor — followed by democratic socialist Katie Wilson winning Seattle’s mayoralty — the moment for economic populism seems ripe. Democrats, some liberal and others more moderate, also won numerous races in rural parts of Pennsylvania and elsewhere. In late November, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced new investments and staffing to help win over rural voters in 2026.

While some of this election’s winners were moderate Democrats, there is surging evidence that voters are restless and hankering for mold-busting politics offering bold populist messages and discarding the party establishment’s dreary attachment to corporate power and the status quo.

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.”

As unprecedented millions have taken to the streets in “No Kings” rallies across the country — including many in Republican and rural areas — a new campaign is going beyond resisting Trump. In September, the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI) launched “Beyond Resistance,” bringing together a coalition of rural, working-class, pro-democracy and progressive groups aiming to win back the hearts and minds of rural America.

“Our outrage and resistance must encompass the ongoing betrayal of farmers, unions, workers, U.S. manufacturers and small businesses,” said Anthony Flaccavento, RUBI’s co-founder and executive director.

At the online launch, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told hundreds of attendees, “It’s not going to be enough for us to just be against Donald Trump. We have to understand why people are upset about the loss of the American dream.” Democrats, Khanna said, “need a vision for how we are going to bring economic security and independence to rural America, to factory towns, how we’re going to make sure that local communities are respected, how we’re going to make sure that local communities are leading revitalization.”

Rather than simply disparaging the MAGA world, Khanna said, Democrats and others need to understand that “our opponent isn’t just Trump as much as it is the cynicism and despair that has given rise to Trump — a form of anger, division, and despair in this country. We need to offer an alternative vision, economic patriotism, a vision to invest in every community and every family so that every family and community can have economic success and bridge the economic divides.”

One of those bridges could be the Rural New Deal, crafted by the Progressive Democrats of America and RUBI — part of what Khanna called “a Marshall Plan for America” that centers on “economic patriotism.” The Rural New Deal lays out a far-ranging platform to rebuild the nation’s economically embattled small farms, revitalize rural towns, invest in community infrastructures, fund rural health care and schools, and other urgent priorities.

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The 10-pillar plan, composed with about 20 rural development practitioners and advocates, aims to “reverse forty years of wealth and corporate concentration, restore degraded lands, reclaim land and ownership opportunities for those whose land was taken by force or deceit, and ensure that communities and the nation can and do meet the basic needs of its people.”

The Rural New Deal emphasizes that policies and projects must come from local communities’ needs and priorities, support workers and share the wealth. The mission includes restoring ecologically damaged landscapes, reversing corporate consolidation, building worker power, and creating “real and durable wealth” that sustains communities.

This may sound ambitiously progressive, but speakers at the September launch emphasized pragmatism and concrete local projects to cut through the nation’s extreme polarization. On the ground level, this means community volunteer efforts like neighborhood environmental cleanups, helping food pantries distribute sustenance to families in need and volunteers assisting underfunded local libraries. Such projects may seem small, but they provide a rare opportunity for participants “to talk and trust each other for the first time,” said Meredith Dean, national director of Community Works. Shanelle Carr, a local coordinator with the group, said the approach is “showing the community we can work together for a common good,” noting that “trust is built through the work we are doing.” 

In these volatile, polarized times, trust is a crucial part of any project, Flaccavento explained. “We’ve lost trust in one another, rural-urban, left and right.” He stressed the need for “completely non-political” local projects that help “rebuild trust and open hearts and minds,” creating human bonds and safe meeting spaces.

As Khanna put it, “something is really deeply ill about America, and really hurting.” Amid the divisions and fear, he said, “we need to offer a big-hearted vision of what it means to be an American,” based on mutual respect, not fear, and “respecting people’s way of life.”

Part of this respect may involve trusting in the wisdom, knowledge and underlying politics in rural America, which, below the often MAGA-red surface, has a long history of progressive populism. “Rural people are progressive economic populists,” argued Sarah Jayne, executive director of the Heartland Fund, which pursues climate-repairing partnerships with rural communities. The Democrats, she said, “need to be the party of working people, full-stop.” 

One could surmise from current rural voting patterns that this progressive populism is in a long, deep slumber. Democrats are hardly tilling or testing this seemingly frozen ground — yet there is growing evidence that progressive candidates and ballot measures can beat the odds.

As the autopsy report documents, in 2024, voters in deep-red, largely rural Missouri passed an amendment to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by a wide margin, and approved guaranteed paid sick leave, even as they voted overwhelmingly against Harris. In conservative, heavily rural Nebraska, 75% of voters backed a measure creating paid sick leave. Harris, the autopsy notes, “did not make either policy a major part of her campaign.” Defying political expectations, Dan Osborne, a Nebraska independent running a progressive populist campaign, nearly defeated a Republican for U.S. Senate.

There are other rays of hope arising for progressives in unlikely places. In swing states across the U.S., many progressive candidates are winning elections over mainstream establishment Democrats, in small cities such as Lancaster, Pennsylvania, La Crosse, Wisconsin and Dayton, Ohio. 

As growing portions of Americans turn against Trump, progressives and the Democratic Party have an opportunity to reach those millions of disillusioned voters. But, the message needs to go beyond the overripe, low-hanging fruit of opposing Trump — candidates and campaigns need to offer inspiration and concrete alternatives.  

At the “Beyond Resistance” launch, Dustin Guastella, research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics, urged for a meaningful reconnection with rural and working-class America. “A lot of union and working-class voters who’ve drifted toward Trump won’t be won back by a message of resistance and how evil Trump is,” he said. Rural and working-class voters “want a better economic system that values the work they do.”