JD Vance Understands Something Important About Rural Voters |
JD Vance Understands Something Important About Rural Voters
Recent research shows that they believe both parties are corrupt. So the vice president and his party are aggressively making the case that Democrats are the real fraudsters.
Last week, JD Vance gave a speech at a factory in Des Moines, Iowa, that ostensibly was in support of GOP Representative Zach Nunn’s reelection campaign, but rightly has been evaluated as a trial balloon for Vance’s all-but-declared 2028 presidential run. And its message should worry Democrats who are expecting to ride an anti-Trump wave back to power this fall and beyond.
The vice president said the November midterms would come down to one big issue. “It’s fundamentally, do you want people in Washington, D.C., who fight for you, who fight for the people of this district, or who fight for corruption and fraud?” he said.
It might seems surprising, given President Trump’s rampant and ever-expanding corruption, that Republicans think this is a winning issue for them. But much anti-corruption messaging depends on how voters define corruption and who they think is responsible for it. Republicans for years have been pointing fingers at the poor, people of color, urban residents, “welfare queens,” and immigrants. Vance stuck to that message in Iowa because it resonates with rural voters and the kind of persuadable voters the Democratic Party needs to win back. So the Democrats have work to do in redirecting anger over political corruption toward other, more credible targets that will also resonate with these voters.
To lay out his case that Democrats are the corrupt ones, Vance recalled February’s State of the Union speech, in which Trump asked the politicians in the chamber to stand if they agreed that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Vance said in Iowa that no Democrats stood. “They didn’t care about you. They didn’t........