Iowa Democrat party fundraiser displays cardboard cutout of Hillary near podium a year after 2016 election loss, wonders how to win back rural voters-Quad City Times, Des Moines, Iowa...(Didn't they hear Putin stole the election? Why don't they just ask Putin for tips on how to win next time?)

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Oct. 14, 2017, "Democrats agree: They ignored, talked down to rural voters, and lost them," Quad City Times, Erin Murphy, Des Moines Bureau

"Rural Iowa shifted its political direction in 2016 and caught Democrats off guard.

The conversation of how to earn back those votes is dominating the conversation among Democrats these days.

It was the focus by speakers at a recent fundraiser held by Democrats from Polk County, which is dominated by the city of Des Moines and its suburbs, as they talked about the party’s need to reach voters outside the state’s biggest cities.

This week in Des Moines, Democrats gathered again to discuss the need to regain the trust of rural voters at an event organized by a new national advocacy group formed for the sole purpose of having that conversation."...

[Ed. note: The national Democrat Party is happy keeping its focus on identity politics (Chaos and hatred keeps the rubes churned up). Ohio Democrats couldn't get them to change. 4/5/17, "Democrats are still ignoring the people who could have helped them defeat Trump, Ohio party leaders say," Washington Post, William Wan, Youngstown, Ohio. The Republican Party doesn't care about voters either.]

(continuing): "“We have to make our argument with courage, and we have to make it everywhere,” said Jason Kander, a former Missouri secretary of state and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in 2016. 

Kander was one of the speakers at the event in Des Moines hosted by New Democracy, an advocacy group formed to help expand Democrats’ appeal in the Midwest, the region that Democrats’ losses took the biggest hit in the 2016 elections.

Formerly blue states like Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania all flipped to Republicans in the presidential election. 

That swing was magnified in Iowa, a state that went twice for Democrat Barack Obama but in 2016 went for Republican Donald Trump by almost 10 percentage points.

From the 2012 to 2016 elections, the state swung nearly 15 points from the Democratic candidate to the Republican. 

Obama won 38 counties in 2012; 32 of those went for Trump in 2016. 

Most of those 32 counties that swung away from Democrats were in rural areas, particularly in eastern Iowa. 

“(The 2016 election) brought home a reality that we were dimly aware of, but were not focused on,” said Will Marshall, who formed New Democracy. “We have to expand the party and we have to expand in all directions, reaching beyond our core partisans and engaging voters who are not now Democrats or are not now voting for us.”

Marshall added, “We have to go everywhere and build real, winning coalitions and majorities again.” 

So how do Democrats earn the support of rural voters?

“Before the Democrats can win over the folks you mention, they have to get these folks to be willing to listen to them,” said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University and author of a book on Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses.

“You don’t do that with a list of policy proposals; you do that by presenting an overarching vision for the country that respects them and includes them.” 

“Calling them deplorables or focusing on an identity politics that speaks to every group that’s not them will not accomplish that,” Goldford said.

That message seems to be getting through to Democrats.  

“What happened in Iowa (in 2016) unfortunately and tragically has happened all over the United States. Because our party, for whatever reason, stopped showing up and stopped competing effectively in rural areas,” said Tom Vilsack, the former two-term Iowa governor and U.S. ag secretary for all eight years of the Obama administration. “We stopped understanding the hopes, the dreams, the aspirations, and yes the frustration and anger of those who live, work and raise their families in rural areas. We forgot how to talk to folks, and when we did we often talked down.” 

How Democrats talk to rural voters is a problem, said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster. The website for the polling firm ALG Research, in which Anzalone is a partner, believes he has helped beat more incumbent Republicans and take back more Republican seats than any other polling firm in the nation. 

Anzalone said Democrats can get trapped by holding hard-core stances on issues like immigration, and by holding contempt for voters who don’t agree 100 percent with their stance on the issue.

“The problem is is that...we, generally, as Democrats, if they have those feelings, we kind of treat them like idiots. We condescend, literally treat them like idiots in elections,” Anzalone said. “And I think that this is a really big problem that we have to figure out, to understand that their values and their concerns aren’t ones that we can just dismiss, in small towns or big towns. Because a lot of what I’m talking about is actually in suburbia, in a place like West Des Moines.” 

Anzalone said, when that happens, as Goldford alluded to, voters will tune out Democrats regardless of whether they are talking about the right issues. 

Many Democrats have said they must shift their message in 2018 and beyond to focus on jobs and the economy. But, Anzalone said, none of that will matter unless Democrats first learn how to talk to voters on issues with which they may not perfectly align with Democrats. 

“We want to talk about believing that there is a magic fairy dust on our economic message,” Anzalone said.

Democrats can do that simply by being genuine, multiple leaders say. 

Kander said, while there is a debate within the party about which direction it should go ideologically -- more to the left or more to the center -- he feels it’s more important for Democrats to be genuine and honest, and that voters will respond better to that regardless of the candidate’s ideology.

Kansas City mayor Sly James said it’s about listening, not pandering. 

“It’s not about putting on overalls, sitting on a tractor and acting like you know what it’s about,” James said. “That ain’t what it’s about. It’s about listening to them.”

If Democrats do that -- simply listen -- they may begin to win back those rural voters they have lost, said Matt McCoy, an Iowa state senator from Des Moines.

“Our future is not how we talk to rural Iowa,” McCoy said, “but rather how we listen.”"

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Comment: I didn't see Putin mentioned in this article. Why don't they just ask Putin what they should do to win elections? 
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Added:

4/5/17, "Democrats are still ignoring the people who could have helped them defeat Trump, Ohio party leaders say," Washington Post, William Wan, Youngstown, Ohio 

"At a bar on the hollowed-out edges of Youngstown [Ohio], Betras slid a memo dated May 12, 2016, across the table. It was then that he saw the wave of anger coming and tried to warn Clinton’s campaign.

“I know I am just a chairman but I am a chairman in the trenches,” Betras wrote in the three-page memo, begging Clinton to focus on jobs.

Mahoning Cty, Ohio

In Mahoning County — a Democratic stronghold decimated by the manufacturing industry’s decline — Betras was seeing GOP yard signs suddenly popping up. During the primaries, [March 15, 2016] he learned that 18 of his own Democratic precinct captains had crossed party lines to vote for Trump. Some areas had to print extra Republican primary ballots just to keep up with the demand.

“That’s when I knew something was wrong,” he said. 

He warned Clinton that she had lost all credibility with working-class voters by waffling on trade and offering tepid solutions. He urged in his memo that she talk about infrastructure instead.

“The workers we’re talking about don’t want to run computers, they want to run back hoes, dig ditches, sling concrete block,” he wrote. “They’re not embarrassed about the fact that they get their hands dirty. ....They love it and they want to be respected and honored for it.” 

He sent his memo to Clinton’s top campaign adviser in Ohio and other senior party officials. But Betras never heard back."...

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7/18/2016, "Outside Cleveland, thousands of Democrats are becoming Republicans," CNN, by Jeff Simon, Vanessa Yurkevich and Contessa Gayles, Mahoning County, Ohio

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Added:

Chuck Schumer in July 2016 not worried about losing blue collar Democrat votes in Midwest, says for each they lose they'll pick up 2-3 moderate, suburban Republicans:

10/4/17, "Could Washington's centrist dream help Trump win a second term?" CNN Politics, Gregory Krieg

"During a live interview hours before Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in Philadelphia, he (Sen. Chuck Schumer) was asked if Donald Trump's blunt appeal to white working class voters could turn the Midwest red. Schumer, the unwavering optimist, offered allies this soothing equation:

"For every blue-collar Democrat we will lose in western P-A (Pennsylvania), we will pick up two or three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia," he reasoned, "and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin. The voters who are most out there figuring out what to do are not the blue-collar Democrats. They are the college-educated Republicans, who lean Republican, or independent and in the suburbs." 

It is a remarkable riff, and not only for the sheer tonnage of faulty assumptions the now-minority leader manages to pack into such a tidy space. Schumer clearly possesses an abiding belief in the power of the political center -- that there is no populist swell the establishment cannot divert, manage and make to find its level."... ..................... 

Added:

July 17, 2017, "Poll: Majority of Voters Say Democratic Party Stands for Nothing - Except Opposing Trump," CNS News, Craig Bannister

 "Today’s Democratic Party stands for only one thing – attacking President Donald Trump – a majority of registered voters said in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll."


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Dates of interest: March 15, 2016: 18 Ohio Democrat Party precinct captains vote for Trump in the Republican primary.

July 22, 2016, First Wikileaks release: 

7/22/2016, "Wikileaks Releases Nearly 20,000 [allegedly] Hacked DNC Emails," Daily Caller, Chuck Ross

Oct. 7, 2016, Second Wikileaks release:

10/13/2016,  "The John Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks," cbsnews.com, AP

"WikiLeaks says it has some 50,000 Hillary Clinton campaign emails, and on Fri. Oct. 7, it began leaking the personal emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The group said it would release emails every day until Election Day."... 


 
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