This Progressive Democrat Could Help Improve Millions of Lives — and American Democracy

Tuesday’s Democratic Party primary in Oregon’s vast 5th congressional district just might hold the key to defeating MAGA Republicanism and renewing American democracy.

Sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not. If one of the two top contenders in the race, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, wins next Tuesday and in November, she will transform the Democratic Party for the better – and, by doing so, alter the 50/50 balance that defines American politics.

The reason for this is simple, the Democratic Party has all-but-abandoned small town and rural America. This is evident to anyone paying attention, but it is still a somewhat absurd state of affairs. After all, on balance, things have not been going well across small town and rural America for many decades. So, you’d think that the more progressive of the two major partes would be responsive to the needs of so many people and communities in distress, but that simply hasn’t been the case. Rather, small town and rural America is effectively ruled by one party: the GOP.

The Democratic Party has all-but-abandoned small town and rural America. This is evident to anyone paying attention, but it is still a somewhat absurd state of affairs.

This is doubly confounding since things, on balance, have been going so badly for so long. For rural and small-town Americans, the past four decades have been defined by: the hallowing out of thousands of small towns, the precipitous decline in social services, widespread poverty, epidemics of drug addiction; and about as much free-floating anger and despair about the wholesale implosion of family farming from the 1970s onward that it matches the ire of the residents of industrial towns whose factories were offshored. When things are that bad, you’d think the party out of power would have a huge opportunity to suggest a different path. But nope, the “mainstream” of the Democratic Party seem content to continue writing off the vast majority of the country’s geography.

That is, until now. Jamie McLeod-Skinner is trailblazing the effort to forge a new path for the Democratic Party, with detailed plans to address the concerns of the many rural and small-town constituents in her district.

As it turns out, there are compelling proposals that address the myriad problems facing small towns and rural America. Yet there is no current Member of Congress or high-profile candidate elsewhere in the country who champions such ideas more than Jamie McLeod-Skinner.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, publisher of The Nation magazine, one of the linchpins of American left-liberalism (and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party), wrote an article highlighting a recently published proposal designed to lift up the economies of small town and rural America, called The Rural New Deal. This detailed document speaks to the crises impacting tens of millions of Americans, and their root causes – and proposes a set of solutions, all of them readily achievable, drawn from listening to the concerns of actual small town and rural Americans.

Jamie McLeod-Skinner was a prominent consultant on the drafting of the Rural New Deal. I know because I helped draft the document.

The Nation summarizes the Rural New Deal’s transformational potential this way: by “championing bold solutions… Democrats could inaugurate a progressive renaissance in places that have been misconstrued as irretrievably lost—and bolster enthusiasm among core voters:

Imagine networks of family-owned farms, powered by solar panels, plowed by workers earning a livable wage, all organized around iconic small-town courthouse squares. Imagine students at the local school taking vocational courses to pursue a trade—future carpenters, mechanics, and electricians getting free training that they can supplement with online research via universally available high-speed broadband.

This is what life could look like after a Rural New Deal… (which) consists of 10 pillars of fearless but practical policy proposals.

If Jamie enters congress in January, she will find a broad base of support for the Rural New Deal; but currently, there is no Democrat in Congress as well suited to lead the effort than McLeod-Skinner.

In other words, right now, Jamie McLeod-Skinner is the key. This is not surprising. If you read Jamie’s campaign website, you’ll see that she’s the right person to carry this forward. Her entire career reflects a deep commitment to the hard-working people of small town and rural America, in the best tradition of American progressivism.

So, as you see, simply electing this one member of the U.S. House of Representatives could dramatically alter the entire Democratic Party’s approach to small town and rural America.

Detractors will counter by saying, there are many reasons why small town and rural Americans votes overwhelmingly Republican. But, at the end of the day, no reason is greater than the mere fact that the Democratic Party doesn’t compete there; and the mainstream of the party seems to have no impulse to even try.

Of course, there are other reasons, most notably what are usually referred to as “cultural issues.” These are real. But it is absolutely contemptuous of the people of rural and small-town America to hide behind cultural differences and effectively say there’s no point in addressing their economic hardships and proposing an agenda for revival and prosperity that matches the scope of the problems.

Let’s be real: Compared to what they’re doing now, the Democratic Party will attract support if it addresses the crises of small town and rural America in the manner of the Rural New deal and Jamie’s platform proposals – thereby reversing the ever-downward performance of the party across the American outback.

This would spark a compound victory of the highest significance: 1) it would generate hope that tangible improvements for the long-suffering communities of small town and rural America are possible and; 2) even a 5% shift in voting to the Democrats across small towns and rural America would swing the national balance in their favor—which would, in turn, almost certainly engender the demise of the MAGA GOP’s offensive against our democracy.

So, Democrats in Oregon’s 5tdistrict, please cast your primary ballot for Jamie McLeod-Skinner.

A victory for Jamie on Tuesday will pressure the Democratic Party to return to working for all Americans, thereby helping tens of millions of our fellow citizens and residents across this vast land, and, by doing so, preserve our democratic republic.