Democrats have retreated from rural America, which could cost party seats in key elections

Democratic candidates who relied on rural voters to take control of the House and Senate in 2006 have largely ignored rural Americans the past several years, and it could cost them seats this election year in key races in mostly rural states, Matt Barron reports for The Hill. "With Senate control hinging on the outcome of races in four of the nation's 10 most rural states (West Virginia, Arkansas, South Dakota and Montana), Democrats have allowed what little rural electoral and policy infrastructure they once had to wither away and atrophy."

"With the exception of a Native American outreach effort, the national party committees have no rural vote components anymore," Barron writes. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee largely ignored rural America when it announced its community outreach chairs in March 2013, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has no rural desk and the Democratic National Committee's Rural Council "is unstaffed and still stuck in second-class status, unable to become a full-fledged caucuses. Why? Because under party rules, the group must represent at least 2 percent of the DNC membership, and its members must share an 'immutable characteristic.' As a result, the roadblock is that being rural is not a permanent trait. I swear, you can't make this stuff up."

"Things are no better at the state level—only a handful of state parties have a rural caucus to recognize geographic minorities," Barron writes. "Despite running on platforms that included pledges to form rural caucuses in their states, the Democratic chairmen in Georgia and South Carolina have yet to create them. In Massachusetts, a rural subcommittee adopted by the state party in February remains stillborn, having never met."

The Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee folded its Senate Rural Outreach operation after led by former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark) lost the 2010 election, while the House Democratic Rural Working Group no longer exists, Barron writes. David "Mudcat" Saunders, one of the party's premier rural strategists, told Barron, "For them to turn their backs on the South and rural America is electoral insanity,  and it's damned immoral." (Read more)