For decades, The Democratic Party has aimed to form a wide geographical coalition, ranging from the low-income inner-city neighborhoods of Los Angeles to the highly educated suburbs of Washington, D.C. But there is one population they consistently lose: rural America.
I’ve long found this tragic. Rural people represent precisely the working-class constituency that the left hopes to champion. Sure, on cultural flashpoints such as abortion and gun rights, there can be ideological distance between city-dwelling liberals and their country counterparts. But the central economic promises of the left — affordable healthcare and housing, quality public education and reducing inequality — can and should speak to rural and urban Americans alike.
That’s why I’m a strong believer in the Abundance agenda. This new platform, popularized by the book “Abundance” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, seeks to invigorate the political left with new emphases on effective government, removal of bureaucratic red tape and innovative growth. While this movement could speak volumes to rural communities, Abundance has so far focused only on urban audiences. Abundance proponents must now change their rhetoric to include solutions for small town America, or risk sacrificing this platform’s potential as the future of the Democratic Party.
Let’s consider the Abundance movement’s foremost concern: housing shortages. Abundance scholars believe two phenomena are to blame. First, wealthy urbanites and suburbanites weaponize zoning laws and legal statutes to block affordable housing development in their neighborhoods. Second, endless layers of bureaucracy, the result of well-intentioned but superfluous construction codes and regulations, have delayed much-needed construction. Abundance liberals hope to dismantle these barriers through targeted deregulation, unleashing both private and public urban development processes in order to ease costs.
This laser-focus on new housing creation could be a boon for rural residents — over half of rural renters pay more than 50 percent of their income towards housing costs. Just as in cities, many rural government housing programs have been hampered by bureaucratic sludge. Take the USDA Section 515, which provides Rural Development (RD) loans to construct and maintain affordable housing. If a developer wants to sell an RD property, they must endure an arduous, months or years-long process involving three costly appraisals and a USDA application requiring over 40 separate documents. It’s no wonder one property owner declared, “the best way to get out of an RD property is to die.”
Abundance scholars could have offered the perfect solution to small towns starved of housing: slash red tape, and you’ll end up with a surplus of affordable units in your community. So, what have Abundance writers actually proposed to politicians with regards to rural abundance? Nothing! In fact, they argue that America should strive to move all of its residents into dense, urban housing to improve productivity and reduce carbon footprints.
Further Abundance initiatives would fit seamlessly into rural communities. Take another top issue, energy. Abundance scholars see the solution to climate change not as mere conservation, but innovation: combining public capital with private ingenuity to help clean energies outcompete fossil fuels on cost. A taste of this vision could be seen with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which brought $129 billion in wind and solar investment and generated over 115,000 jobs in largely rural regions. Abundance proponents would want to boost those numbers and make investments in the reliable and efficient energy sources, such as nuclear and geothermal. Alas, they make almost no mention of the fact that rural America would reap these rewards.
Now, to be clear, Abundance only became a formalized “movement” a few months ago; beforehand, its ideas were responses to the particular problems of large coastal cities. Nonetheless, Abundance writers such as Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson and Misha Chellam are clear in their aim to influence the national Democratic Party, and ultimately, federal policy. In taking on this mantle, the Abundance movement must pivot away from urban elitism and make room for the boondocks.
You may ask: if Abundance proponents want to influence Democratic politics, why even bother winning over rural Americans? Contrary to popular belief, rural voters are key to Democratic performance. In critical presidential swing states such as Wisconsin and North Carolina, over one-third of the population is rural, and some of the most competitive House races of 2024 were rural battles. Democrats’ deterioration among rural voters played a large role in their 2024 losses — and this was largely of their own making. Starting around 2015, the Democratic National Committee began to intentionally starve rural county offices of resources in favor of urban and suburban centers, and hasn’t turned back.
If the left considers rural voters a lost cause, they will be — but the right messaging can win them back. Believe it or not, the most successful rural Democrats today are just Abundance liberals by a different name.
Take Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, a largely rural state where President Donald Trump won almost two-thirds of the 2024 vote. Governor Beshear’s office has collaborated with modular housing manufacturers and streamlined the state’s housing agency to create more affordable rural units. Under Beshear’s purview, Kentucky has attracted companies building hydroelectric storage, EV batteries and residential solar. All told, these moves have added tens of thousands of rural jobs and made Beshear popular even among die-hard rural Republicans.
The conclusion from Beshear’s success is simple: rural voters are hungry for a platform that brings economic prosperity to places they call home. Where Democrats have abandoned rural places, Republicans have filled the vacuum, appealing to these grievances and winning with little opposition. Yet, time and again, Republican policies, from sky-high tariffs to Medicaid and food stamp cuts, have only further harmed their rural constituents.
Democrats won’t win back rural voters by getting swept into culture wars or class warfare. Instead, they must focus on bread-and-butter economics, alleviating the skyrocketing costs of housing, childcare, healthcare and transportation that impact all working class people. Amidst Republican failures, Abundance presents Democrats with an opportunity to refresh their once-neglectful economic platform and reinvigorate rural voters’ confidence in Democratic priorities. The critical challenge for the movement now – as with the whole Democratic party – is branding.
Will Abundance come to be seen as the champion agenda for small town families? Or will it stay relegated to the coffee chats of D.C. policy wonks and Bay Area tech-bros? The answer will lie in whether or not it embraces rural America with open arms.
Caleb Rasor CMC ’28 is studying economics and mathematics. On campus, Rasor is a data journalist at the Lowe Institute, a podcast host at Free Food for Thought and co-founder of Claremont Students for Abundance. Back home in Tucson, Arizona, he spends much of his free time hiking, camping, foraging and fishing with friends and family.
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