ICYMI: Democrats Continue to Struggle in Rural Wisconsin

[Madison, WI] – In case you missed it, Democrats’ attempts to campaign on bloated spending and two-cent gas price drops still aren’t resonating in rural Wisconsin. A new story in Politico discusses how Democrats are losing the messaging war in rural communities while lying about their Build Back Broke agenda – falsely claiming that the nearly $2 trillion tax-and-spending plan will not add to inflation and will not raise taxes on middle-class families.

As a Democrat county party chair points out, Democrats haven’t dedicated resources to rural Wisconsin because they have long taken rural communities for granted. Now, Democrats are scrambling to tout wasteful spending plans while rallying for unconstitutional vaccine mandates, attacks on our Second Amendment, and backdoor death taxes that would crush generational farmers – policies that don’t resonate with rural Wisconsinites and would obliterate their way of life.

Monroe County Obama-turned-Trump voter Sharon Stroh says it best: Democrats can only offer “a bunch of crap,” and rural voters know it.

Read more from Politico below:

Biden’s rural investments run up against the culture wars in Wisconsin
Politico
Meredith Lee
December 14, 2021

Democrats are making an all-out push to recapture support in rural areas by touting massive federal investments in everything from broadband to monthly child tax credit payments. But they’re facing some deep skepticism from the people the money is supposed to help.

[…]

But as local voters — who are overwhelmingly white, blue-collar workers — increasingly disagree with Democrats on cultural issues, GOP arguments against government spending are resonating, making it difficult for the White House’s messaging to stick.

[…]

Many voters in the area, like Sharon Stroh who voted enthusiastically for Obama in 2008, are full-time Trump supporters now. Stroh doesn’t doesn’t ever plan to vote for a Democrat again — no matter how much money they invest in her village of Wilton, population 500, which is slated to receive more than $400,000 in pandemic relief funding.

[…]

“We don’t need to print any more money,” Stroh said. “Obama talked about being shovel ready and all that. That was a bunch of crap.”

Stroh acknowledged money for new roads in her area would be nice, and even create some jobs, but she’s more concerned about her granddaughter learning what she described as “too much about gender identity” and race in her school in the Madison area, the state’s capital and a Democratic stronghold.

She plans to vote for Derrick Van Orden, the Trump-backed Republican who narrowly lost to Kind last year. 

[…]

Like many Democrats on the ground in rural areas, Mary Von Ruden, chair of the local party in Monroe County, said national Democrats haven’t dedicated the necessary resources to these areas for years. That makes it even harder to address voters’ genuine concerns about the spending while pushing back against misinformation, Von Ruden said.