General Discussion

Republicans are decades ahead of us on that. They started it with "culture wars."

Meantime, we have not promoted our own cultural values enough at local and state levels.

I am in western NY. NY is a blue state only because of NYC, Buffalo, and a couple smaller cities. The rural counties are solidly deep red.

My own county government used to have Democratic Party leadership and two of its largest cities used to have Democratic mayors and councils. The Republican culture wars turned the entire county government red. Only one small city still has a Democratic mayor and council. In the November election this year, two positions ran MAGA candidates, unopposed. Nobody even knows the name of the Dem candidate who ran against our extremely gerrymandered district's MAGA House representative.

State and federal party levels write us off as too red to bother with. There are private and state college campuses in the district and several demographic groups that could be reached if an effort was made, but the district is widespread geographically and campaign costs are high. The district and my county are financially poor, with only a handful of companies that have good paying jobs. A little effort from state and federal levels could add jobs and campaign funds.

I think that one reason for ignoring rural red areas is low population levels. Yet, we could gain Congressional seats from those rural districts with some investment in money and effort to reach the people.