Why rural White Americans’ resentment is a threat to democracy

Some White Americans are showing signs of disagreeing with key democratic principles. Carol Yepes/Moment via Getty Images by Thomas F. Schaller, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Rural White voters have long enjoyed outsize power in American politics. They have inflated voting power in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House and the Electoral College. Although there is no uniform definition of “rural,” and even federal agencies cannot agree on a single standard, roughly 20% of Americans live in rural communities, according to the Census Bureau’s definition. And three-quarters of them – or approximately 15% of the U.S. population – are White. Since the rise of Jacksonian democracy and the expansion of the vote to all White men in the late 1820s, however, the support of rural White people has been vital to the governing power of almost every major party coalition. Which is why my co-author Paul Waldman and I describe rural White people as America’s “essential minority” in our book “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.” As a political scientist, I’ve written or co-written five books addressing issues of racial politics at some level of government or part of the country. My latest, “White Rural Rage,” seeks to...