Most observers associate identity politics with Democrats because underrepresented groups have used their common destiny as a tool for political action since movement politics in the 1960s and 1970s.
The political science literature has highlighted another key identity that has been emerging in politics in recent years: rural identity. There has always been a rural-urban divide; think of Hamilton’s view of the advantages of growing cities compared to Jefferson’s ideal of an agrarian republic. However, recent works Katherine Cramer but also Nicholas Jacobs and Daniel Shea highlights how a growing common identity, even in America’s diverse and remote rural areas, deepens our political-cultural divisions.
Jacobs and Shea point to the 1980s when this identity began to crystallize. In various regions, cost pressures on family farms and ranches, suburban sprawl, or unavailability of water economically narrow rural communities, coinciding with the dire portrayal of rural life in popular culture. As national news outlets began to appear via cable television and the Internet, regional newspapers were shut down and divisive national narratives enveloped the local political context. Distinct, localized identities coalesced into a common national rural identity.
At the same time, globalization has closed down compact producers who were vital to community economies, so younger generations have moved to larger cities, and social problems and addictions have increased. For Cramer, a key element of this rural identity is a reluctance to feel overlooked by government. This has deepened partisan polarization, as rural Americans increasingly vote Republican and see the world in contrast to group identities associated with Democrats, and vice versa.
It could be argued that rural America is more Republican due to demographics and cultural conservatism. Rural America is whiter, older, and more religious, but in multiple studies, Jacobs and Shea control for these factors and find that rural identity independently contributes to support for Republicans. Moreover, on issues of race, LGBTQ+, and immigration, rural white Republicans tend to be only slightly more conservative than their suburban and urban Republican counterparts, and their news consumption patterns are also idiosyncratic.
Donald Trump didn’t create this identity; Cramer’s study linked resentment in rural Wisconsin to Gov. Scott Walker’s rise to power years earlier. It’s true that Trump’s rhetoric heightened the resentment surrounding this identity – 2016 and 2020 were characterized by a clash of partisan identities – but a politically empowered rural identity already existed – as evidenced by Sarah Palin’s meteoric rise.
What does it mean? Overlapping group and party identities means that people utilize identity-based filters to perceive politics and see their group as winning or losing compared to other groups. As Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler arguethe groups’ conflicting worldviews mean that the others are not only wrong about policy; the other side is causing the problems that policy must solve. Democrats threaten the American way of life that Republicans believe is being threatened, and Democrats say Republicans are keeping America from changing in order to fulfill their promises.
The picture looks bleak as we face the clash of identities in 2024. The solution is to separate identity from resentment by reframing the actual issues that cause it. Much like the rural Detroit area where I was teenage, economic dislocation, population decline, and drug addiction were clear crises, but they were usually framed as race. Ironically, that meant that these issues focused on identity rather than universal problems, helping to drive a wedge between rural and urban Democrats that left few Democrats representing rural America.
Both parties don’t have to try to empathize with each other if they don’t even try to compete for regions of America. From their leaders, people with shared identities see their fates compared to those of others, which deepens polarization.
Rural identity research shows that the real, underlying problems that reduce the quality of life in communities affect everyone – in gigantic cities and compact towns – and we have avoided intensely raising issues of inequality, immigration and addiction, while politicians who avoid these issues provoke other citizens based on less noticeable and sometimes even false culture war issues that fuel identities and polarization.
Despite the heat of this election year, there were victories. The bipartisan infrastructure bill has significant benefits for both rural and urban America. The bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act and the shared views on China tariffs by both presidential candidates recognize that offshoring has fragmented communities and harmed industrial America in rural and urban areas. Even though free trade advocates might disagree, globalization has outgrown society’s patience.
This literature confronts the reader with the question: Why do we allow people to divide us over beer brands and symbolic distractions when truly widespread economic and social problems remain inadequately addressed?
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