Are there really enough rural Americans left to pay attention to?

As a resident of the one of the aforementioned rural states, Maine, let me say that the state tends to be moderate, more liberal in the southern more populated areas, more conservative in the northern rural areas.

Southern Maine has had to absorb a population of Somalian and Ethopean refugees over the last ten years. Portland has the most ethincally diverse high schools north of New York city.

There is a comprehensive health care program for uninsured called Dirigo. Public spaces are smoke free, strong environmental laws, and anti-discrimination laws for gays.

While it has two women GOP senators, Susan Collins will face a real challenge in '08 from Tom Allen first district congressman.

She and her colleague Olympia Snow were two of the GOP senator who voted to end the GOP filibuster aka procedural vote.

They see the handwriting on the wall.

Maine went for Clinton, Gore, and Kerry.

Nice work, Mr. Fox. (And don't those Lyric Opera bastards drag you down...)

Justin....

you have to remember that "rural" is code for "Bubba" --- the stereotypical WHITE male southerner who despises the "liberal elites", who has a "black friend" or two, and is especially vulnerable to the GOP's "coded" messages promoting bigotry and hatred.

When Mudcat talks about how "democrats need to focus on rural voters", he's certainly not talking about the very large number of rural blacks who live in poverty and consistently vote Democratic. He's talking about "my kind" and "our culture" i.e. the Celebration of the Confederacy and all it stands for (except that they realize that slavery was wrong, but only sort of, because the "culture" they want to celebrate was built on the backs of slave labor.)

I think the issue of whose Urban vs Rural is less important that the issue of who has experienced actual exposure to people who are unlike them. While city dwellers encounter people of differing religion and/or race or ethniciity routinely, people who live in small towns have less such exposure but unfortunately so do people who live in the vast suburban enclaves that surround our major cities.

The cultural inexperience we're associating with the "rural" mindset is far more widespread than the actual membership in the rural demographic.

Many years ago the New Yorker magazine published a map of the world on its cover. It clearly showed what was urban and what was rural. Urban started around the East River and ran to the Hudson River, west of that, except for a few scattered towns like Chicago and San Francisco and Tokyo, was rural.
I think that is still true for many folks.

I am frankly surprised that this doesn't get more coverage. Increased urban populations, and nearly universal winner take all electoral vote systems, means a party can win a state simply by focusing on said state's metropolis. And since the issues facing a metropolis are largely those facing all the other metropolises, the politician's job is arguably easier, as instead of focusing on transparently bogus policies that will be ignored once said primary is over (e.g. corn ethanol), they will instead focus on issues that are of interest to the majority of the country's population (e.g. health care). The predictable changes in campaigning (national ads, visits only to metropolises) also follow.

Not that this is necessarily any more representative of the "will of the people" than the old system; see scenarios where candidates can win the presidency simply by winning the 11 highest electoral vote states, by concentrating on their metropolises - they can win the country with only ~35% of the popular vote.

Heck, one could say that total rural unimportance is nearly the case already; look up a electoral result by county map of the last two presidential elections, and then realize that the Democrats essentially tied both elections despite taking a far smaller percentage of square area.

P.S. Note that, given their recent policy positions, this would indicate that the Democrats will have significant, bordering on overwhelming, advantages in the future (this is ignoring the current cyclical switch to the Democrats). However, the above numbers work the same regardless of any party's current positions.