Hey, I'm Matt Rothschild and welcome to this episode of the Wisconsin Forward Podcast
on the Civic Media Radio Network and at civicmedia.us.
Today we're going to continue probing the so-called rural urban divide, which I began last
time when I interviewed UW Professor Kathy Kramer, the author of The Politics of Resentment.
Now for this one I'm talking with Mike McCabe who wrote Blue Jeans in High Places and
with Bill Hogseth, organizing director of a group called Grow, which stands for Grassroots
Organizing of Western Wisconsin. So let's get going. Joining me now is Mike McCabe, the former
executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. He's written two nonfiction books including
Blue Jeans in High Places and now he's got a fun first novel out entitled Miracles Along County
Queue to just finish this morning, I gotta say. You can hear him every Wednesday morning at 7.30
a.m. on the John and Gordy show on WMDX and Madison and on the Civic Media app of course.
Mike McCabe, welcome to the Wisconsin Forward Podcast. Good to be with you Matt.
You know, I was thinking back, must have been 12, 13 years ago, you were at the Wisconsin Democracy
Campaign, I was at the progressive and we were both speaking at a place up north, small town,
you spoke first and then I spoke. So I got to hear you speak and you said something that I had
and heard before, which was that the Democratic Party has a brand problem. Of course, now everybody's
talking about the Democratic Party having a brand problem. What did you mean by that and how did
you detect it? Well, part of the brand problem at that time just was that the Democrats were known
as the party of government. And for people in rural areas, there's always been strong anti-government
sentiment. They're people who believe in self-reliance and self-sufficiency and they,
and they, you know, there's this sense of pride you don't want welfare or relief as they would call
it. And even when they need the help, they take it only reluctantly. And so there's just this
feeling that there's a suspicion about government and a sense that, you know, just leave us alone.
Let us live our lives the way we want to live. And the Democratic Party had really become identified
as the party of government. And so in rural communities, that was a brand problem. But I think more
broadly, and now we see it in much sharper contrast, what I noticed back then was that the Democrats
were losing the working class slowly, ever, ever so slowly, but surely they were losing support
among working class people. And the dividing line was really whether you were college educated
or not college educated. And the Democratic Party was increasingly becoming the party of the
college educated. And my dad was had an eighth grade education and had a real problem with me going
off to college when I decided to do that. You know, and I think it hurt him deeply and he tried
to talk me out of it. And college educated friends of mine would hear that story. Your parents tried
to talk you out of going to college. They thought that that was a bad thing. And I was, well, you know,
that's part of the culture there. And so there was that dividing line too that I was noticing back
then. And you can, you can feel it much more sharply now because it goes beyond rural America.
It's working class populations in general. And one of those dividing lines is education.
It's interesting. You mentioned that the Democratic Party was identified as the party of government.
I'm thinking back to the new deal where the party of government, FDR, the Democrats,
the government was solving people's problems. And they could, if you were the party of the
government, that was a good thing. And the government was working for working people. And they
could identify people would have two pictures up in their little houses. One would be of Jesus
and the other would be of FDR. Exactly. And my dad, with the eighth grade education, he was,
he was born in 1919, lived through the depression, went to World War Two, fought in World War Two.
He only ever once voted for a Republican and that was Dwight Eisenhower. Other than that,
he worshipped FDR and measured every candidate he ever voted for the rest of his life by
the extent to which that candidate reminded him of FDR. And so Roosevelt was a looming figure.
But there was a situation where I think they did feel that that president used the power of
government to help people like him, people, people like, like he and his neighbors.
Yeah. And that relates to something else I've often heard you say that the Democrat party,
when they were in power, unlike an FDR's time, didn't deliver tangibly to people so that people
could say, yes, thank you to whichever Democrat was in power for giving us this. And except for
the Affordable Care Act, which is highly flawed, because it's not Medicare. It's hard for me.
It's hard for anybody really to identify what is the Democratic Party delivered for you. And
especially if you're a working person who has seen the jobs flee or in your novel, they've seen
their small town decimated by the paper mills dying and the big farms taking over everything.
And the small town's not what it used to be. It's just hard for people to say, it makes a
difference who you voted for. Yeah. It is hard to come up with a list of achievements that rival
social security and Medicare and the, and, you know, the rural electrification, the GI bill,
all of those things that my dad looked at and said, well, that helps us. We all benefit from that.
It's hard to come up with a comparable list over the course of the last 50 years or so.
I want to get also back to what you said about the divide between educated, college educated,
and non-college educated. And your novel, even, that you described Madison as a place where
people look down upon other folks because, you know, they're highly educated here. And this
resembles Kathy Kramer's book, The Politics of Resentment. So it's a resentment of feeling
look down upon or ignored. One of the things I hear from left of center audiences really frequently,
and it's usually phrased in the form of a question. So why are these rural people voting against
their own interests? I hear it all the time. And how do you respond to that? I really have two
responses. First of all, my initial response is, no, they're not. They're voting for their interests
as they define their interests. And you don't get to define their interests. You might think that
they're voting against their interests, but that's based on how you think they should think.
And they get to decide for themselves what their values are and how they define their interests.
But my other answer is that we all vote against our own interests. So, you know, you really
are demeaning them for behavior that we ourselves engage in. I've been lucky. I've never applied
for unemployment compensation. I've never had to make a worker's comp claim because I was injured
in a workplace. I've never been on food stamps. But I support those programs and those policies.
So it could easily be said, you're voting against your own self-interest. You haven't personally
benefited from that. So why are you supporting politicians who advance those kinds of policies?
We all will make decisions about what we think is for the greater good or what is beneficial for
our society as a whole. Even if we don't personally benefit from those programs, rural people are
no different. They think about their values and they think about who will advance those values
best. And yes, sometimes it means that something where they could actually benefit from gets cut,
or doesn't get continued. But when they're disparaged for voting against their own interests,
what I tell audiences is that they hear you. They know you think that about them. And it drives
a wedge between you and them. It helps create that rural urban divide. And there is tremendous
resentment because what they hear, when they hear somebody say you're voting against your own
interests, what they hear is you're stupid. You're an idiot. And the fact is, we all will make
decisions sometimes about how we voter, who we support in elections that might work against our
own personal self-interest. So it's a values thing? Absolutely. It's an absolute it's a values
thing. And I think now it's gotten corrosive enough. The rural urban divide has gotten corrosive
enough that if this politician is with them, who those people who look down on us, I'll vote for
the other side. Because I don't want to be in their tribe. I don't want to be among them because
they think so little of us. And that's where it really gets poisonous. And I think we're basically
at that point. Talk a little bit more about the appeal that Donald Trump has had. And I'm not
talking about the far right neo-Nazis. The person who has a swastika on their bicep, their flies,
a confederate flag at the back of their pickup truck. But otherwise seemingly decent folks
voting for Trump. I actually think I've had thousands of conversations with Trump supporters.
And people who are from the area where I grew up, they're largely Trump supporters. And I've
talked with so many of them. And the interesting thing is there's no two alike. No two
Trump supporters alike. They come to them for different reasons. They reach them through different
doors. But I think one of the common characteristics of Trump's support is that they
they want to basically want to flip the bird to the political establishment. And he's the
biggest middle finger they could find. And he wants to blow stuff up. And they want to blow stuff up.
So this is a real strongly populist moment where people want upheaval. They want radical change.
And they see the Democrats as being sort of the party of the status quo.
Steady as she goes, keep things the way they are, keep the programs moving along the same lines.
They've been moving the last 50, 60, 70 years. And people are thinking, but this isn't working for
us anymore. Our town is dying. I'm losing work. I'm having a hard time supporting my family.
And I don't know how the heck I'm going to go to the doctor if somebody in family gets sick,
because I don't have health insurance. And they're thinking we got to do something dramatic.
We got to shake things up. And they feel like the Democrats have have taken a more a more
moderator or or safe approach. They see the status quo being reinforced. And so it's basically
when you think about Hillary Clinton was put up against Donald Trump, who better epitomizes
the political establishment than Hillary Clinton. Then Joe Biden, same thing. And so I don't think
it's that they love Donald Trump. I don't think it's that they even like Donald Trump.
It's that they see Donald Trump as somebody who's going to, who's going to blow things up.
And they saw Clinton and Biden as people who would kind of keep things the way they are.
And the way things are is now working for them. I think a core, it loves them. But the wider
Trump appeal gets to where you are. And I think your point about Clinton and Biden and also,
I mean, Kamala Harris and I don't blame her. She was given a terrible deck to play with. But
the decision to go, you know, Liz Cheney to Bernie Sanders or Liz Cheney to Elizabeth Warren,
we're all in this together might have told people with the exception, maybe a Bernie,
that, you know, this is the established. You know, let's keep things. These guys are crazy on the
other side. Trump's crazy. You know, we'll we'll have a steady hand on the wheel. People don't want
the steady hand. But there again, when you talk about the education dividing line, college educated
people are feeling better about about where the country is and where the country's headed,
then working class people have been feeling. And so college educated people are going to be more
likely to say, yeah, you know, Hillary will, you know, she'll be a steady hand, you know, guiding
the ship. And they felt the same way about Biden. Let's just keep things calm. Let's keep things
steady. And then there are people who are feeling desperation. And they're saying that's lethal to us.
We need to really uproot things and really shake this thing to its roots and and and Trump embodied
that. You know, whether whether, you know, in policy is kind of an abstraction here. It's more,
it's more of a leadership style that they were drawn to in a sense that he understands me or he
gets it. You know, it's some gut level. Yeah, exactly. And they understood that from Bernie too.
That's why there was a overlap there. That was the amazing thing is I talked to so many people
who said I could go Sanders or I could go Trump. In 2016, that Sanders would be would be great.
Trump would be great. Well, when you think of it in an academic way, put them on a traditional
political spectrum, the tour on oppositions of the of that spectrum. But that's not what people
were feeling. They sensed that Bernie got it and that he was and that he was ready to go in there
and and really shake things up. And they got that same sense from Trump. And when Bernie wasn't an
option, Trump became their their remaining option. Yeah, there we are. We've talked about the
urban world divide. How do we bridge it? I think part part of it is is just through greater
understanding. One of the things that I hear all the time, people say, well, you know, they only
vote the way they are because they're racist or because they're misogynist or because they're
they're homophobes or whatever. The interesting thing is that I can tell you growing up in in
Clark County, people were more socially conservative than than they are now. They're more accepting
of of gay families now than they were then. They are more accepting of gender equality now than
they were then. And yet they were electing Democrats back then and now they're solidly voting for
Republicans. And and as far as race, if if if race determines their vote, then how do you explain
Barack Obama in 2008? He won dozens and dozens of rural counties in Wisconsin and became
president as a result. How do you explain why Tammy Baldwin also won dozens of rural counties in
Wisconsin and out lesbian gets elected over Tommy Thompson, a four term governor. And they chose
Tammy Baldwin in a lot of rural counties, you know, in in my own hometown, the little town our
farm was closest to is a town named Curtis, about 150 people then all white today. It is a
majority minority community. The majority is Latino. So I think people need to understand that
rural communities are not like, you know, may bury RFD. It it's a different world out there. It's
and you know, if you say that they only vote the way they are because they're racist,
the majority of people in Curtis are not white. And and and they and they are voting for Trump.
And it speaks to just the dismissiveness again, the condescending attitude, patronizing attitude
that people have when they just paint with such a broad brush. Yeah. It is and that that's the thing
is is rural communities are complicated. They're very stratified, not everybody thinks alike, not
everybody looks alike, not everybody acts alike. And and with that's one of the things I tried to
capture in my novel is the stratification of rural communities and people who lived up on the hill
and and were and sort of look literally looked down on the rest of the community. And and that's
very pronounced in rural communities there. They are complicated places. And I think the more
we are willing to open our minds to that complication, the closer we'll get to an understanding of
rural life that can help us, you know, live in harmony politically with with people. And the other
thing I would say is that is that I remember a time when Democrats were were representing those
communities. Dave Olby was the mayor of Congress. Tom Harnish was the state senator. Frank
Nicolay, one of the most progressive members of the state assembly ever was from Nielsville representing
Clark County in the state assembly. And and FDR was a revered figure. Today the word Democrat is
a curse word. And they don't they don't want anything to do with a liberal or a Democrat. But
that will change. They'll they'll they'll tire of when when Republicans don't deliver for them,
don't make their lives demonstrably better. That will change. And there'll there'll be that shift.
Now I'm old enough to have seen that shift occur from rural Wisconsin being a Democratic stronghold
to to now Clark County is as red as any county in America. It is it is solidly Republican. But
that will shift Mike McCabe's been my guest on this Wisconsin Ford podcast his novel, which I
highly recommend a really good read miracles along county cue. Mike McCabe, thanks for being my
guest in my pleasure. Great to see you. With me now is Bill Hogseth. He's the organizing director
at a great group called Grow grassroots organizing of Western Wisconsin. Bill Hogseth welcome
to the Wisconsin Ford podcast. Hey Matt, it's good to be with you. Yeah, I really wanted to pick your
brain on you know what's going on in communities across Wisconsin that not that are not in the urban
centers of Madison or Milwaukee. I know for some folks who live in those cities, you know,
they can't really relate to what's going on in rural Wisconsin or small town Wisconsin. And I know
you've been plowing those fields for years now and maybe able to help us out. First of all, I wanted
to just get your sense as to why rural counties in Wisconsin lurched toward the Republican party over
the last two decades, not so much the last four years, but in the 15, 16 years prior to that,
there was a big move toward the right. What accounts for that? Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would
just say is that rural voters are not a monolith. There's it's not just like we have a block of
rural voters in one county or another county and they all go this way or that way. It's actually
I think it's really complex and I think it's not just who's voting which way, but it's also who's
like staying home on election day and who's not voting or who is voting that that wasn't voting
prior. So like when you compare one election to another, I think there's actually more complexity
than just like all the whole community arch towards the right or the left. In my county, which is
in Dunn County, my county voted, went with Obama for 08 and 12 and then went for Trump in the
last three elections in 1620 and 24 and like just I can I can speak only for my experience because
I'm not like a political scientist, but my sense is that the reaction to the way the economy has
been going for regular people in rural communities has created a situation where people are just
fed up with politics and they are very open to a narrative that says that let's just blow it all up
and that makes a lot of sense when you've been living in a situation where your community has,
I mean, there's been like economic upheaval over the last 40 years in my community. I'm 44 years
and just from when I was born in 1980 to right now, we've basically lost the entire dairy economy
in a county like ours. The time I was born there were 1100 dairy farms in my county. Now there are
70. That is an entire way of life that like supported, you know, basically small businesses that
supported entire families that has like gone away. I mean, that's a shrinkage of more than 90 percent.
Yeah, I mean, it's devastating. It's hard to like really explain in words like how that is
basically like flipping upside down in the entire like structure of a local economy and when you
have that kind of upheaval where people are suddenly kind of cast off to figure out how to make a
living, you look for answers and what why is what's happening in my community happening? Why is
why are all there are so many empty barns on the way into town now? Why is the main street
hollowing out? Why are many of our neighbors succumbing to addiction? Why is it harder to
earn a living when you're still working three jobs? So like, it just makes you really susceptible to
just blowing up the system. I think that's what that's what I would say. And Trump was the guy who's
blown up the system. You mentioned there are some people who, if they didn't vote for Trump, maybe they
stayed home, who is staying home? Yeah, I mean, let's just remember that like we, the United States actually
has pretty low voter turnout when compared to other industrialized democracies across the world.
We're usually at like 65% of eligible voters. That's not actually a lot to celebrate. There's a whole
chunk of people who just see no value in politics because whether it's a Democrat in the White House
or whether it's a Republican in the White House, from many people's perspectives, they don't see
much changing in their town. So who are those people? I think they're just regular people. I think
they're just regular people who've made an analysis that's really not that irrational. That politics
doesn't produce real outcomes for them. And so these are people who I think have made that,
you know, they've seen both parties not deliver for them. Right. And I think that's a really,
really important piece of this because I don't think it's just Trump. I don't think it's just
Obama. I think it's the whole political system. As it's set up right now, where it's soaked in
money, where it's really driven by consultants, where it's basically this mass marketing campaign,
people can tell when it's when it's kind of howled out and they don't really believe in it anymore.
And these are people I talk to, by the way. I mean, we do a lot of door knocking at grow and we
talk about these issues of people at door, their doorsteps. And this is just what I hear from,
from how people are making sense of the way things are right now. Well, it makes total sense to me.
I mean, people are fed up with politics as usual. They're fed up with politicians as usual.
I mean, it's not a shocker to me that two of the most popular politicians over the last 10 years
have been Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders because they're not typical politicians. One guy wasn't
a politician at all. And Bernie's such an atypical politician since he's right out there with his
grumpy old socialist self, you know, and just says, says what's on his mind. So I think people
appreciate that and want that. And they don't want the consultants or the pre-packaged plastic
politician. And they want answers to their problems. And that's where demagogues can come in.
So easily as we as we've seen with Trump, tell me more about what you're hearing when you're going
door to door. What's the first question that you ask people? How do they respond?
Well, I mean, every time I mean, we go door to door for different issues and different reasons.
But I mean, one question we always ask people is like, how are the problems that,
how are problems showing up in your daily life? Like literally what's keeping you up at night?
We really want to get into people's experiences and just just hear how
hear their stories basically. And so we always start every conversation from that standpoint.
Last year we were doing a lot of door knocking around the issue of housing. And it was like
what's keeping you up about housing? And we heard, you know, some people it's they can't,
their rent is going up, some people it's like there's black mold in their apartment,
some people feel trapped in their house because they they raised a family in a house and then
all the kids left and they want to downsize, but they find anything that's affordable. And
you know, there's so many issues. And it's just such a human issue housing that's where we start
rather than, well, what do you think about this policy or that policy or what do you think about
this party or that party? We start with people. And neither party has been really addressing the
housing issue squarely. Kamala Harris kind of waved at it in the 100 days that she was running,
but she didn't really make it real clear to people how she was going to help other than try to
build a few more, you know, five million houses or one million houses, whatever it was. But for
folks who are, you know, trapped in a house with mold or can't pay the property tax or can sell
their house because there's not an affordable house in the county or in the town they're living in,
that really wasn't a answer, certainly short term anyhow. Yeah. Why do you think
the Democratic Party, for instance, has not been hearing these issues as loudly as you
heard them every day when you're not gunned or worse? Um, I don't know. It's hard for me to
know why, why things are the way they are with the Democratic Party, why they do what they do. So
it's really hard for me to say. But I do know that like an issue like housing,
it, one thing I do want to say about this like question around the urban and rural divide and I
think housing is a way of illustrating this is that I think that the rural and the urban divide
is kind of a myth. And I think it is a myth that's intentionally perpetuated to keep us divided.
You know, if you're, if you're a part of a ruling class and you want to maintain
your position, you intentionally look for ways to divide people and you see with housing,
many people think it's an urban issue. But when you go door to door and a town and towns like
around where we are, um, and even in the rural townships, you hear that people are experiencing
the exact same stuff that people in, in areas where I live as they are in Milwaukee or Madison.
I don't knock doors in Milwaukee or Madison, but I talk to people who do live there and I do read
about it. Um, and, and it's the same issues. And, and what I see is that, um, what are the reasons
that housing isn't getting built in a rural area is often the same reason that housing supply isn't
getting built in an urban area and it's because housing is a commodity. And housing is, uh,
become not just a roof of your head. It's, it's a financial instrument. It's a mortgage, you know,
and that's used by private equity and banks to, you know, deliver profits for their shareholders.
And so when something is a commodity, there's always going to be an incentive to keep supply low
because that's what keeps prices high and that's what drives profits. So when you ask something
like why, why are the Democrats like not delivering on this or not hearing people's issues,
um, it kind of brings me back to the profit motive and, and, and the way our economy is structured.
Um, and when you think about it from that way, like rural and urban people are basically getting
squeezed in the exact same way by the exact same forces in our economy. It just looks differently.
And so painting that picture of like urban and rural people are different is actually totally
false. And I think that, uh, the more we can try to build a bridge between rural and urban as an
organizer, I think that could unlock like a really, really serious political force in this country
that could deliver some real gains for people. And how do you build that bridge?
Listening. Mm-hmm. It's always a good start.
Yeah, and also just like getting people together in the same room. It's like so often like
we get siloed off and, um, we don't interact with people who are different than us. So like,
you know, as organizers, we're constantly trying to do that in small ways and big ways. And just,
I think at some point when, um, when I'm in rooms with organizers who are organizing in Milwaukee and
Madison, I learn a lot. I've been just hearing their perspectives. And I know they hear,
they learn a lot hearing our perspectives. And I think the more we can create those kind of spaces
and then start strategizing together and start planning together and looking towards the future
with an imagination about how can you bridge rural and urban people into a political coalition.
I think a lot could happen if that, if that were the case. Yeah, I look forward to that. And
just as the urban world divide may be to some degree manufactured. So too, uh, this division
between red counties and blue counties. Yeah. I really, you know, you can look at a map of
Wisconsin after an election. I mean, they'll paint a whole county red or a whole county blue.
And it bugs me so much because I've been to, uh, you know, all over Wisconsin to almost every
county. Uh, you know, even if on the map, it's a red, red county. You know, there are a lot of
people who aren't agreeing with Trump or the Republican Party or Scott Walker or whoever
from the Republicans is leading the state of the country and are doing great work. And so just
to paint a county in one color is so totally misleading. Doesn't that bother you too?
Yeah. Well, and it also just like ignores the, the reality of politics, which is that it's always
shifting and moving. And it's like politics is not this like static, monolithic thing. I mean,
like basically you basically take a picture of an area's political leanings. You take a snapshot
of that on election day. But it doesn't paint the whole picture because it's like, it's a fluid
thing that's moving throughout the year, throughout time. Um, and I just look at my own county and just
think about how much it's changed. And it was just a blue county not long ago. Um, and as political
conditions change, uh, voting patterns will also change. Um, and it, and it's just basically a
reflection, I think of how are people making sense of the pain that they're experiencing in the
world and like, uh, the way it's connected to the economy, the way it's connected, uh, to the,
to politics. And the way people make sense of that is going to drive their behavior.
And part of the way they make sense of that, it depends on the media that they consume.
And are you noticing, uh, kind of a silo media diet from people up there?
Yeah. I mean, that's such an interesting thing for me because, you know, I also, like,
I've had to recognize that I'm in my own various information silos. And like, as I organize,
and I organize with people from different generations, I'm, I'm hearing where they get their
information. And I have kids and I hear where they get their information. And one thing I just
definitely know is that I can't really fully understand the information landscape as one person
because it is, um, so fractured and so complicated now. And there's a million places where you can
kind of, um, go to to get your, to get your information. Um, so that's just like such a, such an
interesting, uh, part of the political moment we're in right now. And not, one other thing I just
wanted to say about, like, kind of the fallacy of red and blue counties too, is that it also
presumes that the red and the blue are static things. Like, there's this constant realignment
and alignment of what these parties are and who they're speaking to or who they're not speaking to.
I mean, you've seen like, uh, the Democratic Party kind of abandoned working class voters. You've
also seen the resources that they put into a rural organizing decline. And you see, I mean,
the the Republican Party too has also undergone this massive shift. So what is a red county or a
blue county just seems like, um, a really simplistic way of looking at it. Yeah, I totally
resist those terms of myself. Uh, how long have you been at grassroots organizing of Western Wisconsin?
Well, I've been at grow for three years and the organization was started, um, at the in 2020 by a
group of folks outside of River Falls who got together around the farm table and, uh, saw some
things they wanted to change in their community and they started organizing and, um, one thing led
to another and they they had some success and some, uh, some energy created through some of the
campaigns and we're now, uh, we're now an organization with staff. We cover seven counties. We do
issue campaigns where we work on housing. We work on industrial agriculture. We help people get
elected to local government and we really, really focus everything we do, um, on developing leaders
from within our community to become like to become basically, uh, you know, agents within the
within the public arena, um, whether that's like trying to pass an ordinance through a city council
or like I said, trying to get trying to get elected. Um, we feel like the more leaders that we have in
this moment is what's going to make the difference because right now we need not just like one big
charismatic leader. We need thousands of leaders. So the way we develop them is by organizing.
Yeah, local homegrown leaders. You can't beat that.
Well, that's it for today. I'm Matt Rothschild and thanks for listening to this episode of the
Wisconsin Forward podcast on the Civic Media Radio Network. Thanks again to Bill Hogseth and Mike
McCabe for being my guest and thanks to my excellent new producer, Dom Lee, for polishing everything
up. Please check out civicmedia.us to find my next podcast and for other terrific offerings as we
continue to foster civic dialogue about our democracy right here in the Badger State.
