Anthony Flaccavento, a farmer in Appalachian Virginia who ran as a Democrat for Congress in 2018, laid out a three-part prescription for how Democrats can regain trust among rural and working-class voters in an essay published Sunday by The Guardian. Drawing on his own campaign experiences and the work of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, an organization he co-founded, Flaccavento argued that the party must change how it thinks, talks, and acts toward the millions of Americans it has lost over decades.
Flaccavento described meeting a man while cutting firewood in rural Virginia who initially did not recognize him as a Democrat. “If my buddies could see you out here, working your tail off like this, every one of them would vote for you!” the man told Flaccavento, according to the essay. The encounter illustrated what Flaccavento described as a political divide built “over decades of decisions that pushed people further apart.”
Flaccavento traced the erosion of Democratic support in rural areas to what he described as bipartisan policy failures since the 1980s. He cited the “trickle down” economics begun under President Ronald Reagan in 1981, investor-driven trade policies over four decades, the weakening of antitrust enforcement by both Republican and Democratic administrations, and changes in labor law that he said made it easier for corporations to crush union drives. The essay noted that private-sector unionization fell from more than 30% to single digits over this period.
Over time, Flaccavento wrote, “rural Americans didn’t just experience different problems, they began living in different economic worlds.”
Flaccavento argued that many rural voters’ anti-elitism extends beyond Wall Street executives to include academics, media figures, and policy experts. He cited as examples the closure of textile mills in North Carolina and auto parts plants in Michigan after the North American Free Trade Agreement, which President Bill Clinton had promised would create 1 million net new jobs within five years, and the opioid epidemic that followed assurances by health professionals that OxyContin was safe and non-addictive.
“Anti-elitism here isn’t just about taking on the oligarchs,” Flaccavento wrote. “It’s about rejecting a professional class that many believe has helped sustain a system rigged against them.”
The essay cited Stony Brook University professor Musa al-Gharbi, who wrote after the 2024 election that “Democrats have become the party of elites” and that “the class composition of the Democratic and Republican parties has basically flipped over the last 30 years.”
Flaccavento acknowledged that racism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant hostility motivate a segment of Trump voters, but said that explanation “alone cannot account” for broader shifts. He cited data showing that 37% of working-class voters of color moved toward Republicans from 2012 to 2024ate, and that 13% of voters who supported President Barack Obama in 2012 voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
The essay’s first prescription — “thinking differently” — calls on progressives to recognize that “millions of rural and working-class people believe that the system is rigged against them, that the economy has failed them and the wider liberal culture despises them.” Flaccavento wrote that the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative’s trainings help participants move past the question “why do these people vote against their own interests?” toward a different understanding of the problem. He said many rural people do not want the federal government to take care of them, but rather “want the government to level the playing field by reining in big corporations and by investing in local communities so that they can solve their own problems.”
The second prescription — “talking differently” — Flaccavento described as “talking less, listening more,” with respect. He urged Democrats to eliminate jargon and academic language, speak “clearly, plainly and as succinctly as possible,” and use concrete examples instead of abstractions, a set of habits the initiative calls “talking like a neighbor.”
The third prescription — acting differently — centers on organizing collaborative local work that is not overtly political, such as packing and distributing food, picking up trash, or cutting and distributing firewood. Flaccavento wrote that “this kind of concrete, locally focused work changes the way rural liberals view their neighbors, and improves the view of Democrats among people in the countryside.” The initiative calls this approach “Community Works.”
Flaccavento also outlined a policy platform called the Rural New Deal, developed with Progressive Democrats of America, which he said includes rebuilding small town centers, investing in rural healthcare and schools, dismantling monopolies, and relocalizing small town banks.
Flaccavento described moments during his 2018 campaign that he said demonstrated the potential for bridge-building: a coal miner’s widow who told him “don’t you change a word you’re saying”; a former Republican county party chair named Dwayne who pledged support because Flaccavento understood farmers’ challenges; workers at a shuttered manufacturing plant who later won a class action lawsuit for compensation; and a Republican county supervisor named Lou who spoke publicly in support of his candidacy.
“Moments like that make the political divide feel less inevitable, and more something built over decades of decisions that pushed people further apart,” Flaccavento wrote. “If there’s a way across it, it begins with an unflinching look at how it formed: decades of bipartisan decisions that left rural communities and working people behind.”