I’m a rural guy. I’m not really a Democrat. I know theory and practice. I’m active in my local community which is 2/3 republican. I wrote the zoning plan for my city, the fastest growing town in western WI.

Whatever the DNC did in 2020 won’t hold out here.

You look at the voting maps and see huge geographical swaths of red.

That’s where I live.

That’s where I work and the community I help.

That’s where my wife saves lives. That’s the community I helped build.

I’m not “one of you”, whatever that is.

The DNC lost farmers and rural workers decades ago.

So much that the haven of “local control” — rural America — bows down to distant federal authority. Without federal support and government funding, these towns suffer.

THAT is something the “founders” would be shocked at.

Yet, the DNC has made no effort to reach these people.

There are just visions of a hyper capitalist “new deal” that simply reinforces big businesses.

I’m literally on DSL internet with a bankrupt national company. I can’t upload without crashing my modem.

Drugs are everywhere. Alcoholism is rampant. People are more afraid of delirium tremens and getting junk sick than they are of covid.

And all they here from the DNC is “regulate, regulate, regulate.”

And because people’s identities are tied into their fleeting work with corporations, they think regulations of corporations means regulations of people.

And they’re right.

Biden looks like he won this one, and that’s the right choice.

But the DNC as a platform is unsustainable.

They have zero plan to fight misinformation. Zero plan for education. Zero plan for rural reinvigoration.

People out here need support.

They need to know they’re more than a cog.

And the Trump community gave that to them. They felt part of something, even if that something amounted to a fandom.

People need to be liberated, not regulated.

That’s the platform for 2024.