By Eric Levitz, The Intelligencer
Blue America is a nation with an ever-shrinking countryside. In 2008, Barack Obama won 875 U.S. counties; in 2020, Joe Biden won 527, thanks largely to the rightward drift of rural jurisdictions.
The fact that the Democratic coalition has grown increasingly urban is not inherently problematic; after all, the U.S. population is itself increasingly concentrated in cities. But America’s political geography has a significant rural bias. The middle of the country is home to a large number of low-density, low-population states, each of which boasts as many votes in the Senate as California.
Rural America’s overrepresentation lies behind the bulk of blue America’s present discontents. Due to the Senate map’s inequities, the Democrats managed to orchestrate a popular vote landslide in the 2018 midterms while still losing seats in Congress’s upper chamber. Thanks in part to the House map’s (less egregious) bias toward rural areas, Biden’s comfortable victory in 2020 coincided with a loss of House seats, while the party’s gains in the Senate were highly limited. As a result, Senate Democrats’ inability to achieve unanimity on climate and social policy has derailed Biden’s legislative agenda. Meanwhile, the party’s thin margin in the House all but guarantees a Republican takeover in November.
