How the Democratic Brand Turned Radioactive in Rural America | The Ezra Klein Show

President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard from red states into blue cities isn’t just a partisan attack; it’s also a geographic one. In the 2024 election, Donald Trump won rural areas by 40 percentage points. And you could see what’s been happening in Washington, D.C., and Chicago as a rural political coalition militarily occupying urban centers. The rural-urban divide in America has become so big it’s dangerous — for our politics, and for democracy. And yet, just a few decades ago, this divide didn’t exist. Urban and rural areas voted pretty much in lockstep. And for Democrats to gain power again, they’ll need to figure out how to win some of those voters back. So how did the Democratic Party lose rural voters? And what could they do to win their votes back? Suzanne Mettler is a political scientist at Cornell University and the co-author with Trevor E. Brown of the new book “Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy. 0:00 Intro 2:52 The urban-rural divide is relatively new 15:01 How educational polarization fits in 21:46 Affinity politics 31:49 How media influences the urban-rural divide 34:59 Why winning suburban voters can’t replace winning rural voters 39:52 What happens to the urban-rural divide after 2008 44:38 How Trump factors into the urban-rural divide 51:35 How Democrats can reverse the urban-rural divide 1:02:51 Book recommendations Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-suzanne-mettler Watch more on @EzraKleinShow Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html