Opinion: Small towns, shrinking and fighting back

Also: In Georgia, Democrats go with a voter-turnout strategy. View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Wednesday, May 23, 2018 [NYTimes.com/Opinion »]( [David Leonhardt] David Leonhardt Op-Ed Columnist First, the Georgia governor’s race this year is going to be a case study of whether Democrats can really lift the turnout of demographic groups that lean left but often don’t vote in midterm elections. Last night, Stacey Abrams won the Democratic nomination in that Georgia governor’s race. She isn’t only the first black woman to be a major party nominee for governor anywhere in the country — a welcome milestone. Abrams has also made clear that she plans to win by motivating liberals more than winning over conservatives. “The approach of trying to create a coalition that is centered around converting Republicans has failed Democrats in the state of Georgia for the last 15 years,” she [said recently](. The Abrams approach will not be easy. The turnout of voters under 30, as well as Asian-Americans and Latinos, tends to be extremely low in midterms — each below 30 percent. By comparison, African-American voter turnout is substantially higher, almost as high as white turnout in midterms, despite years of voter suppression against African-Americans in many places. (For more, see statistics from [Michael McDonald of the University of Florida]( But this is very much an effort worth making for Democrats. If young and nonwhite Americans started [voting more often]( it could transform politics. For more on Abrams, see pieces in The Times by [Michelle Goldberg]( and [Aimee Allison]( as well as this February profile by Mother Jones’s [Jamilah King](. Racism or economics? Regular readers of this newsletter know that I’m fascinated by [the debate]( over what made President Trump possible. Was it cultural anxiety — a combination of discomfort and bigotry sparked by Barack Obama’s election, immigration, same-sex marriage and other forces? Or was it economic anxiety — caused by a generation of slow-growing living standards for many Americans that was punctuated by the financial crisis of 2007-9. A fair number of political scientists and liberal writers believe the answer is overwhelmingly cultural. I believe the answer is both cultural and economic. It may ultimately be an unsolvable debate, but it’s still an important one, because it speaks to how other politicians should try to defeat Trump. I think that a [new Times Op-Ed]( makes an important contribution, even without relating to the debate in an obvious way. It’s by Philip Auerswald of George Mason University and Joon Yun of Palo Alto Investors, and it points out that Trump-style populism has flourished — around the world — in regions suffering from a dwindling population. “In the world’s largest cities, where populations are densely concentrated and growing, economies are generally thriving and cosmopolitanism is embraced. Where populations are sparse or shrinking, usually in rural places and small cities, economies are often stagnant, and populism sells,” Auerswald and Yoon wrote. “Why does it hold such appeal in these places? Nativist, nationalist rhetoric — ‘Make America (or Whatever Other Country) Great Again’ — appeals because it promises to restore the rightful economic and cultural stature of ‘common people’ in relation to a decadent urban intelligentsia.” In these rural areas and smaller cities, people often fear that their way of life is dying, and it’s not a wholly irrational fear. Good-paying jobs have left. So have many young people. Even among people who have remained and are doing just fine economically — a description that applies to many Trump voters — there is anxiety. It isn’t simply ethnic anxiety, although it can include racism and be sparked by it. And it isn’t simply economic anxiety, although it often does include a legitimate worry about a town’s or a region’s economic future. It’s a complex stew of dissatisfaction and concern that can’t be broken out in clean social-science categories. Economics and culture feed off each other. That’s why, as Auerswald and Yoon noted, this phenomenon is evident across much of the globe — and not only in a country that elected its first black president and legalized same-sex marriage in the past decade. To go much deeper into the inexorable connections among money, culture and morality, see “[The Dignity of Working Men]( a book by the sociologist Michèle Lamont. The full Opinion report from The Times follows. 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But Is He Innocent?]( Readers discuss a Nicholas Kristof column about a black man who he believes may have been framed for murder. HOW ARE WE DOING? We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [leonhardt@nytimes.com](mailto:leonhardt@nytimes.com?subject=Opinion%20Today%20Newsletter%20Feedback). FOLLOW OPINION [Facebook] [FACEBOOK]( [Twitter] [@nytopinion]( [Pinterest] [Pinterest]( Get more [NYTimes.com newsletters »](  | Get unlimited access to NYTimes.com and our NYTimes apps. [Subscribe »]( ABOUT THIS EMAIL You received this message because you signed up for NYTimes.com's Opinion Today newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Manage Subscriptions]( | [Change Your Email]( | [Privacy Policy]( | [Contact]( | [Advertise]( Copyright 2018 The New York Times Company 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018