More than one-in-seven Americans live in rural areas
'Rural America is the new 'inner city', the WSJ writes.
There is no anger like the anger that comes from hopeless economic decline.
" In terms of poverty, college attainment, teenage births, divorce, death rates from heart disease and cancer, reliance on federal disability insurance and male labor-force participation, rural counties now rank the worst among the four major U.S. population groupings (the others are big cities, suburbs and medium or small metro areas)," the WSJ reports.
The truth of American politics -- and in all Western democracies -- is that politicians are urban people with urban ideas living in urban places. When they talk, they speak to urban people and their policies are designed to court those voters.
The unflinching trend of the past 100 years has been urbanization but many people still live in rural areas and they are increasingly disaffected and searching for a voice.
At the moment, no one is even courting those votes, they don't know how. But it's fertile ground for someone with new ideas.
See more about the economic decline of rural America in the WSJ.
