How does resentment feed the rural and urban divide? 'White Rural Rage' seeks an answer.

Midday

Political scientist Tom Schaller, who teaches at UMBC, and former Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman have written a book that examines how rural communities wield out-sized political influence.

Going even further, to the chagrin of their critics, Schaller and Waldman assert that, quote, “white rural voters pose a growing threat to the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.”

But critics of the book say the threat Waldman and Schaller hypothesize isn't actually there. Nicholas Jacobs, a researcher cited in White Rural Rage, wrote for POLITICO that his work was misinterpreted by the book's authors. Jacobs found that 27 percent of rural voters—including 23 percent of rural Trump voters—think that if the opposing candidate wins in November, “people will need to take drastic action in order to stop [Biden or Trump] from taking office.” That is the exact same proportion—27 percent—as voters in urban and suburban areas who hold the same view.

The book is called White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.

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