Introduction
The United States of America is among the superpowers of the world, and anything that changes in this country has impacted all the countries around the world. Their decision, foreign policies, trade, commerce, military affairs, politics, economic policies, and others have a huge influence on the politics, economy, defenses, and foreign policies of developed and developing countries. The United States is a democratic country, and the President of the state is the head of the country's government.
Moreover, they have a direct form of elections in which people voted after every four years to elect the President of the country. Two representative parties that participate in the presidential elections in America, these parties are democrats and republicans. Many of the researchers have noticed and mentioned the voters’ selection to vote for either party in their papers. The different States have different voting trends, love, and support to specific parties (Goetz, Partridge, & Stephens, 2018).
Despite being a superpower and a developed country, American citizens and states are also divided into underprivileged and privileged states. People in these states have different problems and expectations from the government that will be formed to solve their issues accordingly. Racism, gender inequalities, and class differences also hit the United States more than any other country in the world. Southern America and the states with black people are underprivileged and wanted a government that can solve their basic problems of food, education, and employment disparities.
Moreover, these states have been found to support the Republican Party, and their votes help Donald Trump to be elected as the President of the United States in 2017 (Adamy & Overberg, 2017). A reporter and journalist, Robert Leonard, has mentioned his understanding of Trump's victory in the presidential elections in 2017 because of the support of rural people and rural States. This claim-based paper would elaborate the claim that rural America supported Trump as a president and the evidence from other sources apart from this essay (Leonard, 2017).
Claim
Most of the reporters and journalists that covered the US Presidential election every four years were found impressed with the voting trends of different states in America. This article was written by Leonard and was published in the New York Times claims that rural America supported Trump, or we one should say Republican Party in the presidential elections and they show their support for Trump despite his hell nature, ugly fights, and the successful completion of 8 years of Barack Obama in the White House as a president elected from the Democratic Party and who was the African American talking about the rights of minorities including African Americans and Native black.
However, these minorities and the weak black community voted for Trump. This is the claim that the writer is presenting. Moreover, he gives the example of the people of Knoxville Lowa, an underprivileged county in the United States. The writer belongs to this state, and he spends his childhood and present-day life in this state (Leonard, 2017).
He said in his article that the people of Lowa did not understand the problems of rich people, talking bullshit on human rights and freedoms. However, people like them who go for the work to get basic needs for their families, their children can get the education and better quality of life, they need a government that can understand their problems and invests in their problems rather than providing to the privileged people from the underprivileged people. He argued that his family and the liberals in his county vote for the Democratic Party and never understand why most nonliberals or traditional people vote for Trump.
He added that most of his county men and women are hard workers, believe in church, family, and cops. They did not understand feminism, abortion rights, and socialism, and they became satisfied with three times meal, good healthcare facilities, employment, and education for their children. They didn’t have big ideas of liberty and freedom of living. They just wanted America and are concern about basic needs, not luxurious lifestyles like the rich county people (Leonard, 2017).
Summary of the article
The article was about the priority of Rural America to choose Trump to be the President of America, in which the writer gave the example of two young boys working in the coffee shop, also worked in summers to pick sweet corns and professionally one was a welder, and the other was the university student on the scholarship, they both were talking about the problems of rural America and showing their support towards Trump and their logic to supporting him were logical and rational according to the writer despite being liberal and supporting Democratic Party.
He further added that the new generation in these rural counties also supported the traditional ways and believes that socialism is evil and wanted to save Christ and their tradition alive, and this could be done by supporting Trump. Moreover, these people supported the church and home culture and believe that the liberals believe they are despicable and horrendous for their future generations (Leonard, 2017).
Another important connection between urban communities with Democratic Party and rural areas with Republicans is the definition of good and bad humans. Democratic Party believed that humans are always good and nice and blame others for the inhuman behavior of humans, like they blame guns, poverty, unemployment, other countries, etc.
Therefore, they emphasize the gun regulations, drug regulations, and other reforms and blame them for everything, and the whole tenure would be utilized in blaming others and making unnecessary reforms, policies, and legislation that has nothing to do with the underprivileged rural population. They supported by the concept of Republicans that the human is naturally bad, they need to learn how to behave well and good with others.
Therefore, they did not blame others and were involved in the unnecessary complications, and would work to provide labor, education, and basic needs of the rural people. Their focus is America and its citizens rather than foreign policies, international labors, and unnecessary reforms and policies because the rich communities found racism, socialism, Islamophobia, and other liberal problems as issues to be solved on an urgent basis because they have all the basic needs, the government invested in their counties and all the taxes have been utilized on them.
All the offices are in their cities that’s why they found these issues as problems to be solved whereas, the rural people need their traditions alive and wanted basic rights for themselves. The author concluded that the elections were not between urban and rural states. It was between rural and urban counties as many of the rich states have rural counties as well (Leonard, 2017).
First Evidence for the claim
Above mentioned are the details and supporting arguments from the author, who claims that the rural people vote for Republicans in the American presidential elections and elected Trump as the President of America. To prove this claim, evidence from other sources would be presented over here to justify his claim. A professor of sociology and director of religion and culture at the University of Notre Dame, prof. Kraig Beyerlein wrote in his article to support the claim of Leonard that religion and cultural values play an important role in the formation of ideology and party agendas.
Moreover, it established the point of view of the party and their targeted audiences, and the audiences can also target the party to whom they can favor according to their similar ideology and cultural norms. In the case of the presidential elections of America, this concept works to understand the beliefs and ideology of the party and their targeted audiences.
Giving and elaborating his theory, Beyerlein explains that the Democratic Party was supporting gay and lesbian rights and were promoting their rights and freedoms in the country. This clearly shows that they wanted the support of liberals and the urban population and their claim of protecting the minorities and establishing legal systems for the marriage of lesbians and gays. There was nothing wrong with supporting the minorities. The rural communities are also coming under the tagline of minorities and depriving communities.
However, this claim and support to the LGBTQ community offended the values and norms of the rural and traditionalists, and it gives them a clue that the democratic party did not support and value their tradition, cultures, religions, and values. Moreover, they also show their support to one community or a school of thought by neglecting the values of a community. This hinted at the rural people to selected the party that values their rights and values, and the party is non-other than Republican (Beyerlein & Klocek, 2020).
Second Evidence for the claim
Another study also claims that the cognitive approach, just like the values, beliefs, and culture, helped to decide the best party or candidate to vote for. The cognitive approach is the way that matches the frequencies of the party and people supporting that party. This study was conducted by Siri Carpenter, who is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Open Notebook and the editor of The Craft Science Writing.
According to him, liberals and conservatives have different cognitive approaches on different concerns and issues in the country, and likewise, both ruling parties elected for the presidential election do have their cognitive beliefs. The cognitive approaches of the liberals match with the Democrats and the conservative with the Republicans. He explains that how even reflexes in the brains helped in political decision-making with the help of brain reflexes. He further elaborates that the cognitive sense of the Democrat supports the wisdom and rationale of the liberals while the simplicity and clarity of the republicans support the logic of the conservative or rural America.
He said that the liberals were more tolerant of ambiguity, and the conservatives support a more structured system that they lack for many years. Conservatives demand structured policies that provide them all basic needs of daily living, and the dollars should be invested in their counties rather than spending on foreign aids, military affairs, and terrorism in other countries. However, the liberals’ demands for freedom of religion, speech, minorities, rights of LGBTQ and others because they did not face the problems of survival that are faced by every rural citizen daily and that differentiates them from each other on the means of a cognitive disagreement. This study concluded that differences in brain and cognitive reflexes of the two parties resulted in the larger division of the group of supporters in politics (Carpenter, 2021).
Third Evidence for the claim
The third evidence of rural America chose and voted for Trump was from the First steps of repeal, replace and repair. This paper was written by Jost in 2017, is a professor of Law at the University of Washington and lee university in America. He is also a co-author of The Case-Book of Health Law. In his study, Jost talked about the affordable care act about the health care system in rural and underprivileged areas in the United States.
He said that this act has huge disagreement between both of the parties, including Democrats and Republicans. The health care system in the United States is one of the best systems in the world. However, the irony is that it is limited to the urban and privileged areas of the country. Rural people cannot afford good health facilities due to the disparity of resources and tertiary hospitals in these counties.
He added that in this case, the Republicans supported rural communities by blaming the inauthentic and different health insurance coverage in the country. Moreover, the rural community could not afford the insurance premiums. Therefore, they could not get better treatment in well-equipped hospitals. However, the Democrats did not raise voice for the rural community in this affordable care act, and this act was not passed due to disputes and disagreement between the two parties. But the efforts of Republicans make it clear that this party supported the cause of rural America, whereas the Democrats did not give importance to the issues faced by rural counties (Jost, 2017).
Conclusion
The claim of Leonard was proved with the help of other sources and evidence that shows that the rural American people supported the Republican Party and Donald Trump in the elections of 2017 and other elections before this. The authors said that the Democrats party supported the culture, beliefs, norms, and values of liberals living in America, having all the basic needs and their demands are very unnecessary in the beliefs of the rural people. These people were also called traditionalists as they believe in the family system, religion, and culture. They found abortion laws and socialism evil for their generations and their country.
They support the party that understands their needs and invest in their interests; other sources also supported the claim of Leonard as they believe that the political, cultural, social, and cognitive approach of a party helps the voter understand their side, and then they voted for them. In the last, the rural people will support the Republicans until they supported the transitional values over lesbian and gay laws in America, supporting feminism and other problems that in terms of traditional people, unimportant, illogical, and evil for themselves. They believe in hard work, so they should be provided with better employment, healthcare facilities, the standard of living, and education for their future generations.
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References
Adamy, J., & Overberg, P. (2017). Rural America is the new ‘inner city.’. The Wall Street Journal.
Beyerlein, K., & Klocek, J. (2020). How Do Religion and Sexual Orientation Affect Support for US Presidential Candidates? Evidence from a Survey Experiment. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 59(4), 551-568.
Carpenter, S. (2021). The ideology of civic engagement: AmeriCorps, politics, and pedagogy. SUNY Press.
Goetz, S. J., Partridge, M. D., & Stephens, H. M. (2018). The economic status of rural America in the President Trump era and beyond. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 40(1), 97-118.
Jost, T. S. (2017). First steps of repeal, replace, and repair. Health Affairs, 36(3), 398-399.
Leonard, R. (2017). Why rural America voted for Trump. New York Times, 5.
