Schaller & Waldman’s ”White Rural Rage” Thesis Misuses Data to Push an Unhelpful Narrative w/ Prof. Nicholas F. Jacobs

On this edition of Parallax Views, Colby College's Prof. Nicholas F. Jacobs, co-author with Daniel M. Shea of The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America, joins the show to discuss his piece in The Daily Yonder entitled "New Book on Rural America Started with a False Conclusion, Then Looked for Evidence". Jacobs offers a damning critique of the hot new book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy by Paul Waldman and Tom Schaller. Waldman and Schaller's book, which has garnered a lot of media coverage in outlets like MSNBC and The Washington Post, posits that the biggest threat facing democracy is the rage of white rural voters who they are more bigoted, xenophobic, prone to anti-government violence, believing in conspiracy theories like QAnon, and more than other portions of the population. Jacobs isn't in the business of giving a defense of rural America. That's not his interest as an academic. He is, however, perturbed by claims made in Waldman and Schaller's book because, he argues they misuse data and survey research in a way that is harmful to discourse about the current American political landscape, voter attitudes, and the urban-rural divide. Moreover, he argues that Waldman and Schaller's books fan the flames of right-wing talking points about Democrats and resentment against rural populations. But most of all he focuses on the issues with the data itself that's presented in the book. Get ready for a blow-by-blow breakdown of White Rural Rage on this edition of the program.