But the fact that the debates aired on CNN, rather than network television, was a bad start.
Once at a Dallas megachurch in 2018, an interview subject told me: "I figured it was OK to talk to you only because you weren't wearing a CNN badge."
In speaking with young voters across rural America, the one Democratic candidate whose name I heard repeatedly was long-shot businessman Andrew Yang. Like Trump, Yang benefits from his outsider status and his willingness to speak plainly about what ails middle America.
In comparison to Representative Tim Ryan, whose talk about manufacturing workers and "bills around the kitchen table" seemed overused to the point of pandering, Yang comes across as competent and refreshing when he talks about the truth that automation — not immigration — takes away American manufacturing jobs. This was a talking point I heard from voters in the Rust Belt, and they knew Yang was the source.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, has received ample praise for his insertion of faith during the Democratic debates. But I suspect many of the voters I interviewed in rural America were turned off by the way Buttigieg talked about faith on Wednesday. Buttigieg has a tendency to suggest that he is more Christian than others, especially Republicans. Buttigieg's seeming elitism and his penchant for formal language will likely be more of a barrier than his sexuality for these voters.
A reminder: 2016 Trump voters are diverse. Across the South and in the Bible Belt, many rural evangelical Trump voters likely will have a hard time voting for a female or gay candidate. But rural evangelical voters in states that will likely decide 2020, like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, talk less about social issues and more about the economy.
What they appreciate is a sense that Trump speaks directly to them.
That is an ineffable quality that Democrats need to pay attention to as the election moves forward: A sense by rural and Midwestern Americans that the Democratic candidate understands them and is speaking their language.
One surprising candidate who can do that: Spiritual guru Marianne Williamson, who on Wednesday chided Democrats for failing to tell real truths about their complicity in upholding wealthy America at the cost of middle America. Flint's water crisis, she reminded them, wouldn't have happened in wealthy Grosse Pointe, Michigan. If Democrats didn't start telling the truth about American socioeconomic divides, she said, why would Americans trust that Democrats were there to fight for them anymore than Republicans and Trump?
Afterward, she told CNN's Anderson Cooper that her remarks were inspired by the policies of senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the left's current answers to the anti-establishment fervour that elected Trump, as well as Obama in 2008. But it was Williamson's words that got the loudest cheers of the night.
•Angela Denker is a Lutheran pastor and journalist who lives in Minneapolis.
