The elections are done. The unrest is not. For some reason, many of us can’t accept an outcome that doesn’t match our expectations. Instead, we once again bitch that we were ripped off, that the other side stole the election, blah, blah blah, blah blah!

Don’t try to justify it all to me. I’ve seen the popular vote. And I know that the Electoral College ultimately decides, and as we all seem to know, the outcome is pretty certain.

I’m not asking you to just get over it either (I probably won’t.) And I’m not judging you if you want to just stew about it for the next four or eight years (I people probably will be too). Protest is a natural part of our democracy, and I celebrate the right to peacefully protest as much as I do the right to vote and the right of free speech, since RobZerrvations seems to be the epitome of free speech.

But there’s something that runs much deeper here. We are indeed a divided country, but not in ways that most people think. It’s not the white men against every person of color. It’s not even Democrat vs. Republicans.

I saw this coming some months back. In my job, I work with a lot of rural counties in Washington State. There is a huge have/have not divide between urban and rural in Washington. Eastern Washington is heavily conservative and the urban centers in the west are heavily liberal. There are pockets elsewhere of both conservatives and liberals, but the divide we see most at the state level and certainly the electorate level is between Eastern and Western Washington.

This recent election tells the same story nationwide. If you look at the numbers, and I’m not talking about the popular vote, the divide is daunting and alarming.

Here’s the Reader’s Digest version of the data. You can read an interesting article about this in The Atlantic or this one today in The Seattle Times, but there are other sources that confirm the data points and the resulting extrapolations.

There are 3,100 counties in America. Obama won handily in 86 of the 100 largest urban counties in the 2012 election, but only won 600 of the remaining 3,000 counties. He was fortunate that he had 12 million more votes in those 100 urban counties, because he lost by seven million in the rural counties.

Fast forward to this election. Clinton won the 100 urban counties by 12.6 million votes and counting, but she won only 420 counties in the rural parts of the U.S. Trump trounced Clinton in the other 2,580 counties by 11.5 million votes.

On CBS Sunday Morning a couple Sundays ago, they had a piece on people living in McDowell County, West Virginia, smack dab in coal country. At one time, the population was around 100,000. Today, the county only has about 19,000 residents. They voted 4 to 1 against Hillary.

This has been a traditional Democratic stronghold, going all the way back to Kennedy. But over the years, the Democratic party has increasingly pursued an increasingly liberal agenda, which doesn’t resonate in small communities that are economically challenged and often poor.

Remember back in the sixties when the Democrats were all about the poor? This time around, it was all about the middle class, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, gay rights, abortion… I could go on. The party forgot about the rural poor.

People in rural communities want to share in all the economic wealth of the urban centers are enjoying. But they don’t necessarily want to buy urban liberalism.

I can’t say I blame them. Part of the charm of rural life is that it hasn’t changed much over decades or even centuries. People can still leave their doors unlocked at night, everyone knows their neighbors by first name and chances are very good that if your children go out to play, they won’t be snatched by a pervert. The pace of life is slow and predictable, something a lot of my urban friends wish they had as they sit in miles of Puget Sound traffic, look at huge condo projects going up across the street where quaint bungalows used to be, and freak out when their kids are three minutes late in answering a text.

Sadly, creating economic vitality in rural areas is not easy. Employers want a qualified workforce but you can’t get the training you need until you know what an employer needs. Regulations have killed a lot of these communities as wekk. A good example lies in Skamania County here in Washington.

A state-of-the-art mill lies dormant there. Until 2008, workers at the mill made veneer. But regulations on timber harvests and a complex, burdensome review process has created a shortage of logs. The mill needs 15 million feet more of timber to open. Without it, it sits idle and the region’s economy continues to suffer.

I could name many more towns, just here in Washington State. These communities can’t grow without jobs and companies want vibrant communities to do business in, not ghost towns. The residents of these towns, traditionally Democratic strongholds, are angry and they are taking their anger out on the liberal agenda they see foisted on them by urban centers.

Now, I’m not saying this is what cost the election. But if you listen to people in small towns, especially those who have a history of supporting the Democrats, they have lost hope. They feel ignored. They feel that they are no longer important or relevant and that they have taken a back seat to the urban money-making machines. The result: they are angry, dispossessed and lashing out.

This divide will continue until someone pays attention to the economic disparity that exists nationwide. As I said, it’s not all about whites and minorities. The numbers don’t support that. Rather, it’s about a historic shift to urban centers, the decline of once thriving rural communities and age-old resentment by the have-nots of the haves.

Bitch all you like, but if you’re liberal, you need to realize that things are going to get worse, not better. And until the poor, the dispossessed rural folks have hope, you will hear their voices loud and clear at the polls.

So, go ahead and stop by Starbucks on your way to your protest rally in downtown Seattle or Portland. Continue to delude yourself that you were somehow wronged. Blame the supposed uneducated white men in small towns if you like. Continue to believe that you’re the smart one and that all these people are idiots, or worse, continue to marginalize them as being somehow less of a person than you are because they didn’t see the world through your urban eyes.

America is already great for many of us; we’re the lucky ones. But, there are those who are losing hope that their tomorrow will even come, let alone show any signs of greatness. And believe me, they are pissed!

In the Emerald City, thankful that I came from where I did, as I’ve never forgotten what it’s like to be poor,

  • Robb