University of Maryland Professor: White Rural Voters Are a ‘Threat to Democracy’

BRZEZINSKI: “Joining us now, professor, a political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Tom Schaller, and journalist and opinion writer, Paul Waldman. Their new book out tomorrow is entitled ‘White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. Tom, I’ll start with you. Why are white rural voters a threat to democracy at this point? You would think, as we pointed out, looking at Joe Biden’s background and Donald Trump’s, that the opposite would be true.”
SCHALLER: “I mean, we lay out the fourfold interconnected threat that white rural voters pose to the country. First of all — and we show 30 polls and national studies to demonstrate this. We provide the receipts in Chapter 6. They are the most racist, xenophobic, ant-immigrant, anti-gay geodemographic group in the country. Second, they’re the most conspiracist group: QAnon support and subscribers, election denialism, Covid denialism and scientific skepticism, Obama birtherism. Third, anti-democratic sentiments. They don’t believe in an independent press, free speech. They’re most likely to say the president should be able to act unilaterally, without any checks from Congress or the courts or the bureaucracy. They’re also the most strongly white nationalist and white Christian nationalist. And fourth, they are most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse.”
BRZEZINSKI: “So, you mentioned a lot of negative factors about this demographic...”