When we simply write a place off as, like, 'Well, it's just Trump country,' for the people who are there, we do them a disservice on some level. It's their country, too.
We need a president who understands the contributions and values of rural America, a president who understands the men and women who are up at 5 a.m. every day to grow the food that we put on our tables.
Middle America is dying for a voice.
In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman.
I'm a regular dude from Kansas who grew up with pigs and cows.
I'm always making Butcher Holler sound like the most backward part of the United States-and I think maybe it is.
Reagan grows up in 1920s Dixon, Illinois, and it's the heartland of America. It's a time when Americans are particularly drawn to this small town world because it's beginning to pass.
When news of the crash came, probably a lot of people in small towns and farms across America felt a sense of grim satisfaction that the sinners had finally been punished for their wicked ways.
To keep farmers on the farm we must maintain a strong farm safety net, but we will also have to build a thriving companion economy to compliment production agriculture in rural America.
To drive a car in rural America is freedom. Before I had a car, I'd never seen a rock and roll show, I'd never seen a comic or a show.
I've always liked country music. It's a certain aspect of America that goes back to the British Isles and the influence is very native to America.
I'd lived in West Virginia on and off for four to five years growing up. I'm familiar with Bible Belt, with Appalachia, 'Hillbilly Elegy.'
I don't think the real America is in New York or on the Pacific Coast; personally, I like the Middle West much better, places like North and South Dakota, Minneapolis and Saint Paul. There, I think, are the true Americans
It was very much like Norman Rockwell: small town America. We walked to school or rode our bikes, stopped at the penny candy store on the way home from school, skated on the pond.
We will never recreate 'Iowa.'
I come from a rural state. People drive 50, 100 miles to and from work every single day. That is true all over America.
Hoosiers are practical people, and Hoosier Republicans in particular have a history of unifying.
Democrats have laid out a program that, if adopted, would make us independent of Middle Eastern oil in ten years, and create a new economy especially for those in rural America. Our program invests in clean energy alternatives and provides energy assistance for those in need.
If you take any populated place - any major city in America - and drive 45 minutes from that spot directly out of town you'll be in about as country a place as you'll ever find.
I remember a humorous episode from Bill Clinton's presidency in which his advisers prevailed upon him, one summer before his re-election campaign, to spend his vacation in Montana and Wyoming instead of the usual Martha's Vineyard. The theory was that he'd benefit from hanging out someplace a little more down to earth.
In the 1930s, photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange produced images of sharecroppers and Okies, which drew attention both to the conditions in which these unfortunates found themselves and to their heroic fortitude.
There really is a sense of internationalism in the heartland.
Among the rednecks of America, which there are many more than people seem to realize, it was terribly damaging. I got blamed for O.J.'s acquittal.
I think the sensibilities of having grown up in Upstate New York and the concerns, the fears, the hopes of the people there are reflected all over the country.
I first came across Chadron, Nebraska, by accident in 1994.
