MSNBC, Paul Krugman Panic Over "White Rural Rage" This week in undisguised class hatred: the New York Times and MSNBC slobber over a new book on the domestic threat MATT TAIBBI “Tom, I’ll start with you,” began Mika Brzezinski. “Why are rural white voters a threat to democracy at this point?” Fastball delivered, University of Maryland professor and co-author of just-released White Rural Rage: The Threat To American Democracy Tom Schaller took a swing. He and Mika first complained rural voters should be supporting Joe Biden, given his roots — you’d have to be pretty high to call Scranton “rural,” but whatever — then Schaller read off small town America’s charge sheet: rural whites, he said, are the most “racist,” “xenophobic,” “anti-immigrant and anti-gay,” “conspiracist,” “anti-democratic,” they “don’t believe in an independent press or free speech,” and are “most likely to accept or excuse violence,” for starters. White Rural Rage , which I made the mistake of reading, i