Let Them Eat Tech

In the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton paid a visit to the community of Whiteville, a struggling small city of about 5,500 people in southeastern North Carolina. Hillary Clinton was having a hard time establishing support among poor and working-class residents in rural areas, and Bill—who had once proclaimed himself the "ambassador to rural America"—was there to help. In fact, the former president spent much of that October touring communities like Whiteville across battleground states in the Upper South and Midwest, where he empathized with the economic hardships rural voters were facing. If elected, his wife had a plan for "connecting small town and rural America to the successes of the American economy," he promised on these campaign stops. Above all, Clinton insisted, increased broadband service, cheaper rates for internet access, and more jobs in the tech sector would be the solution to rural America's woes.