Rural areas also tend to be at least as dependent on domestic shipping as cities, and not a lot of rural dwellers are growing enough of their own food to avoid

Rural areas also tend to be at least as dependent on domestic shipping as cities, and not a lot of rural dwellers are growing enough of their own food to avoid starvation if that's disrupted. Not like back when a really high percentage were farmers who grew both cash crops and varied crops & small animals for their own consumption. If all the crops for a 50 mile radius are soy beans and feed-corn, and there are no processing plants for either nearby, and you're not close to a large port... you're gonna have a bad time if the trains stop running and gas gets scarce. It's not like any but a small percentage of rural folks would be sitting back well-fed while the cities starved. The best-off of all might well be the coastal cities, in fact. The notion that mostly-empty red counties can just deliberately starve out the cities and win seems extremely far-fetched to me, in this our modern economy.