Well, dang. Who knew Kamala Harris and Tim Walz read “Trouble in God’s Country”?

Actually, they almost certainly don’t. But it’s one heck of a coincidence that they announced a South Georgia bus tour less than a week after TIGC suggested exactly that.

Well, not exactly that. I recommended putting Coach Walz (and members of his old Mankato West High School football team) on a campaign bus tour across South Georgia now that high school football season is gearing up. I did not include Vice President Harris in that recommendation, primarily because I doubted it was the best use of her time. Plus, Walz is the best natural ambassador to rural areas the Democrats have had since at least Bill Clinton and arguably Jimmy Carter.

South Georgia has long been hostile territory for Democrats, Black and White alike. With very few exceptions, nearly every county south of Macon has tilted overwhelmingly Republican over the past three or four decades. GOP vote-shares of 75, 80 and even 90 percent are the norm. I wrote a piece several years ago positing that the Republican strategy in rural Georgia was pretty obvious. Basically, they were simply trying to run off all the Democrats. I also reported that they were doing a damn fine job of it.

Stacey Abrams launched her 2022 gubernatorial campaign in front of a shuttered hospital in Cuthbert, Ga. I thought she had gotten lost. White Democrats — including Jason Carter and former Columbus, Ga., Mayor Theresa Tomlinson — thought their rural roots would help them in South Georgia. They were sorely disappointed.

Harris deserves major props for venturing into South Georgia, but it’s a high-risk strategy. The Harris-Walz ticket has clearly put Georgia back into play, and it could once again be the decisive state. But it’s difficult to imagine she can pull the kinds of crowds she’s been getting lately (or, for that matter, that she could find a place to put them).

How will the national press play the small crowd sizes she’s bound to draw anywhere outside of Macon, Albany or Savannah? And is it really a good use of Harris’s time to take a 140-mile bus trip from, say, Dublin down U.S. 441 to Valdosta (with stops along the way in McRae-Helena, Douglas and Pearson) or the 180-mile west-to-east haul across U.S. 82 from Albany to Brunswick (with stops in Ty Ty, Tifton, Enigma, Alapaha, Willacoochee and Waycross).

Such a trip would, of course, give Harris and Walz an up-close-and-personal look at some of the poorest counties and communities in the nation. More importantly, it would give them a chance to articulate their plans for addressing the challenges of rural Georgia and rural America.

Since the Harris-Walz campaign is now apparently open to counsel from TIGC, here’s some more:

• Fly into Joint Base Robins for an event at the Macon Coliseum. It’ll hold about 10,000 people and they can probably draw from at least 20 rural middle Georgia counties.
• Offer Geoff Duncan a front-row seat on the bus (and, for that matter, Air Force 2). The state’s former Republican lieutenant governor has made it clear he’s all-in on the campaign to defeat his own party’s nominee, and what better way to do that than to play a key role in tipping Georgia and its 16 electoral votes to the Democratic nominee?
• Recruit several members of the Mankato West H.S. defense that played for Walz. The Peanut Brigade played an important role in Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential victory. A contingent of the 1999 Mankato West Scarlets might do the same for Walz and Harris.
• Fill the bus with the state’s Democratic stars. This includes Abrams, U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, U.S. Representatives Lucy McBath and Sanford Bishop. Warnock in particular will help build crowds anywhere in South Georgia.

To be clear, with the exception of a handful of predominantly Black counties, the Harris-Walz ticket has no chance of even getting close to the Trump-Vance vote in South Georgia, but showing the area a little love could energize the area’s Black voters and bring out the remaining dispirited White Democrats who are still hunkered down south of gnat line. Then, if the Democrats can get their turnout act together in Metro Atlanta, they’ve got a chance of building on that 11,779-vote margin from 2020.

Speaking of gnats, somebody’s going to have to teach Harris and Walz how to blow the gnats out of their eyes.

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As I was finishing this post, news began breaking that the Harris-Walz tour would be a two-day road trip ending with a Thursday night rally in Savannah. No word yet on where it’ll start. I’d still recommend starting in Macon but Albany would be a fair alternative, and they ought to be able to put together kick-off rallies in either place by Tuesday night. Also no word on the route they’ll take from wherever to Savannah, but here’s a pro tip: I-16 ain’t exactly rural Georgia — plus, I-16 would take the national press right past the crown jewel of GOP Governor Brian Kemp’s economic development efforts, the massive new Hyundai plant in Bryan County.