Shortly after Republicans’ stunning Election Day sweep, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack grabbed Vice President Biden in a receiving line. Vilsack had an urgent message, and he sensed that in Biden, he would find a receptive audience. The two politicians had served together throughout President Obama’s eight years in office and had known each other for decades. Both are nearing the ends of long and successful political careers, built on speaking to the ambitions and anxieties of white, working-class voters who turned decisively to Donald Trump in this election. “We need to speak more directly to our folks in rural America,” Vilsack recalled telling the vice president. “And we have to spend time there.” Biden nodded, and Vilsack kept moving, unsure whether his message — one that he had been pressing for years — had penetrated. Their hurried exchange is a small part of a broader reckoning that is happening among Democrats as they struggle to make sense of their election losses. Even before Trump’s surprising victory this month, Vilsack was complaining, sometimes loudly and often with little effect, that his party had essentially given up competing in large swaths of the country that it needed to win Senate seats, governor’s races and state legislatures. “Democrats need to talk to rural voters,” Vilsack warned this summer. “They can’t write them off. They can’t ignore them. They actually have to spend a little time talking to them.” Today, the former Iowa governor compares Democrats to a tree that “looks healthy on the outside but is in the throes of slow and long-term demise.”