I think the biggest problem with reaching rural America for the left isn't a lack of clarity on policy, it's a media landscape and resulting social conservatism that's hard for the left to counteract effectively. I think the above quote is right that it's possible to reach rural Americans, on the grounds that they stand to heavily benefit from well targeted left wing policies, but it smacks a bit of one of the common left-wing flaws which is to assume that the economic argument would be sufficient if only you were using the right words to say it.
The fact is that groups like churches are immensely powerful in rural America, in part because they're the only functioning centres of community, the only groups through which worse off people can access services, etc. And the media landscape is overwhelmingly, pulverisingly right-wing. Overturning those advantages doesn't, I think, just require talking to people differently, and nor does it require the "blue dog" strategy of accepting it and trying to run as left wing social authoritarians. What it really needs is a restructuring of the rural social landscape either along more liberal-communitarian or social-labour driven lines, or both. (I think those in my head are two separate modes/structures, the former being "more village level organisation, societies, mutual aid groups, cooperatively run businesses", whereas the latter is more strictly organised labour). And it needs a major breaking and restructuring of the media model, and it probably needs twenty years to bed in because social beliefs are sticky and don't actually just transmute easily to the situation around them.
It is a difficult, multi-stage process: in parts of the UK the Lib Dems got quite good at step 1 (embed in communities effectively and address local concerns) and then screwed up on the important later step of "actually use that process to show your values and bring the community with you", which is partly why we crumpled so badly in the past decade.
I'd really like to see more polling on the Maine, Iowa, and Montana senate races, which collectively are the ones most likely to decide the upper chamber. Arizona and Colorado look likely pickups for the Democrats, North Carolina looks tight, and Alabama we can assume will be a loss, so Democrats I think need two out of Maine, Iowa, NC, and Montana, assuming they win the presidency. More would obviously be ideal as that lessens the chance of four years of Dems going "we tried to do a good thing but Joe Manchin said we couldn't".