There haven't been many mentions of rural America in the major speeches at the Democratic Convention. This story, however, come's from Mark Warner's keynote address:

"Let me tell you about a place called Lebanon—Lebanon, Virginia. Lebanon is in the coalfields of southwest Virginia, and everyone in that whole town could fit right here on the convention floor. Lebanon is like many small towns in America. It has seen the industries that sustained it downsized, outsourced, or shut down. Now, some folks look at towns like Lebanon and say, "Tough luck. In the global economy, you've lost."

"But we believed that we shouldn't—and couldn't—give up on our small towns and expect the rest of the state to prosper. And that's what brought me, towards the end of my term, to the high school gym in Lebanon to announce that we were going to bring over 300 high-tech jobs, jobs that paid twice the county average.
One student told a reporter from The Washington Post that before this, he always thought he'd have to move away to get a good job and raise a family. I just heard from this young man, Michael Kisor. Today, he is a junior at Virginia Tech. His older brother just moved back home to Lebanon because there was an information-technology job open for him, that was just too good to pass up.

"That's a story worth rewriting all across America."

The Washington Post this morning takes note of the economic boom in farm country. Post reporter Neil Irwin travels to Blair, Nebraska, to find booming truck and equipment sales, new store openings and plummeting unemployment rates, all brought on by the rapid rise in price paid for farm commodities (corn, beans, etc.).

There is now a ten month backlog on orders for a new tractor. Land prices have nearly doubled in the last four years. "You can tell when farmers are doing well," one Nebraskan said, "because they go out and buy a new truck." (See Blair truck lot above.)

The caution in the story is that this boom may turn out to be another price bubble. "There are no straight-line graphs," said Jim Realph, the mayor of Blair. "Things just don't go up forever. I don't know when this will end, or whether it will be bad when it does, but this will go the other way."