American Politics from 2019 on

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He does not know.

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Shades of Scopes Trial. NYT article by
Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin, writing in the "New York Times" calls attention to the fact that 2025 is the "centennial" of the Scopes Trial.

"All this strikes the secular cosmopolitan base of the Democratic Party as dangerous babble by people who abhor expertise and intellectualism — often to their own detriment."

But Bryan was not just the Bible quoting defender of rural religious beliefs. He had run for president three times as the "prairie populist."

"Back then, many Bible-believing rural and small-town people supported the progressive populism of Bryan, who had run three times as the Democratic candidate for president. Throughout his career, he denounced corporate power and big financiers like J.P. Morgan while championing crop subsidies, labor unions, a ban on large donations to campaigns and higher income taxes on the rich. That may point a path forward for Democrats grappling with how to reach rural voters today."

"Of course, rural and small-town voters may appreciate the talk of populist-minded Democrats but still decide to stick with the right-wing party that flatters their religious and racial worldviews. Less than a decade after the Scopes trial — during the Great Depression — rural Christians made common cause with liberal Democrats. They voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt and welcomed his New Deal programs that brought electricity to their homes, as well as relief and a measure of security to their families."