Thursday, February 06, 2020

Hillary Clinton gave up on rural America; are the Democrats about to do it again? Will they even ask for rural votes?

So asks Tom Philpott of Mother Jones magazine, based on reporting from Politico and The Washington Post. "Ignoring it would be foolish," he writes, citing Jake Davis, policy director for Family Farm Action.

Whoever gets the Democratic nomination “has to show up” in rural areas, Davis said. “Make some campaign stops, talk about [rural people’s] issues, listen to their issues, and there’s 10 percent of voters out there who feel like they’re disenfranchised from both parties. It’s there for the taking, and it’s clear President Trump isn’t taking care of rural areas.”

Davis was "referring to the administration’s export-roiling trade machinations, its policies favoring big meat packers over independent farmers, and its approvals of mega-mergers among seed/agrichemical conglomerates," Philpott writes for the liberal magazine.

He also quotes Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times in northwest Iowa, a liberal who won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials three years ago. Clinton lost Midwest farm states because “she never showed up,” Cullen said. “The first rule of politics is to ask people for their vote. She never asked the Midwest for their votes.”

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