Obama on bus tour: 'Democrats need to show up in rural communities'

President Obama's bus tour in rural Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois last week, preceded by creation of the White House Rural Council and its issuance of a report, showed that rural voters remain part of the electoral calculus of a man who may be America's most urban president. (Associated Press photo)

Obama doesn't need "the traditionally conservative rural vote," Phillip Hayes, a former Senate agriculture subcommittee staff director, writes for Politico. "He only needs to keep Republican support low enough that the traditionally left-leaning urban vote can put him over the top."

"Obama did better in rural America in 2008 than any Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton," veteran farm journalist Jerry Hagstrom writes for Ag Week. "That was because Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the Republican candidate, had opposed both the Farm Bill and ethanol [subsidies] and because the Obama campaign focused more on rural America than most Democratic candidates have."

Hayes says Obama borrowed a page from George W. Bush's 2000 playbook by forming "a team of agricultural advisers from the farming community to monitor the heartland’s pulse." (Read more) That was evident last week, at meetings that featured groups representing "smaller farmers, minority farmers and other rural Americans who are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican," Hagstrom writes. "The White House said that 125 rural leaders had been invited to the forum and that 26 states were represented."

Hagstrom's 2,342-word report is a good summary of the tour, during which Obama repeated his support for a cap on farm subsidies. "Caps are not popular with the large farmers who produce most of the nation’s food, but they are popular with small farmers who think that the subsidies help the big farmers expand and compete unfairly for land," Hagstrom notes.

"Several participants complained about too much regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission," Hagstrom reports. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack "noted that he had encouraged EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who was not part of the bus tour, to see more of rural America, which she has done. Vilsack suggested 'maybe people who are doing regulating need to do a better job of communicating.' Traveling to rural communities 'is an eye-opening experience,' he said. 'There just isn’t enough of that.'" (Read more)

Our favorite report from the tour was Obama's interview with Doug Burns of the Daily Times Herald in Carroll, Iowa. The two became acquainted (2007 photo) during Obama's caucus campaign, in which he targeted rural newspapers, and that shows in the interview transcript.

Burns asked Obama if the Supreme Court needs a rural justice, and the president called that "a great question" and said, "I’d like to see more diversity of experience on the court." Asked why recent elections have seen rural voters go more Republican, Obama told Burns, "I think that there are cultural issues. There have been times in the past at least where some of these social issues or wedge issues made rural communities suspicious of Democratic candidates. But I also think that Democrats need to show up in rural communities. I may not win every rural community but I tell you what, I’m certainly going to lose them if people don’t feel like I’m paying attention to ’em." (Read more)