Minnesota’s Northfield Steven and Jodi Ohlson Read are dairy farmers who have heard complaints about inflation and expense increases from others in their rural Minnesota town.
Although they agree that small farms have suffered greatly in recent years due to economic issues, the two still believe that President Joe Biden is headed in the right direction, which is why they attended his speech on Wednesday in their hometown.
Source: NBC NEWS
Steven Read said, “The economy has been humming along pretty well, despite what everyone is saying.” “I don’t attribute inflation to Biden. It’s corporate greed, I say.
Even still, Biden will have difficulty winning over rural voters, who are already more inclined to support Republicans, despite the economy’s recovery.
Inflation has impacted rural families more severely than it has the nation as a whole over the last two years. Iowa State University researchers found that in 2021 and 2022, rural families had to pay an additional $8,120 in inflation, compared to $7,480 paid by urban households in the same two years. In the meanwhile, 94% of the increase in jobs in the country since 2000, according to Cornell University researchers, has occurred in metropolitan areas.
Pew Research reports that former President Donald Trump gained greater support from rural voters in 2020—65% in 2020 compared to 59% in 2016—than Mitt Romney did in 2012. In the 2022 midterm elections, 69% of rural voters supported Republican candidates.
Furthermore, current polling indicates that the trend isn’t improving. According to an NBC News survey conducted in September 2023, 51% of urban voters and 26% of rural people approve of President Biden. In addition, 57% of urban voters and 42% of rural voters, respectively, expressed satisfaction with their own financial circumstances, according to the same study.
Tim Lindberg, a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris, noted that since rural voters are often more socially conservative, the Democrats’ leftward shift may have played a role in rural voters’ more definitive movement toward the Republican Party.
Lindberg said that rural communities in Midwestern states had “severely” swung to the GOP during the 2016 election, citing patterns in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan.
Of course, in 2016, the issue was: would it stick? said Lindberg. Would it be true if Trump was removed off the ballot? We also have signs that it did have a lot of staying power in 2020 and even in 2018.
Understanding the struggle of the working class has always been a key component of Biden’s argument. In an effort to woo back rural voters who have been drifting away from Democrats in recent years, he launched a two-week campaign blitz this week by highlighting $5 billion in new government assistance for agricultural towns.
“It’s about making things in rural America again,” Biden said to the assembled attendees in the frigid Northfield barn, which is located about 30 miles outside of Minneapolis. “At the moment, the farmers and ranchers who cultivate the food only get a little portion of the proceeds from sales of the food.”
The President emphasized that the unemployment rate has been around 4% for the last 20 months while Biden stepped up his efforts to promote “Bidenomics.” He cited the benefits of renewable energy programs included in the Inflation Reduction Act for farmers and ranchers, and the White House stressed that the additional government spending will support the development of agricultural practices that combat climate change, increase internet connectivity in rural areas, and help generate employment.
“Experts predicted a recession was almost certain a year ago,” stated Biden. Guess what, though? We found out last week that the GDP expanded by over 5%.
The president, together with Cabinet secretaries and other top administration officials, will continue to spread that message throughout the nation, according to the White House, over the course of the next two weeks. According to a DNC source, the Democratic National Committee has appointed a chair for the Rural Council. The source also said that the DNC Rural Strong signature program collaborated with organizers in roughly 40 states during the 2022 midterm elections.
However, Dave Struthers at his Collins, Iowa farm is not convinced. The pork farmer said that the last three years had been difficult.
Struthers said, “We’ve had higher costs and our product’s value has not increased correspondingly.” “We seem to be ignored just because we don’t have the population, even though we are the ones who produce the food and manufacture many of the goods that the people on the coasts need on a daily basis.”
Struthers expressed his frustration to the Biden administration for not doing more to advance the biodiesel sector and thought the president was overly advocating for electric cars. He declared his intention to support Trump in the next election.
Struthers said, “He’s not my favorite because of some personal issues of his, but I would support him.” “It appears the Democrats have always wanted to regulate and have their fingers in everything, and I think Republicans have understood the cost of regulations and the burdens of needless regulations.”
