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.
Steven Read stated, “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 households more severely than it has the nation as a whole during the last two years. Iowa State University researchers found that in 2021 and 2022, rural households had to pay an additional $8,120 in inflation, compared to $7,480 paid by urban households in the same two years. In the meantime, 94% of the increase in jobs in the country since 2000, according to Cornell University researchers, has occurred in metropolitan counties.
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 poll 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 personal financial circumstances, according to the same poll.
Tim Lindberg, a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris, noted that because rural voters are typically more socially conservative, the Democrats’ leftward shift may have played a role in rural voters’ more definitive swing toward the Republican Party.
Lindberg said that rural areas in Midwestern states had “severely” swung to the GOP during the 2016 election, citing trends in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan.
Of course, in 2016, the question was: would that stick? said Lindberg. Would that remain true if Trump was removed off the ballot? We also see signs that it did have a lot of sticking 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 stated 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 receive a little portion of the proceeds from sales of the food.”
The President emphasized that the unemployment rate has been around 4% for the past 20 months while Biden stepped up his efforts to promote “Bidenomics.” He cited the benefits of clean energy programs included in the Inflation Reduction Act for farmers and ranchers, and the White House stressed that the additional federal spending would support the development of farming practices that combat climate change, increase internet connectivity in rural areas, and help generate jobs.
“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 almost 5%.
The president, together with Cabinet secretaries and other top administration officials, will continue to spread that message across the nation, according to the White House, during 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 stated 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 claimed that the past few years have been difficult.
Struthers stated, “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 with 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 upcoming election.
Struthers stated, “I would support him, but he’s not my favorite because of some personal issues of his.” “I think Republicans understand the costs and burdens associated with needless regulations, but it seems like Democrats have always wanted to regulate and get their hands dirty.”