The Blue Wave Has Always Been A Myth-- And So Has GOP Friendliness Towards Rural America

Last year, over 40 red House seats were flipped. But, despite all the self-congratulations from the DCCC, that was not a result of anything the DCCC did nor the result of the imaginary blue wave they persuaded a lazy and largely foolish media to propagate for them. The same dynamic is likely to dominate the 2020 congressional battles as well.

The newest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (April 28-May 1) shows that 12% of voters have a very positive view of the Republican Party, that 23% have a "somewhat" positive view (total 35%) of the GOP. 42% have a negative perception of the party (23% very negative and 19% somewhat negative). That's pretty bad. But the Democrats aren't in much better shape.

12% of voters confided that they have a very positive view of the Democratic Party and 22% say their view is "somewhat positive." basically the same miserable total as the GOP-- 34%. No one likes either shitty party, although the public is slightly less negative about the Democrats than about the Republicans. Where 42% of voters reported a negative view of the GOP, "just" 39% have a negative view of the Democrats-- 24% very negative and 15% somewhat negative.

In other words, voters are not impressed with either party although they hate the Democrats fractionally less than they hate the Republicans. For the Democratic establishment, that plays right into the only strategy they ever feel comfortable working-- less-of-two evils. They look for the most conservative candidates and then try appealing to Republican and independent voters, confident that Democratic voters will either be too stupid to see the difference between a real Democrat and a Democrap or that they will feel they have to choice other than voting against the greater evil-- the Republican.

This morning, Chuck Todd's team looked at the polling and came away with the conclusion that the Democratic enthusiasm edge is no longer greater than the Republican voters' eagerness to get out and reelect Trump and his enablers in Congress. Voter enthusiasm is now 75% GOP/73% Democratic. Still a blue wave? Suppose the Democrats approached this differently--you know, the way Democrats used to, before Bill Clinton and his neoliberal takeover of the party made them ashamed to be traditional populist/progressive Democrats? How would it even look? Well, both Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are running positive, policy-rich campaigns that show how it would look. And yesterday, Bernie went to rural America with his plan for a part of our country the neoliberals have largely ignored. Oh, it sounds like a New Deal Democrat kind of proposal. Fancy that!

The idea is to revitalize rural communities-- not just farms, but small town America overall. Unlike Trump, whose plan for rural communities was to simply to play politics by demonizing Hillary and then leaving farming communities to rot, Bernie is offering a concrete plan-- starting with trust-busting-- that will bring back prosperity and dignity to a vital part of the country that people joke about as "fly over country." In introducing his multi-faceted program yesterday, Bernie noted that "Agriculture today is not working for the majority of Americans. It is not working economically for farmers, it is not working for rural communities, and it is not working for the environment. But it is working for big agribusiness corporations that are extracting our rural resources for profit. For far too long, government farm policies have incentivized a 'get big or get out' approach to agriculture. This approach has consolidated the entire food system, reducing farm net income, and driving farmers off the land in droves. As farms disappear, so do the businesses, jobs, and communities they support... Our mid-size and small towns have been decimated. Local businesses were replaced with national chains, many schools and hospitals shut down and good jobs left at an alarming rate. The next generation of rural Americans is finding better opportunities outside of the small towns where they grew up in. Fundamental change in America’s agricultural and rural policies is no longer just an option; it’s an absolute necessity. Farmers, foresters, and ranchers steward rural landscapes, which benefit all Americans. They provide us with essential resources such as food, fiber, building materials, renewable energy, clean water and habitat for biodiversity. They also have an enormous potential to address climate change. With the right support and policies, we can have rural communities that are thriving economically and ecologically. The following policies will drive a transition in our agricultural system away from a consolidated, profit-driven industrial model to one that rebuilds and restores rural communities." [Note: 69.5% of Vermont is rural.]

Introducing his plan, Bernie wrote that "We need to address corporate consolidation and control of our food and agriculture system-- all the way up the food chain from seed companies; fruit, vegetable, and grain growers; food processors; food distributors; and grocery chains. When markets become too concentrated, they begin to act more like monopolies than free markets." This is, in bullet point simplicity, what he proposes:

• Enact and enforce Roosevelt-style trust-busting laws to stop monopolization of markets and break-up existing massive agribusinesses; Place a moratorium on future mergers of large agribusiness corporations and break-up existing massive agribusinesses.
• Place a moratorium on vertical integration of large agribusiness corporations.
• Reestablish and strengthen the Grain Inspectors, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA), the agency that oversees antitrust in the packing industry.
• Ensure farmers have the Right to Repair their own equipment.
• Reform patent law to protect farmers from predatory patent lawsuits from seed corporations.
• Change regulations to improve markets for family farms-- Strengthen organic standards so behemoth agribusinesses cannot circumvent rules and cut out small producers who make investments in their communities and environment. We must begin by reversing the erosion of standards in recent years.
• Allow meat slaughtered at a state-inspected facility to be sold across state lines.
• Classify food supply security as a national security issue.
• Develop fair trade partnerships that do not drive down the prices paid to food producers and that, instead, protect farmers here and abroad.
• Enforce country-of-origin-labeling so companies cannot import foreign meat for slaughter, passing it off as American grown to undercut domestic producers.
• Enact supply management programs to prevent shortages and surpluses to ensure farmers make a living wage and ensure consumers receive a high-quality, stable, and secure supply of agricultural goods.
• Re-establish a national grain and feed reserve to help alleviate the need for government subsidies and ensure we have a food supply in case of extreme weather events.
• Reform agricultural subsidies so that more federal support goes to small- and mid-sized family farms, rather than that support going disproportionately to a handful of the largest producers.
• Transition toward a parity system to guarantee farmers a living wage. That means setting price floors and matching supply with demand so farmers are guaranteed the cost of production and family living expenses.
• Pass comprehensive disaster coverage and allocate payments to independent family farming operations.
• Provide relief to help prevent independent family farm bankruptcies, which in areas like the Midwest are at their highest level in a decade.
• Help beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers get fair access to land and resources.
• Strengthen oversight of foreign acquisitions of American farmland in order to prevent that farmland from being controlled by foreign governments and foreign corporations.
• Invest in beginning farmers to purchase land and equipment for sustainable farming.
• Allocate government funding to purchase easements to ensure land stays in agriculture.
• Incentivize community ownership of farmland to allow more people to work the land and produce food for local consumers.
• Make government owned farmland available as incubator farms for beginning farmers.
• Incentivize programs-- including 4H, extension programs, or others-- to ensure diversity of age, race, gender, ability, and sexual orientation so we begin to eradicate systems and cultures that prevent fair access to agricultural land and opportunities.
• Fund development of local, independent processing, aggregation, and distribution facilities.
• Incentivize rural cooperative business models and utilities, such as rural electric cooperatives, food co-ops, and credit unions.
• Pass comprehensive legislation to address climate change that includes a transition to regenerative, independent family farming practices.
• Help farms of all sizes transition to sustainable agricultural practices that rebuild rural communities, protect the climate, and strengthen the environment.
• Provide grants, technical assistance, and debt relief to farmers to support their transition to more sustainable farming practices.
• Support a transition to more sustainable management of livestock systems that are ecologically sound, improve soil health, and sequester carbon in soil.
• Create financial mechanisms that compensate farmers for improving ecosystems.
• Establish a program to permanently set aside ecologically fragile farm and ranch land.
• Enforce the Clean Air and Water Acts for large, factory farms, and ensure all farmers have access to tools and resources to help them address pollution.
• Ensure rural residents have the right to protect their families and properties from chemical and biological pollution, including pesticide and herbicide drift.
• Enact a universal childcare program for every child in America that provides rural Americans access to local daycares.
• Increase funding for rural public education including ESL programs, classes for students with disabilities, student transportation, college accredited classes, etc.
• Pay rural teachers a living wage, health benefits and strengthen rural union bargaining power.
• Stop consolidating rural schools and start building rural schools that can access and utilize distance learning opportunities.
• Provide free higher education, job training, apprenticeship programs and other professional development programs that cover low-income and rural areas.
• Substantially end the burden of the outrageous levels of student debt in this country.
• Provide funding to rebuild and expand rural health care infrastructure, including hospitals, maternity wards, mental health clinics, dental clinics, dialysis centers, home care services, ambulance services, and emergency departments in rural areas.
• Expand access to public addiction recovery services in rural areas.
• Lower the cost of prescription drugs and make prescription drugs more accessible to people in rural areas.
• Promote local foods to encourage healthy lifestyle and wellness, including incentives for schools to source their meals from local farmers.
• Enact policies that allow immigrant workers who already live here to stay in this country.  That means long term visas and a pathway to citizenship.
• Protect farmworkers from Trump’s deportation machine.
• Enforce fair and just labor laws-- including the right to organize and overtime protections-- to end wage theft, harassment and discrimination and mass immigration raids.
• Ensure farmworkers regardless of immigration status can safely report workplace and human rights violations and abuses.
• Ensure access to high-speed broadband internet to every American.
• Raise the minimum wage to at least $15/hour.
• Start investing in small businesses in rural areas and stop handing out tax breaks to big corporations.
• Remove Right to Work, pass fair labor laws, and make it easier to form a union, including agricultural and food system workers.
• Enact a federal job guarantee that will create good-paying jobs and much needed rural infrastructure.
• Invest in affordable rural housing housing and end housing discrimination that segregates rural communities by race and income.
• Focus substantial federal resources on distressed rural communities that have high levels of poverty.
• Provide support  for rural community banks, CDFIs and credit unions, not Wall Street.

Obviously, a great deal of these proposals sound like they will work everywhere in the country-- suburban, urban and rural. It was meant to. Do you want to see Bernie win this thing? You can help him do that here.