Today’s column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is about prospects in the Farm Belt.

Bruce Ledewitz: Make the Democrats great again

Special to the Post-Gazette

Dec 23, 2024

5:30 AM

The Democrats, still shocked by Trump’s victory and their many other election losses, have not begun to think about becoming the dominant American political party. There is an obvious way to do this.

Despite outsized Republican wins in the House, Senate and the Presidency, the 2024 election showed that the country remains about equally divided politically, as it has been since the 1990s. Neither party has been able to build a durable national majority.

Republicans are seeking to build such a majority by adding working class voters to the traditional Republican coalition. They may succeed, but they have yet to solve the inherent economic contradictions in this formula — deregulation and tax cuts do not necessarily aid workers.

How does the Democratic party become dominant instead? Become the major party in the farm belt.

An obvious path

The farm belt — basically the 15 states traditionally associated with corn and wheat production, plus a handful of other states in which agriculture is a mainstay of the economy — currently provides Republicans with a structural advantage in the Senate and Electoral College.

Many states in the farm belt are low population, but have two senators and thus two extra presidential electors. In many of these states with low populations, Democrats are not competitive today.

But that could change quickly. The farm belt offers Democrats the access to rural America that many in the party have been seeking. The Harris campaign recognized this but was unable to capitalize on it.

Donald Trump has no intrinsic appeal in the farm belt. He is a real estate developer. For Trump, a farm is just a potential golf course.

In his first presidential term, Trump angered the farm belt with his failed trade deal with China.

To end a spiraling trade war, China agreed to purchase an additional $200 billion in U.S. exports. But that did not happen.

That failure is remembered, which may be why the Iowa Poll that showed Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in the state — the subject of a Trump lawsuit — was considered plausible.

Trump’s major policy proposals are anathema in the farm belt. Farmers need international markets. They oppose tariffs because they lead to restrictions on American exports to foreign nations.

I doubt deportation, if it happens, is going to go over well in the farm belt, either. Immigrants, legal and undocumented, provide labor in both production and processing of agricultural products. Who is going to do that work if Trump follows through on his threats?

Nor is crime the major issue in the farm belt that it is in many urban areas.

More generally, Robert Kennedy Jr.’s attacks on the American diet, corn production and Big Ag are not going to play well in the farm belt.

The same is true of Elon Musk’s streamlining of government. Some of the biggest bureaucracy in Washington is in agriculture. Some of the most inefficient government spending is in agricultural subsidies.

There is something to be said for the positions Kennedy and Musk are espousing. But so what? Pandering to the farm belt is good politics. Democrats should vigorously defend the agricultural status quo. They should resolutely be the farmer’s friend.

A return to roots

None of this is alien to the Democratic Party’s history. This is a return to the party’s roots, especially in the Midwest. The formal name of the Democratic Party in Minnesota, for example, is the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

An appeal to the farm belt makes even more sense for Democrats today than in the past, for two reasons.

First, Democrats are not really for fundamental economic change, nor should they be. Our economic system is the envy of the world. America has the world’s largest and most productive economy. Some MAGA voters want to blow everything up. Farmers don’t want to do that.

Neither do most voters. For all the dramatic talk of anger and alienation among voters, Trump basically won because higher prices outpaced wage increases. Democrats just need to limit spending a little to prevent future inflation and raise the federal minimum wage.

America does not need fundamental change.

Second, Democrats need to build a lasting coalition to fight climate change. The political strategy of not talking about climate change during Presidential elections, while supporting fracking to try to win Pennsylvania, is both bad politics and bad for the planet. This is the reason the Green Party keeps siphoning off Democratic votes with a plausible claim that Democrats have failed on climate.

Farmers may not talk about climate change right now, but they sure do talk about the weather. Heat and drought are their enemies. If the Democrats had the courage to proclaim that climate change is destroying American agriculture, they would eventually change the narrative in the farm belt.

A winning slogan

It is time for Democrats to run on the slogan, “Save American Agriculture — Say no to tariffs, deportations and climate change.”

When the party does that, it will win in the farm belt and become, for the first time since President Lyndon Johnson, America’s dominant political party.

Bruce Ledewitz is a professor of law at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University. His previous article was “Donald Trump is inheriting a stronger country thanks to Joe Biden.” The views expressed do not represent those of Duquesne University.

First Published: December 23, 2024, 5:30 a.m