There are two good articles at
XX and
Mousepad.
The small rancher/farmer is being run out of business by Big Agriculture with the help of this administrations policies. If we can push/submit legislation to remove Government Subsidies to Big Agriculture, support proper labeling and make Mad Cow Disease Testing mandatory we would be simultaneously help the small farmer and provide a better product to the American People.
There's been a lot of talk about Democrats talking more about their religion and about taking back the moral high ground. That's like adressing the sympton instead of the disease. We need to go out and support the midwest way of life with deeds insteads of nasty words like the repubs. We need to make their issues our issues and make a strong effort to address them. Let's ask the Republican Right why they are agaist the small farmer/rancher's way of life. Let's put them on the defense and have them articulate in public why Big Ag is more important than the small farmer/rancher. Let's be passionate about it. In the long run this is our best strategy.
I really prefer this way of attacking the Administration because we are being real Democrats. We will help people instead of taking a page out of the Repub playbook and punish people who don't think or act like us. This attack would be so much more satisfying.
From Mousepad
It will take work, but I think that there are tons and tons of rural people who would be open to the Democrats if they put forth some decent policy proposals and made a good faith effort to communicate their ideas to rural people. Not all, or even most, farmers are Bible-thumping wingnuts. Their main interest is finding a niche in the ag market so that they can continue living life as they like it.
For instance, Big Ag has done a number on the small ranch-based economy of the town I grew up in. While our ranchers turn out a superior product--free range beef has flavor that factory farm beef just doesn't have--superior isn't what the market demands in our age of McDonald's. But there is hope on the horizon--the demand for organic beef is rapidly on the rise, because of fears of mad cow and E. coli. But BushCo has worked against the small farmer and the growth of the organic beef industry, going so far as to actually force a small producer to stop testing its beef for mad cow in order to sell it in Japan at top dollar prices.
I think if the Democrats started now, they could undermine the stranglehold that the Republicans have on the small rancher vote...
...If the Democrats are actually successful in this campaign, it would send a shockwave over the red states. Sure, the small farmer and rancher vote is a small vote, but it's an influential one. Plus, it would be fun to go behind the Republicans' backs and start taking the votes the Republicans treat like a birthright.
From XX
The animosity towards urban liberals is understandable enough. Rural people generally work hard-ranchers I know put in 12+ hours in 6 days a week. My mother spends 12-14 hours a day running her small business. They go to church and try to do the right thing, like anyone else. But they are living on the edge of economic collapse and it seems like there's no help at all for them. And then they flip on the TV at night and watch program after program set in the cities that seem to convey only two major messages-urban people are rich and the cities are hotbeds of crime. And that just produces more resentment.
Then the Republicans step in and offer them a Bible to thump us with. They don't have solutions, but they do have revenge. But believe me, they still see revenge as a last resort. We have a much more powerful symbol than the thumping Bible to counteract the Republican message with. We have the Norman Rockwell painting and the means to give that back to them. Let them have their way of life back and they won't be so inclined to take ours away from us.