Spent Friday chasing presidential candidates around Iowa, including the biggest ever sign wars and chanting competition outside the Northern Iowa Democrats “Wing Ding” at the Surf Ballroom featuring our twenty odd candidates. IMHO Warren’s contingent won the sign wars hands down, so many people that they needed both sides of the street. Best chant goes to the smaller Booker contingent with their dance line!
But the meat of the matter, even for vegetarians, is which candidate will do the most for rural America? Being a Minnesotan I’m partial to Amy Klobuchar, a well known quantity who’s represented rural America well in the senate for most of this millennia. But Amy’s having a hard time catching on even in Iowa, so I shopped around some more… Dang, Bernie’s got a good rural platform just like in ‘16. Then Biden jumped in with an ag platform that at least wasn’t recycled from Hillary’s campaign and written by a Big Ag lobbyist, and he backed it up with a campaign kickoff tour of rural Iowa.
But Warren caught my interest- She and Amy were the only major candidates to show up at the rural forum in Storm Lake and Elizabeth was definitely on top of the issues, especially the monopolies that are stealing farmer’s livelihoods. Took a little digging but I found Elizabeth’s rural platform and it shows an understanding of the broken rural economy few other candidates can match. I threw my support behind Elizabeth, and friday afternoon on the banks of the Des Moines River she delivered a lecture on how farmers are going broke and making Big Ag richer while polluting the river. So knowledgeable was Elizabeth on the subject that while she had several experts present, she didn’t need them… That’s why I’m supporting Liz!
So what candidates ya likin’? And of course, any outer rural issues ya wanna talk about...