This is very bad politically. Farmers - farm owners - are a very small percentage of the population even in rural areas. It is a bad look for us. It advances the right wing framing about partisan demographics. The MAGA cultists are NOT farmers, ranchers, cowboys, lumberjacks, et al. they are weak, whiny, cowardly Walter Mittys.
154 million people voted in 2024. There are less than 2 million farm owners in the US, and that is according to the very lenient definition from the USDA — anyone selling $1000 worth of farm products per year. Meanwhile, there are 27 million online influencers in the US. Business owners of all types skew Republican. Yet here, in a heavily agricultural district, 40-45% of growers vote Democratic.
There is no ”farm vote” that has a serious impact on election results. Republicans are not winning the farm vote, they are winning the vote of those who identify with some romanticized image of farming.
Back in 2024 Vance had a rally here and talked smack about agriculture. “Trump will help farmers!” Vance cried. How would he do that exactly? By rounding up “illegals” and by instituting tariffs. Say what? Those actions hurt farmers, of course. But the crowd of thousands of MAGA cultists roared their approval. There's a the problem with that. There are only about 300 growers in this heavily agricultural district. The day of 50-100 acre diversified family farms is long gone. Were any of those growers even in that crowd? Maybe, maybe not. But even if every single farmer in this very red district voted against Trump it would have zero effect on the outcome here.
What we have is a bunch of ignorant yahoos — “farmers? Yeah, man, I’m with them! Yee ha!” — who never worked a day on a farm. They imagine themselves to be kindred spirits with cowboys, ranchers, pioneers, etc.
There aren't enough farmers to affect electoral politics. They vote the way most business owners do - they skew Republican. Here it is 55-45 Republican, and even in this heavily agricultural district farm owners are only a couple of percentage points of the population. They are not the reason Trump won here, not by a long shot.
It is more and more the case that rural voters are exurban upper middle class people, and independent contractors of various sorts — real estate agents, developers, contractors, for example. Not farmers.
The Republicans are wooing and pandering to what I call the "Walter Mitty" vote, not the veteran vote, not the farmer vote, not the coal miner vote, not the lumberjack vote, not the biker vote, not the cowboy vote. None of those are large voting blocs. However, the people who fantasize about and identify with those rugged individualist “real American” stereotypes are whom they are after - that’s the GOP base. Republicans have been playing to those fantasies for a long time — for example, Reagan on horseback, Bush with his phony ranch, Trump and his acolytes with all of their posturing and cosplay.
FAFO is bad politically, as well. Subsidies for agriculture are subsidies for the general public. We should - as progressives - strongly support Farm Credit, NASS and all of the USDA programs, the Land Grant colleges, Cooperative Extension, etc.
Let's look at a red agricultural state, Missouri. There are 3,000,000 or so workers in Missouri, and there are about 27,000 farm workers, a few of whom are actually owners — “farmers.”
By way of comparison, there are 358,470 people working in office and administrative occupations; 251,150 transportation workers; 200,200 heath care practitioners; 257,610 food service workers; 239,430 work in sales; 197,350 factory workers; 181,350 in financial occupations; 169,240 work in education; 159,960 health care support workers; 120,100 installation and repair workers; 116,510 construction workers; 85,000 computer related jobs; 82,140 maintenance workers; 60,980 law enforcement and emergency services; 58,460 personal care workers; 46,640 social services workers; 35,520 in engineering jobs; 33,440 in arts and entertainment.
“FAFO” is delusional in any case, as should be clear to anyone who has studied the history of past authoritarian regimes. It is cruel and it can be an excuse for inaction. It is a kissing cousin to Carville’s “play possum” strategy recommendation.
FAFO? Read what William Shirer discovered when interviewing everyday Germans after WWII. Every German city lay in ruins and millions had been killed.
There was so much that was true that did not make sense: the monumental apathy of the German people and their deep regret, not that they had started the war, but merely that they had lost it; their whining complaints at the lack of food and fuel and their total lack of sympathy or even interest in the worse plight of the occupied peoples, for which they bore so much responsibility; their boredom at the very mention of the Nuremberg trial, which they were convinced was only an Allied propaganda stunt; their striking unreadiness for, or interest in, democracy, which we, with typical Anglo-Saxon fervor and blindness, were trying to shove down their throats.
― William L. Shirer, End of a Berlin Diary
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