Democrats make play for US president’s rural base

Bloomberg

Elizabeth Warren issued a call to arms while Amy Klobuchar made an appeal to unity as Democratic presidential candidates offered different messages they hope will chip away at President Donald Trump’s support across the Farm Belt.
Warren, who’s called for breaking up tech behemoths and large agricultural corporations, cast her campaign as “about standing our ground and fighting back” during a rural issues forum in Storm Lake, Iowa. She targeted “giant corporations that are making bigger and bigger profits” while “putting the squeeze on family farmers.”
Klobuchar, a senator from neighbouring Minnesota, cast her Midwestern sensibility as an antidote to a president “that divides us,” promising she would “emulate that community spirit we see right here in Iowa.”
Democrats are eager to make inroads in rural America, Trump’s strongest territory, as economic strains already in place are exacerbated by the president’s trade policies. Combined with natural disasters and low commodity prices, US net farm income plummeted 16 percent last year, to nearly half of what it was as recently as 2013.
These issues are top of mind for residents who’ll vote in February’s Iowa caucuses — the first contest to whittle down the many Democrats lining up to win their party’s nomination.
Warren, one of the most progressive candidates, said family farmers’ situation and rising economic inequality in the nation demand “big structural changes” and a platform of antitrust populism.

Trust Buster
Warren, who recently called for breaking up technology giants such as Amazon.com Inc, is calling for a similar approach to the big agricultural companies. She attacked Bayer AG’s acquisition of seed and chemical giant Monsanto Co, and promised to mount an antitrust suit to reverse the merger.
At a time the Democratic Party is tilting left, Klobuchar has positioned herself as a political moderate. She presented herself as a pragmatist capable of delivering for constituents and summoned her Heartland bona fides, quoting from the Future Farmers of America creed and joking in a reference to 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that she can “see Iowa from my porch.”
Klobuchar joined Warren in calling for tougher antitrust policy and bemoaned “a new Gilded Age.” But the Minnesotan said her highest priority is a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan she released, which would focus on rural broadband internet, transportation, and clean energy, among other priorities.
Obama administration official Julian Castro also appeared at the forum, brushing aside questions from reporters afterward about his lowly status in early polls. “There are a lot of people in this country right now that don’t feel like a front-runner, and I’m going to go out and speak to them,” he said.
Democratic strategists are debating how much to focus the 2020 campaign on the Midwest’s rural and blue-collar voters in a bid to wrest back Wisconsin and Michigan, and possibly Iowa and Ohio. Those states, along with Pennsylvania, voted for Trump after Democrat Barack Obama carried them twice.
An alternative strategy is a path through the Sun Belt to capture North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia, which would rely more on galvanising those states’ growing minority
populations.
Lopsided support from rural areas was a key to the narrow Trump victories in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that gave him his 2016 Electoral College majority. He carried rural and small-city voters by a 28-percentage point margin, while in 2008 Obama limited the Republican advantage with this same constituency to 8 percentage points, according to exit polls.
Tom Vilsack, Obama’s secretary of agriculture and a former Iowa Democratic governor, said the party’s presidential candidates have to find a way to once again narrow the gap in rural areas. “If they don’t do that, they’re going to have to do really, really well — I mean really well — in those suburban and urban counties,” Vilsack said.
Iowa is the biggest US corn producer, and rural voters play an out-sized role in its influential caucuses. Winning Iowa launched Obama’s candidacy in 2008 and helped Trump stand out in a crowded 2016 Republican field when he came second to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.