July, 2020
Lincoln, Washington – On July 2, 2020, four panelists appeared on an agricultural trade webinar moderated by Libby Schneider of the Democratic National Committee: DNC Chairman Tom Perez, Illinois Congresswoman Cheri Bustos, Minnesota NFU President Gary Wertish, and Ambassador Darci Vetter. The webinar had hundreds of attendees via Zoom. You can see it rebroadcast on youtube.
Look for Nebraskan Darci Vetter at 28:40. She has a remarkable ability to explain agricultural trade issues. Ambassador Vetter would make an excellent Secretary of Agriculture.
After the webinar, the attendees exploded with comments, praising the panel but asking why the DNC and the Joe Biden campaign were not competing more aggressively for votes in rural America. The votes for a competitive rural showing are there if Biden will only go after them.
Indeed, if Joe Biden offered positive ideas for rural Americans to rally around, he could put the election away. If not, he could still lose it. Rural America is the key.
If Biden opened up a wide national lead this summer and the coronavirus continues its march across America unopposed by Donald Trump, the political landscape would rapidly change. Politicians would abandon Trump to try to save themselves, forcing him to resign, like Richard Nixon, or to announce that he would not be a candidate again, like Lyndon Johnson. Trump at this moment is a cat about to be belled.
If Donald Trump were out of the way, other leadership at the national level could step up to fight the coronavirus. For example, NIH and CDC could be given the authority to coordinate the response under the Defense Production Act to supply the country with adequate testing supplies, PPE materials, and to coordinate a national mask requirement strategy. America could emulate other democracies that have successfully combated the Covid-19 scourge.
What may seem to be two unrelated issues — rural voters and the spread of coronavirus — are actually intertwined at this crucial moment in American history. These are life and death matters.
There is a faction within the Biden campaign that does not want to hear the word rural or compete for the Obama-Trump voters. That is a huge mistake. Joe Biden needs to compete in rural America with a positive platform as if our lives depended on it, which they may.
