291–300 of 432 posts
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So what's the alternative strategy that gets them over to ""woke""?
Well the first thing is removing identity politics, especially in replies or discussions. Also, not viewing it as "Come to my side". This isn't star wars, rebellion vs empire.
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Growing excess amount of food is part of food security, but farmers are going bankrupt because they focused on labor efficient agricultural commodity products to the exclusion of everything else. For many farmers, it's not even a full time job I rather we focus on increasing food security in other way. Maybe we shouldn't be turning corns into cows as that reduce the amount of energy we are able to access. But how do…
>Maybe we shouldn't be turning corns into cows Why? We like beef. I don't want it to go away.
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Democrats write constantly about trying to reach rural americans. I've never seen democrats meaningfully position themselves as the party for city dwellers. Instead I've seen democrats simply refuse to describe cities as hellholes full of crime, laziness, and sexual promiscuity like the republicans do.
The Dems dont actually do much to reach those rural Americans though.
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~78% of farmers voted for him. They are directly responsible for their own outcome in this regard. Canada supplies 75-80% of US potash imports, and potash is a non-substitutable input in agriculture; without it, crop yields drop significantly. China no longer buy soybeans from US farmers, and instead now sources from South America; they have made a token 12M ton purchase, as they promised. https://www.thenation.com/a…
Farmers like Ragland are overrepresented. Why do these rural states (several of which have a total population less than that of major metro areas on the coasts) have two senators? The senate is an antidemocratic institution. The compromise that every state gets two senators made sense when we were a weak, newborn and vulnerable nation, with a total population of less than 3 million people. Not anymore. The founders l…
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The Dems dont actually do much to reach those rural Americans though.
That’s because they don’t appear to actually be trying to win. They appear to exist for the sole purpose of playing the good cop to the republican bad cop.
Why?
They're individuals who above all look to secure the steady job that will provide the standard of living they aspire to. Unless someone can self-fund and run as an independent, they are beholden to those who provide the funds required to run for office and also have to pander to whichever party put then on the ticket.
Ag. can't just be about profit. There's a dimension which is national-strategic interest. Food security, the domestic food economy is important. It is my understanding that a lot of the US ag. sector is making inputs for processing for corn oil, fructose, ethanol, and for exports to markets which in turn target american ag, selling e.g. beef back to the US, fattened on US Soy. It's a complex web. I don't want US farm…
Which society seems to have lost because we've focused too much on the one metric, "money", over all others.
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The fix is more expensive food. Everyone loves the mom and pop businesses but shops at walmart for those rock bottom prices. We can have our fresh family farms back, but you're paying double for your food. We have the system we have because people value cheap/affordable over everything, regardless of what they upvote on the internet.
> Everyone loves the mom and pop businesses but shops at walmart for those rock bottom prices. People shop where they can afford to shop. Walmart is famous for not paying people enough to shop anywhere except walmart. The fix is to make sure that people earn a living wage and to actually enforce the Robinson–Patman Act and aggressively go after price fixing. Suddenly walmart's prices won't undercut the mom and pop pl…
No, they shop where they can get the most stuff for the least amount of money.
Temu and Shein didn't fill some kind of product availability void, they filled the relentless consumerism void of people.
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There was a NYT article about farmers going to a town hall meeting where they met their federal reps. One farmer mentioned how they've done these meetings for years and nothing changes, maybe they get a handout from the feds, but he says they effectively just go to support the monopolies that they as farmers sell and buy from. Same reps, same meetings every years, nothing happens. Farmer seemed to have all the pieces…
>Same reps, same meetings every years, nothing happens. Farmer seemed to have all the pieces except the idea that he might want to vote for someone else ... I get it's funny to dunk on dumb Republican farmers voting for the same party for over and over again, and not getting what they want, but it's hardly a farmer or Republican issue. How is this any different than say, Democratic voters who want medicare for all (o…
Though I'm a bit biased, because it seems like if you want anything other than for billionaires to get more money, you would vote Dem.
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There was a NYT article about farmers going to a town hall meeting where they met their federal reps. One farmer mentioned how they've done these meetings for years and nothing changes, maybe they get a handout from the feds, but he says they effectively just go to support the monopolies that they as farmers sell and buy from. Same reps, same meetings every years, nothing happens. Farmer seemed to have all the pieces…
>Same reps, same meetings every years, nothing happens. Farmer seemed to have all the pieces except the idea that he might want to vote for someone else ... I get it's funny to dunk on dumb Republican farmers voting for the same party for over and over again, and not getting what they want, but it's hardly a farmer or Republican issue. How is this any different than say, Democratic voters who want medicare for all (o…
Because democrats largely support M4A and socialized health care in general. A handful are squishy on the issue, and the structure of the senate requires significant bipartisanship to pass[1]. But if you want it to pass you want to vote for democrats, duh. If you do happen to vote for a democrat who actually opposes that and complain to them that they didn't vote for it, then yeah: you're dumb.
[1] The exception that proves the rule being the ACA itself, which passed on an EXTREMELY rare party-line 60 vote majority. And didn't include a government-offered insurance option because of the objections of Just One Guy (Joe Lieberman, representing the insurance hotbed of Connecticut) whose vote was needed.
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There was a NYT article about farmers going to a town hall meeting where they met their federal reps. One farmer mentioned how they've done these meetings for years and nothing changes, maybe they get a handout from the feds, but he says they effectively just go to support the monopolies that they as farmers sell and buy from. Same reps, same meetings every years, nothing happens. Farmer seemed to have all the pieces…
>Same reps, same meetings every years, nothing happens. Farmer seemed to have all the pieces except the idea that he might want to vote for someone else ... I get it's funny to dunk on dumb Republican farmers voting for the same party for over and over again, and not getting what they want, but it's hardly a farmer or Republican issue. How is this any different than say, Democratic voters who want medicare for all (o…
To be fair, the progressive movement in the Democratic Party is much larger than any actual working-class movement in the GOP. MAGA is not exactly pro-union, pro-striking, or even pro-farmer, given the tariffs. The Progressive Caucus otoh is now 45 % of the House Democrats. Zohran Mamdani was just elected mayor of NYC, and is already making big moves against landlords.
And that's even aside from the voters who don't vote for corporate Dems, and then get blamed by the DNC for losses. Every time someone asserts that "Bernie Bros" sat out in 2016, they're talking about Democrats who refused to keep 'voting for the same party over and over again'.