The democrats made a fundamental miscalculation in the late 90s that you can simply pander to brown people and they will turn out for you. The messaging is complex because you tell different audiences different things, and the Internet makes it complicated because conservative Hispanic Catholics don’t align with the platform.
In doing that, they ceded rural America, which was devastated by NAFTA and other Clinton era policies. Giant agribusiness makes money, but the prosperous dairy operators really need regulation at the federal level to thrive. I grew up in a town that was solid rural democrat… that was gutted like a fish. 30 operating dairy farms to 1, which is a vertically integrated farm/dairy that delivers to consumers directly. The feed stores, gone. Tractor dealer, gone. The best job in town is truck driving and it’s solid trumper land.
The modern conservative narrative is really simple, and is mostly hot air. Those chicken processing plants and farms in nowhereville that need a steady supply of cheap, dumb labor with no workers comp aren’t run by democrats. Bread & circus, until the crowd demands more.
The grain market is a function of government regulation and price controls. The difference there is we scaled it up.
Ever wonder why thousands of Mexicans woke up one day and decided to walk across the desert, never to return? Well, we flooded the market with massive quantities of subsidized corn and put their farms out of business. We did the same thing domestically with other commodities in places like New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
With dairy, you had in-state production requirements and quotas that maintained a balance in price. A smallish dairy farm could support a household reasonably prosperously — there were thousands of farms in places like New York. Now you need thousands of cows to survive - that why milk is often cheaper than water in the supermarket.
But just like WalMart, it gutted a key price of the rural economy. Hell, I watched it happen on a farm I worked on, that operated since the 1600s under the Dutch. Since the early 2000s they board horses for rich people to pay their property taxes.
In doing that, they ceded rural America, which was devastated by NAFTA and other Clinton era policies. Giant agribusiness makes money, but the prosperous dairy operators really need regulation at the federal level to thrive. I grew up in a town that was solid rural democrat… that was gutted like a fish. 30 operating dairy farms to 1, which is a vertically integrated farm/dairy that delivers to consumers directly. The feed stores, gone. Tractor dealer, gone. The best job in town is truck driving and it’s solid trumper land.
The modern conservative narrative is really simple, and is mostly hot air. Those chicken processing plants and farms in nowhereville that need a steady supply of cheap, dumb labor with no workers comp aren’t run by democrats. Bread & circus, until the crowd demands more.