John Nichols’ [The Nation, political magazine] “...Rural Strategy” is dead wrong for presidential candidates. On the contrary, “If they” [the farmers] ”pay serious attention” long enough to recognize their own distorted psyche, perhaps strides toward their interests will be reasserted. Nichols himself admitted that after the FDR improvement of the farmer’s status, the farmer in the 50s went back to his old rugged individualism ways and the Republican party.

Of course, the same can be said for the post war middle class in general, reaping benefits from the G.I. Bill and the liberal opportunity of low cost housing loans, suddenly began thinking like Republicans.The psyche of rural America — not all, as Kingsoiver in The Nation alerts us to the slim plurality in some of the Red states — falls back on lame excuses to stay Republican: “Crows would devastate my cornfields if the government takes away my shotgun” to cite just one.

This psyche is oblivious to the blight the Republicans have wreaked upon the family farm over the decades. The psyche outside their respective states closed its ears to the likes of Wellstone and Daschle’s cries on behalf of its own well-being. Even their own states now repaid the memory of Wellstone by abandoning his legacy, and Daschle is in deep trouble in the upcoming election.


The problem is not with the presidential candidates — it is clear cut that they support family farms, not to mention their precious environment — the solution is for small farmers to abandon their century and a half frontiersman mind-set and pay attention to the enduring battle for rural rights Democrats have heroically waged since Jennings.