Greenbeard
Gold Member
Back when the first presidential election was held in 1788, the United States was an overwhelming 95 percent rural. That number today is around 19 percent, with rural voters constituting an even smaller percentage of the electorate in the 2012 election than that.
This week you've got the Secretary of Agriculture warning that rural areas are becoming less relevant, pointing to the failure of Congress to pass a farm bill as evidence of rural America's waning political power.
It's an interesting trend to think about, given how rural areas shaped American politics for so long. From Jefferson's yeoman farmer to Lincoln and the GOP's Homestead Act (even as industrialization was winning the war for them) to Bryan's prairie populism. Even after the country became majority urban in the early 20th century, rural America continued to be politically important--think of the importance of farmers to the New Deal coalition.
But rural American has continued to shrink. And now we've even got a genuine "urban" President (wink, wink). Times change.
This week you've got the Secretary of Agriculture warning that rural areas are becoming less relevant, pointing to the failure of Congress to pass a farm bill as evidence of rural America's waning political power.
WASHINGTON Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has some harsh words for rural America: It's "becoming less and less relevant," he says.
A month after an election that Democrats won even as rural parts of the country voted overwhelmingly Republican, the former Democratic governor of Iowa told farm belt leaders this past week that he's frustrated with their internecine squabbles and says they need to be more strategic in picking their political fights.
"It's time for us to have an adult conversation with folks in rural America," Vilsack said in a speech at a forum sponsored by the Farm Journal. "It's time for a different thought process here, in my view."
"Why is it that we don't have a farm bill?" Vilsack said. "It isn't just the differences of policy. It's the fact that rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country, and we had better recognize that and we better begin to reverse it."
For the first time in recent memory, farm-state lawmakers were not able to push a farm bill through Congress in an election year, evidence of lost clout in farm states.
The Agriculture Department says about 50 percent of rural counties have lost population in the past four years and poverty rates are higher there than in metropolitan areas, despite the booming agricultural economy.
Exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks found that rural voters accounted for just 14 percent of the turnout in last month's election, with 61 percent of them supporting Republican Mitt Romney and 37 percent backing President Barack Obama. Two-thirds of those rural voters said the government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.
It's an interesting trend to think about, given how rural areas shaped American politics for so long. From Jefferson's yeoman farmer to Lincoln and the GOP's Homestead Act (even as industrialization was winning the war for them) to Bryan's prairie populism. Even after the country became majority urban in the early 20th century, rural America continued to be politically important--think of the importance of farmers to the New Deal coalition.
But rural American has continued to shrink. And now we've even got a genuine "urban" President (wink, wink). Times change.