>There's no question but that small farmers have a hard time of it, struggle
>uphill against very difficult economic circumstances, even with subsidies.
>So why do they vote overwhelmingly Republican? Democrats are no less
>assidious than Republicans about supporting the subsidies. It's not
economic
>interest: Republicans support big agribusiness and credit policies that
have
>contributed to their plight--so do Democrats, of course, but is there a
>significant difference? It's possible that Democrats might be better.
>Nathan, do you know what's what here? Is the triumph of ideology over
>interest? Or maybe the difference is small enough that reactionary
>ideologies trump any marginal differences in the way the parties would
>promote the interests of small farmers.
Well, the first thing to note is that farmers are not the majority of voters even in farm states. And for those that remain, farming has become an incredibly capital intensive-pesticide intensive industry. So slashing capital gains and gutting environmental controls can sound really attractive to a lot of those farmers. The farm subsidy system is so out of whack that poor farmers hardly benefit relative to the bigger ones- it's hard to make a big case on farm issues that the GOP is worse than the Dems; the GOP is quite socialist-oriented towards their farm constituency when it suits them, the temporary market ideological triumph of the Freedom to Farm Act a few years ago aside.
It's not always clear what is progressive about farm subsidies, given that they increase the price of food for poor folks in the cities. Once upon a time, the cities and rural legislators had a deal where farm Congressmen supported welfare for the cities while city Congressmen supported subsidies for the farms. As suburban areas have grown, new coalitions have emerged of suburbs teaming up with votes from rural areas to kill spending on welfare, while to a lesser extent those same suburban votes have teamed up with city votes to undermine the farm subsidies for poorer farmers. And with more and more votes in farm states being those suburban votes teamed with richer farmers, the basis for the old progressive small farmer-city alliance has been largely undermined.
The creation of Food Stamps, teaming Bob Dole and George McGovern with city legislators, was probably the last gasp of that older alliance. The current city-rural divide is the triumph of Southern conservatism in the GOP trumping the prairie progressivism of the past that would support city issues, just as neoliberalism in the Dems (even of a more liberal sort) lost sympathy for farm issues seen as irrational and marginal.
If there is a resurgence of progressive voting in a lot of the plains states, it is not going to be a producerist alliance, since the number of rural "producers" is falling and probably fallening into big or little reactionary directions. But as agribusiness grows, from larger-scale farms to giant pig production, there is a growing working class in those sectors. Latinos are one of the fastest growing groups in many rural areas for this very reason. Now, many of them can't vote because they are not citizens, so this is not showing up in the political results of those counties. But if a real enfranchisement movement addresses the vast underbelly of the rural working class in these areas, there is plenty of basis for a progressive politics in those states.
But not on the lines of the Farmer-Labor Party model. That's dead. Dead. Dead.
-- Nathan Newman