Democrats fear years of work in rural America erased by debate

HOUSTON, Minnesota — Democrats in rural America fear President Joe Biden’s 
debate performance is undercutting their painstaking efforts to build 
trust with their communities — a stark example of how the fallout is 
hurting the party with some of the key voters they’ve been trying to bring 
into the fold.

As Biden struggled to finish sentences during the debate in Atlanta last 
week, rural Democrats felt like they were watching their carefully 
coordinated, yearslong agenda to rebuild their standing in rural areas 
suddenly evaporate, according to interviews with Democratic voters, 
lawmakers, congressional aides and organizers on the ground. That’s 
triggered fears of a Democratic bloodbath in rural America this fall that 
could wipe out the party’s small remaining foothold in those regions.

“I think people just feel lied to” about Biden’s physical and mental 
state, said one local rural Democratic party chair in a battleground 
district.

“I was disappointed,” said Janelle Kelleher, 70, a Democratic voter who 
lives in a Republican-heavy corner of southeast Minnesota. “You can make 
excuses for someone, that he had a cold or whatever, but he didn’t come 
across as a strong leader.”

In battleground states and beyond, the level of alarm among lawmakers and 
local Democrats on the ground in rural areas has only grown in the days 
since the debate, especially after Biden officials spent days chalking up 
the president’s struggles to one bad night and dismissing Democrats’ 
concerns. Biden also falsely claimed during the debate that no U.S. troops 
have died on his watch, an assertion that’s been especially derided in 
rural communities, where young men and women are more likely to serve in 
the military than their urban counterparts.

Rep. Don Davis (D-N.C.), a U.S. Air Force veteran who represents a rural 
stretch of North Carolina, said he thought Biden’s debate delivery “was a 
disaster.”

“President Biden needs to show that he is fit to lead the free world and 
demonstrate his fighting spirit,” Davis said. “If he’s going to stay in, 
he needs to step up.”

Biden was able to clinch key battleground state wins in 2020 in part 
because he performed better in rural areas than Hillary Clinton did in 
2016, as Democrats have hemorrhaged rural support over the past several 
decades — especially in the upper Midwest. Minnesota’s current Gov. Tim 
Walz, a Democrat, represented Kelleher’s rural Minnesota district for six 
terms before former President Donald Trump came to power and Republicans 
flipped the open seat in 2018.

“I don’t even know what to say to people around here right now,” Kelleher 
said, adding she had just talked on the phone with her 35-year-old 
daughter in Colorado who lamented that no other Democrats had stepped up 
to run against Biden. As for her neighbors, “His showing in the debate 
just gives those people on the fence a reason to not support him,” 
Kelleher said.

Just to the north, at-risk Democratic Rep. Angie Craig (Minn.) is trying 
to outrun Biden and fend off a GOP challenger in her district that’s a mix 
of farmland and suburban sprawl.

Craig declined to comment for this story. Her office pointed to comments 
she made about Biden at a news conference this week, saying she thinks 
lawmakers “need to let the president think about whether he wants to 
continue moving forward.”

The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress like Craig have poured 
billions of dollars of investments into rural communities over the past 
3.5 years, while enacting a raft of policy moves to boost small farmers 
and local economies. Cabinet officials have criss-crossed the nation to 
tout the administration’s work, including multiple visits to rural 
Minnesota and Wisconsin this year by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and 
his deputies.

Despite all that, Democrats fear they’re facing a new crisis across 
battleground states, and more importantly, in previously safe states. That 
could help hand Republicans a trifecta of power in Washington next year, 
severely limiting Democrats’ influence on spending deals, a major tax 
package, and likely a $1.5 trillion farm bill reauthorization, which has 
been stalled in Congress for over a year and may get punted to 2025.

On Capitol Hill, a few Democratic lawmakers are starting to publicly warn 
that serious questions about the president’s health won’t just blow over.

“All of us are watching how the Biden team reacts. But it was a serious 
setback. And I think that that’s a universal view from the White House to 
urban to rural America,” said Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), an Agriculture 
Committee member who chairs the rural development panel.

“People saw what they saw, and there appeared to be physical factors that 
weighed into the performance,” Welch continued. “This is something that 
the campaign has to deal with, that President Biden has to deal with,” he 
added.

Welch also said he thought Biden campaign officials were “inappropriately 
critical of everyday Democrats who were asking the question about the 
performance and its impact.”

The prospect of Democrats potentially losing the White House and both 
chambers of Congress this November is top of mind for unnerved down-ballot 
Democrats. Democratic lawmakers also fear the total erasure of gains 
Democrats made with rural voters in states like Pennsylvania in the 2022 
midterm elections.

On Friday, the Biden campaign announced a $50 million paid media blitz 
across battleground states for the month of July. “This will be a close 
race, decided by battleground voters who require consistent time, 
outreach, and attention,” the campaign added.

Many of the most at-risk Democrats this November represent rural districts 
Trump won in 2020. Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Marie Gluesenkamp 
Pérez (D-Wash.) have already told local media outlets they believe Trump 
will win the election in November after Biden’s debate performance.

Welch noted Biden went into the last week “behind” in polling to Trump, 
and “the debate made things worse.” The Vermont Democrat also cited 
Biden’s strong support in his state, where the president’s been 
“extraordinarily, focused on rural development” and has helped his 
constituents “immensely” after record flooding last year.

“And, so great respect and gratitude for him. But we’re also extremely 
concerned about keeping Trump out of the White House,” Welch said. “We 
think that would be catastrophic. And given the setback on Thursday night, 
we’re looking for Biden to make a real decision about the path forward,” 
he added.

“My view, from just watching this extraordinary career from Joe Biden, is 
that at the end of the day, he’ll make his decision on the basis of what’s 
best for the country,” Welch said.

Seeking to quell growing calls for him to step aside, he traveled to the 
battleground state of Wisconsin on Friday. “I’m in Wisconsin for one 
reason,” Biden told supporters at a campaign rally in Madison. “We’re 
going to win Wisconsin.” The president beat Trump by a razor-thin margin 
of just more than 20,000 votes in the state in 2020.

Biden will need every vote he can get in Wisconsin this November. And, 
even if Democrats manage to reenergize their strongholds, they could still 
lose the state — and a viable path to the presidency — if they fail to 
limit Trump’s margins in rural counties.

Rural Democrats, especially in one of Wisconsin’s remaining swing regions 
in its southwest, have been trying to make inroads with GOP-leaning rural 
voters for years by touting the Biden administration’s work to send 
billions of dollars in federal aid and infrastructure dollars to rural 
communities while boosting markets for small farmers. Biden highlighted in 
his State of the Union address earlier this year how the administration is 
working to help more families hand down their farms to future generations 
so that “their children and grandchildren won’t have to leave home to make 
a living.”

That message, however, has been crowded out by consternation over Biden’s 
ability to continue his reelection bid after struggling during the debate.

“I had people sticking their head in my office asking, ‘What the hell was 
that?’” said Mary Von Ruden, chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party 
in a deep red, rural county in Wisconsin’s southwest.

But Von Ruden, who has long been critical of state Democrats she argues 
have overlooked rural swaths of the state, said voters she’s talked to 
were also shocked and motivated by Trump’s “barrage of lies” during the 
debate. She argued it’s more important than ever to rally Democrats, many 
of whom she argued understand the need to ensure Trump doesn’t get 
reelected as they also try to unseat the district’s GOP Rep. Derrick Van 
Orden and reelect Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.).

“I think the kind of Democrats who overanalyze stuff are getting really up 
in their heads about it,” said Sarah Taber, the Democratic candidate for 
North Carolina’s agriculture commissioner.


“What I saw from that performance was somebody who overprepared and tried 
to memorize too much,” Taber added.

Taber also noted that Trump’s 2018 trade war with China cost U.S. farmers 
billions, something she said rural communities have not forgotten as they 
prepare to vote in 2024.

“Most times, we do give people a second chance if they deserve it,” said 
Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union and a fourth-
generation dairy farmer in Westby. “Let’s see what the next debates and 
the next few months bring.”

Vernon County, where Darin Von Ruden farms, is one of the few competitive 
rural counties left in the state for Democrats. He acknowledged there are 
“concerns” that the good news of Biden’s rural work may get lost ahead of 
November as questions swirl about the president’s fitness for office.

“It certainly will keep that question mark in the back of people’s minds,” 
he added. “But let’s look at what the future will look like depending on 
who people choose.”

But Darin Von Ruden argued that the Biden administration has done “more 
antitrust work than any other presidency” — including new policies aimed 
at boosting small farmers who face record bankruptcies in the face of 
growing corporate food chains. He also cited billions in infrastructure 
and other federal dollars Democrats have reinvested in rural communities 
since Biden took office.

Democrats in battleground states like Wisconsin acknowledge the uphill 
climb ahead, especially trying to keep Trump from running up his margins 
in rural counties.

“I’ll be honest, it wasn’t easy a year ago,” Wisconsin’s former Democratic 
Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said. “It’s gonna take a real grassroots effort to 
get us over the finish line.”

Marcia Brown contributed to this report.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/05/rural-dems-biden-debate-fallout-
00166658