“Farmers have some tools, but none are quick fixes.”
Actually there is a pretty quick one. Vote for Democrats for the House and Senate. Get all your farmer friends and everyone in related businesses and communities to vote for Democrats. A Democratic majority in both houses of Congress can stop Trump in his tracks and move towards recovery.
From ruby red rural America. They don't stop beating their heads against the wall. They do it over and over and over again, blaming others for their head injuries.
i use the lens of the antichrist to explain pres. satan. it pretty much covers the gamut. it's not just america that he is ruining, but the entire world as well. a truly evil, soulless creature. that nothing has stopped as of today. we need an exorcism! hello, pope leo!
I recently had an acquaintance who is a farmer tell me that "farmers are hurting under Trump" was just a talking point of the left. He literally said that any farmer "worth his salt" would be able to weather "small increases in prices." The denial of reality and the lack of empathy for others is just a hallmark of MAGA.
but they couldn't stand temporary pandemic related inflation under biden....they are all just so full of shit. i would have more respect if they just said they supported the hatred and bigotry. we'd know where they really stood. and could stop arguing over economics....
Kent, this farmer reflects the delusions of millions of MAGAts who have consumed lethal doses of the poisoned Kool Aid. They are hopeless wretches who long ago sold their souls to the lying, fascist devil in the White House who doesn't give a rat's ass about them. They are lost souls who are irredeemable and I have absolutely no sympathy what will befall them except that the misery will impact millions of Americans who did not sign up for this shit show. A plague on all their houses.
Your acquaintance is a fool. His denial is like the heavy drinkers or smokers who "knew somebody who smoked five packs of cigarettes a day and lived to be 105" only to whimper in pain and fear when they are diagnosed with lung cancer or emphysema. He'll learn the hard was soon enough.
Needless to say I was disappointed and shocked at his pushback and privilege. I am usually really good with my bullshit detector, but this one surprised me. Thanks for your support friends.
Trump doesn’t care if farmers lose their farms due to bankruptcy. His tariffs destroyed overseas markets for their crops, eliminating USAID dried up another important market for US farm products, and his war in Iran has driven up fertilizer prices and fuel costs. Trump clearly doesn’t give a rat’s a**.
Who benefits? Well, remember the news reports that his Treasury secretary buys up farmland from distressed farmers? Hmmm…
david, if they haven't figured it out by now, i doubt they ever will. a lot of people have given up on him, based on polling, though some writers gotta go and find the most favorable polls showing him at close to 40....when there are plenty with him at lower than that.
Q: If a rising power is confronting a dominant power, that's a Thucydides Trap. So, what's a rising power confronting a declining power? A: A Trump Trap.
The ones I know say that Trump changed and that seems to make them comfortable cutting their support for him. It's not that they were gullible and got taken. Whatever gets them to vote differently or at least not vote R.
What is really interesting , I think some of the Republicans in newly drawn districts are going to regret it, at least according to a few Republican representatives from South Carolina. They were saying that persons of color are 45% of the votes - and you can believe they are very important and will vote. So, according to them, be careful what you wish for because you might be in for a surprise. I was walking by the TV room and I think Velshi was on. I stopped long enough to hear that but then the phone rang. So, there is some apprehension from team Red.
And regarding Trump’s new view that Taiwan is a “bargaining chip”:
Someone better wake up the CEO’s of Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Broadcom (among others), since they rely for their chips on TSMC, based -duh- in Taiwan. It has about a 70% share of global chip manufacturing. If China controls Taiwan, we will have a Digital Strait of Hormuz.
Thanks Simon, I share your fury. In the "picture's worth a 1,000 words" department those photos of Trump with the world's dictators (and past dictators, buh-bye Orban) say a lot. Whatever that is smirking in those pictures, it's not an American President. This one from 2018 always sticks in my mind as well, with its smile of appeasement. https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-president-trump-smiles-thumbs-174144239.html.
Today is Day 5 of the 12 days of political donations my wife and I have committed to in May, front loading our 2026 political donations. Today’s donation went to Hopium's Audacious Expansion Fund. https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopiumexpansionfund. Never used to think about state parties that much, but I've learned the importance of them (e.g. Maine defeating its anti-voting initiative last year, Minnesota training constitutional observers for elections).
each time i read an article about farmers and rural voters, it has to come with a caveat that they still support the orange shit head. well, it took the public 30 seconds to turn on joe biden over prices, but these people sticking with trump when he is screwing them over with high fuel, and fertilizer prices, and inflation overall, tells me that inflation was never the issue to begin with.
Fisher this just isn't the case and you should stop repeating it. We don't know what is going to happen in farm country. Even a shift of 5% points could help turn a strong election for us into a rout. This isn't about winning farmers it is about cutting his margins, creating an opening that we can build on in future elections, and every candidate we've heard from understands the opening we have and are working it.
i just read an article on this topic this morning, it's a headline piece at reuters....and it wasn't the only one. are you saying these reporters are incorrect? i know a reporter can cherry pick quotes, but i have seen this kind of thing reported frequently over the past few months. whether a percentage of these voters peels away in a future election is beyond the scope of the reports.....they can only report what residents are saying right now. and, why shouldn't we try to win farmers? my mother's family were farmers in indiana; they were solid democrats, worshipped the ground fdr walked on, and fondly recalled "give em hell harry" truman. my mother wouldn't have voted republican if you paid her. neither would my italian father. but in indiana today, republicans hold sway.
Fisher, again. It just isn't the case you can "they are sticking with him." Based on what, interviews with 5 farmers? Where's the data? I have shared interviews with over a dozen candidates, on the ground, who said support for the Rs in farm country is eroding, and we have an opening. The math is simple - if he gets 90-95% of his people in this part of the country it is bad news for him and very good news for us. So of course a majority of Republicans, of farmers, of MAGA are sticking with him. But that's not the issue. They cannot afford to bleed any votes here so we only need to make small gains to have a big impact given how motivated our voters are and how much indies have swung against them. The "Republican voters are sticking with Trump" meme is lazy and wrong given all the data we have.
i want to see them hemorraghe voters, not just bleed. wouldn't it be nice not to have to sweat a few swing states by narrow margins every four years.....to not have to worry about a joe lieberman, joe manchin, or john fetterman to throw a wrench into the works.....because we have enough votes without them. simon, it's a nice day here and i need to get the tomatoes and peppers into the ground. will catch up later in the week. cheers.
Simon, I agree with you wholeheartedly and I’ve actually seen/heard data to the contrary of what Fischer states here. Sure, there may very well be a portion of farmers still attached to Trump and likely will remain as such. But there are in fact a number of farmers distancing themselves and whom are keen to his betrayal and that like you said, matters deeply as it plays to the margins come time to vote.
In fact, given some of these recent special elections in certain districts where farmers make up a decent proportion of the voting bloc, our flipping by definition has meant we’ve garnered some Republican farmer crossover. Not to mention, who ever said all farmers are republican anyway haha?!?
Many hurdles being thrown out way but like you and others have long often professed, one cant ‘tell people how to feel.’ That unfortunately, was a slight issue when it came to Biden’ communication. Harris was far stronger in that area and tried her hardest but many were already too stubborn in their emotions at that point it seemed whereas now, she has much more pull going around the country, especially all after the fact when she sincerely has ceremony to stand on.
Trump is taking what didn’t work for Biden’ communication and multiplying that by 10 and with a layer of pompous attitude to go with it which is surely off putting to voters all parties alike. Not to mention, Americans, particularly minority voters, do not and will not be told they cant vote nor have adequate representation in a 21st century multicultural societal landscape all amidst the digital age.
He will continue to be his own self destructive downfall and will take his cronies down with him intentionally or not. We will prevail when all said and done and i stand with you in that relentless overarching sentiment. That said, we have to continue to push forward our own succinct and forward thinking messaging to ensure the voting coalition is as massive and as broad as possible come Nov and beyond.
Not everyone in rural areas are farmers. I wonder how important "farmer vote" really is. It has got to be less than 1%.
I found a study (I suspect behind a paywall) that says that in the 2016 and 2020 elections, that the deciding factor is not "rural vs. urban" (which I've always assumed was the right way to view it), but the number of white non-hispanic voters with lower levels of education.
From the article abstract (which I think is available online):
"When controlling for other independent variables, the effects of rural/urban residence largely disappeared. Thus, Trump's dominance in rural counties is explained by the fact that rural counties have large numbers of non-Hispanic white residents and lower levels of educational attainment than urban counties."
Probably tying Trump to wealthy elites who are fucking everyone over is the best way to win over a larger share of those voters. Then the right way is to highlight the corruption and the fact his policies are giving wealthy elites more control over us, not less.
The farmers might turn on him to some extent for their particular set of problems. That's not even a majority of the rural voters, however.
Another harm he's doing: I'm in the DC area, and a friend drove by Memorial Bridge, across the Potomac, and saw two thirty-foot pillars already up where Trump is building his Trump-phal Arch.
I have a vision of history rhyming - all this symbolic gold-painted crap - ballroom, arch, all of it, being leveled post Trump. https://www.bbc.com/videos/cv2xgdj92y2o
Hopefully, the Eastern Plains and Western Slope farming communities wake up and reassess their support for the Trump economy that is devastating their prospects.
It is complicated by an Appeals Court ruling that could have negated her entire sentence if the circuit judge did not re-sentence her correctly. Gov. Polis has always been more centrist in his politics and his commutation does not erase her felony.
That's no excuse. Gov. Polis should not have given in to the thing's threats. What he did was a slap in the face to Judge Matthew Barrett, the election workers and other people who suffered because of Ms. Peters's criminal deeds, and the people of the State of Colorado who put their trust in him. Judge Barrett was on-spot in what he said to Peters. If she did this once, she will do it again.
One can be "centrist" in their politics, but there is NOTHING centrist about what Peters did. She committed a crime that is a threat to our democracy--and Gov. Polis is complicit in this.
“Farmers have some tools, but none are quick fixes.”
Actually there is a pretty quick one. Vote for Democrats for the House and Senate. Get all your farmer friends and everyone in related businesses and communities to vote for Democrats. A Democratic majority in both houses of Congress can stop Trump in his tracks and move towards recovery.
Farmers and all rural voters.
From ruby red rural America. They don't stop beating their heads against the wall. They do it over and over and over again, blaming others for their head injuries.
Yup, he is that and so much more.
At the heart of it all.
He is an idiot, just a stupid freaking idiot.
I could say more, but I think that is enough for today...
He’s a useful idiot to the oligarchs who want to rule the world. The entire GOP is in on it.
i use the lens of the antichrist to explain pres. satan. it pretty much covers the gamut. it's not just america that he is ruining, but the entire world as well. a truly evil, soulless creature. that nothing has stopped as of today. we need an exorcism! hello, pope leo!
I recently had an acquaintance who is a farmer tell me that "farmers are hurting under Trump" was just a talking point of the left. He literally said that any farmer "worth his salt" would be able to weather "small increases in prices." The denial of reality and the lack of empathy for others is just a hallmark of MAGA.
but they couldn't stand temporary pandemic related inflation under biden....they are all just so full of shit. i would have more respect if they just said they supported the hatred and bigotry. we'd know where they really stood. and could stop arguing over economics....
Kent, this farmer reflects the delusions of millions of MAGAts who have consumed lethal doses of the poisoned Kool Aid. They are hopeless wretches who long ago sold their souls to the lying, fascist devil in the White House who doesn't give a rat's ass about them. They are lost souls who are irredeemable and I have absolutely no sympathy what will befall them except that the misery will impact millions of Americans who did not sign up for this shit show. A plague on all their houses.
Your acquaintance is a fool. His denial is like the heavy drinkers or smokers who "knew somebody who smoked five packs of cigarettes a day and lived to be 105" only to whimper in pain and fear when they are diagnosed with lung cancer or emphysema. He'll learn the hard was soon enough.
Needless to say I was disappointed and shocked at his pushback and privilege. I am usually really good with my bullshit detector, but this one surprised me. Thanks for your support friends.
Thank you Simon as always for writing about all of the Trump/MAGA/Repub horror. I hope our great country survives…
Thank you, Simon! Lovely day here in the DMV and I hope you get to go out and enjoy it.
I am writing postcards to Ohio voters today.
Trump doesn’t care if farmers lose their farms due to bankruptcy. His tariffs destroyed overseas markets for their crops, eliminating USAID dried up another important market for US farm products, and his war in Iran has driven up fertilizer prices and fuel costs. Trump clearly doesn’t give a rat’s a**.
Who benefits? Well, remember the news reports that his Treasury secretary buys up farmland from distressed farmers? Hmmm…
My thoughts exactly. Bet there are tRump bros wait to gobble up the spoils.
We must do everything we can to let the American People know the truth about Trump and the Republicans who still support him!!!
david, if they haven't figured it out by now, i doubt they ever will. a lot of people have given up on him, based on polling, though some writers gotta go and find the most favorable polls showing him at close to 40....when there are plenty with him at lower than that.
This is a tad defeatist. I share David’s desire, let’s do more.
Q: If a rising power is confronting a dominant power, that's a Thucydides Trap. So, what's a rising power confronting a declining power? A: A Trump Trap.
Tagline for Dems reaching out to Republican and Independent voters: You've been had.
They were lied to by Trump, and they know it. This is a bit softer than saying they've been lied to. They know they were had.
The ones I know say that Trump changed and that seems to make them comfortable cutting their support for him. It's not that they were gullible and got taken. Whatever gets them to vote differently or at least not vote R.
Interesting point. I'll take whatever floats their boat.
Exactly.
It's like a coping mechanism, but I will take it!
I agree with y'all. Whatever we call this - rationalizing, an offramp, face-saving mechanism, it works to all our benefits.
What is really interesting , I think some of the Republicans in newly drawn districts are going to regret it, at least according to a few Republican representatives from South Carolina. They were saying that persons of color are 45% of the votes - and you can believe they are very important and will vote. So, according to them, be careful what you wish for because you might be in for a surprise. I was walking by the TV room and I think Velshi was on. I stopped long enough to hear that but then the phone rang. So, there is some apprehension from team Red.
Agree with Catherine. Put the emphasis on him having changed/lied. “You’ve been had” has an air of condescension and we should avoid that.
And regarding Trump’s new view that Taiwan is a “bargaining chip”:
Someone better wake up the CEO’s of Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Broadcom (among others), since they rely for their chips on TSMC, based -duh- in Taiwan. It has about a 70% share of global chip manufacturing. If China controls Taiwan, we will have a Digital Strait of Hormuz.
"Digital Strait of Hormuz" is very good. I'm stealing it!
The CEOs of Apple and Nividia were on the trip to China. I doubt they care about borders.
Thanks Simon, I share your fury. In the "picture's worth a 1,000 words" department those photos of Trump with the world's dictators (and past dictators, buh-bye Orban) say a lot. Whatever that is smirking in those pictures, it's not an American President. This one from 2018 always sticks in my mind as well, with its smile of appeasement. https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-president-trump-smiles-thumbs-174144239.html.
Today is Day 5 of the 12 days of political donations my wife and I have committed to in May, front loading our 2026 political donations. Today’s donation went to Hopium's Audacious Expansion Fund. https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopiumexpansionfund. Never used to think about state parties that much, but I've learned the importance of them (e.g. Maine defeating its anti-voting initiative last year, Minnesota training constitutional observers for elections).
each time i read an article about farmers and rural voters, it has to come with a caveat that they still support the orange shit head. well, it took the public 30 seconds to turn on joe biden over prices, but these people sticking with trump when he is screwing them over with high fuel, and fertilizer prices, and inflation overall, tells me that inflation was never the issue to begin with.
Fisher this just isn't the case and you should stop repeating it. We don't know what is going to happen in farm country. Even a shift of 5% points could help turn a strong election for us into a rout. This isn't about winning farmers it is about cutting his margins, creating an opening that we can build on in future elections, and every candidate we've heard from understands the opening we have and are working it.
i just read an article on this topic this morning, it's a headline piece at reuters....and it wasn't the only one. are you saying these reporters are incorrect? i know a reporter can cherry pick quotes, but i have seen this kind of thing reported frequently over the past few months. whether a percentage of these voters peels away in a future election is beyond the scope of the reports.....they can only report what residents are saying right now. and, why shouldn't we try to win farmers? my mother's family were farmers in indiana; they were solid democrats, worshipped the ground fdr walked on, and fondly recalled "give em hell harry" truman. my mother wouldn't have voted republican if you paid her. neither would my italian father. but in indiana today, republicans hold sway.
Fisher, again. It just isn't the case you can "they are sticking with him." Based on what, interviews with 5 farmers? Where's the data? I have shared interviews with over a dozen candidates, on the ground, who said support for the Rs in farm country is eroding, and we have an opening. The math is simple - if he gets 90-95% of his people in this part of the country it is bad news for him and very good news for us. So of course a majority of Republicans, of farmers, of MAGA are sticking with him. But that's not the issue. They cannot afford to bleed any votes here so we only need to make small gains to have a big impact given how motivated our voters are and how much indies have swung against them. The "Republican voters are sticking with Trump" meme is lazy and wrong given all the data we have.
i want to see them hemorraghe voters, not just bleed. wouldn't it be nice not to have to sweat a few swing states by narrow margins every four years.....to not have to worry about a joe lieberman, joe manchin, or john fetterman to throw a wrench into the works.....because we have enough votes without them. simon, it's a nice day here and i need to get the tomatoes and peppers into the ground. will catch up later in the week. cheers.
Simon, I agree with you wholeheartedly and I’ve actually seen/heard data to the contrary of what Fischer states here. Sure, there may very well be a portion of farmers still attached to Trump and likely will remain as such. But there are in fact a number of farmers distancing themselves and whom are keen to his betrayal and that like you said, matters deeply as it plays to the margins come time to vote.
In fact, given some of these recent special elections in certain districts where farmers make up a decent proportion of the voting bloc, our flipping by definition has meant we’ve garnered some Republican farmer crossover. Not to mention, who ever said all farmers are republican anyway haha?!?
Many hurdles being thrown out way but like you and others have long often professed, one cant ‘tell people how to feel.’ That unfortunately, was a slight issue when it came to Biden’ communication. Harris was far stronger in that area and tried her hardest but many were already too stubborn in their emotions at that point it seemed whereas now, she has much more pull going around the country, especially all after the fact when she sincerely has ceremony to stand on.
Trump is taking what didn’t work for Biden’ communication and multiplying that by 10 and with a layer of pompous attitude to go with it which is surely off putting to voters all parties alike. Not to mention, Americans, particularly minority voters, do not and will not be told they cant vote nor have adequate representation in a 21st century multicultural societal landscape all amidst the digital age.
He will continue to be his own self destructive downfall and will take his cronies down with him intentionally or not. We will prevail when all said and done and i stand with you in that relentless overarching sentiment. That said, we have to continue to push forward our own succinct and forward thinking messaging to ensure the voting coalition is as massive and as broad as possible come Nov and beyond.
Not everyone in rural areas are farmers. I wonder how important "farmer vote" really is. It has got to be less than 1%.
I found a study (I suspect behind a paywall) that says that in the 2016 and 2020 elections, that the deciding factor is not "rural vs. urban" (which I've always assumed was the right way to view it), but the number of white non-hispanic voters with lower levels of education.
From the article abstract (which I think is available online):
"When controlling for other independent variables, the effects of rural/urban residence largely disappeared. Thus, Trump's dominance in rural counties is explained by the fact that rural counties have large numbers of non-Hispanic white residents and lower levels of educational attainment than urban counties."
Probably tying Trump to wealthy elites who are fucking everyone over is the best way to win over a larger share of those voters. Then the right way is to highlight the corruption and the fact his policies are giving wealthy elites more control over us, not less.
The farmers might turn on him to some extent for their particular set of problems. That's not even a majority of the rural voters, however.
Reference:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0743016722000481
Another harm he's doing: I'm in the DC area, and a friend drove by Memorial Bridge, across the Potomac, and saw two thirty-foot pillars already up where Trump is building his Trump-phal Arch.
I have a vision of history rhyming - all this symbolic gold-painted crap - ballroom, arch, all of it, being leveled post Trump. https://www.bbc.com/videos/cv2xgdj92y2o
Great idea! And maybe rename the Trump Kennedy Center the "Kennedy Center."
We are working hard in Colorado to eventually flip at least two Congressional districts this year, CD's 6 and 8.
Here is the status of the Colorado GOP:
https://www.denverpost.com/2026/05/15/weld-county-gop-chairman-arrested-suspected-of-soliciting-child-prostitute/?share=
AND
https://www.denverpost.com/2026/04/13/colorado-republican-party-assembly-candidates/?share=
Hopefully, the Eastern Plains and Western Slope farming communities wake up and reassess their support for the Trump economy that is devastating their prospects.
You'll also need to elect a better governor, because of this: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/15/800039675/news/colorado-governor-commutes-election-deniers-sentence-after-trump-pressure/.
Fucking outrageous!
It is complicated by an Appeals Court ruling that could have negated her entire sentence if the circuit judge did not re-sentence her correctly. Gov. Polis has always been more centrist in his politics and his commutation does not erase her felony.
Here is a news channel interview where he explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AV2Jsygww4
It also eliminates a contentious wedge issue for the upcoming November election.
That's no excuse. Gov. Polis should not have given in to the thing's threats. What he did was a slap in the face to Judge Matthew Barrett, the election workers and other people who suffered because of Ms. Peters's criminal deeds, and the people of the State of Colorado who put their trust in him. Judge Barrett was on-spot in what he said to Peters. If she did this once, she will do it again.
One can be "centrist" in their politics, but there is NOTHING centrist about what Peters did. She committed a crime that is a threat to our democracy--and Gov. Polis is complicit in this.