Sam Smith - The Democrats' best target is state and local. Thanks to the media, which strongly prefers the national, we have come to forget that voters spend most of their time relating to their neighborhood, their town and their state. Among those who don't understand this is Donald Trump whose political theories are just a few weeks or months away from bringing true trouble to the same folk who bought his pitch.
For Maine farmers, the Portland Press Herald is already reporting some of the real effects of Trumpism:
Kevin Leavitt was just three days away from getting a $45,000 check from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help pay for the newly installed solar array at his organic vegetable farm in West Gardiner when the Trump administration abruptly froze federal funding.
The 33-year-old farmer had already signed a Rural Energy for America Program cost-sharing contract with the USDA. He secured a $90,000 bank loan, cobbled together $15,000 in cash and hired a contractor to install the array. Although the work is done, the USDA is now refusing to reimburse him.
"I have a signed contract!" Leavitt said. "Forget politics, forget about changing policy, a contract is a contract. You can't take it back. Without that reimbursement, it all falls apart for me. I can't get my loan. I can't pay the contractor. I can't see a way forward."
Leavitt is one of thousands of U.S. farmers, including Mainers, hit hard by President Donald Trump's cost-cutting directives. One order froze funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden's signature climate law, which paid farmers to conserve soil and water and adopt renewable energy.
And the Maine organic agriculture center started by my parents in the 1950s and on whose board I spent forty some years has made the news as well:
A popular Freeport demonstration farm that was awarded a $35 million climate-smart agriculture grant to promote sustainable practices at 400 farms across the country finds itself in financial limbo as a result of President Donald Trump's federal funding freeze.
The Wolfe's Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment in Freeport was scheduled to receive a $335,000 payment from the U.S. Department of Agriculture this month to cover November and December expenses related to the Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities program.
Despite a signed contract, the USDA told Wolfe's Neck it would not be issuing any reimbursements at this time, Executive Director Dave Herring said. He wasn't told why, or when he would learn more about the fate of the grant program. He can only wait and hope for the best.
In short, national politicians like Trump can get away with grandiose projections but reality eventually raises its often ugly local head and the whole story changes.
I don't have a hard time keeping this is mind in part because when I was introduced to politics in Philadelphia and Boston as a teenager it was a practice that was much more into personal relationships rather than defined by major media manipulation and other PR distortions that dominate national efforts - such as running for president. I still remember Dick Dilworth, before he was Philly mayor, staging community rallies that used live music to attract neighbors to his talks. He and Joe Clark ended over six decades of GOP rule in the city.
The trick for the Democrats is not to give up their national pitch but to spend far more time bringing prominence to the damage that Trump is doing to ordinary Americans at a local and state level. The party needs to get back to a time when it was seen as of the people, for the people, and near the people.
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