Democrats Worried That Debate May Have Undone Years of Progress in Rural America

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.