Don’t Buy Democrats’ “Farm Revolt” Narrative

 As the midterm elections loom on the horizon, the Democrats and their corporate media mouthpieces are trotting out a new narrative that many of the Farm Belt and Great Plains states that President Trump swept in 2024 are going to vote Democrat in November. According to this theory, Democrats’ path to retaking the Senate could run through Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas – and they might just win a governor’s race or two there as well.

This tale is based on the supposition that farmers are so furious about President Trump’s tariffs, as well as the high cost of fuel and fertilizer, that there will be a “farmland revolt” against Republicans. This is unlikely, but the narrative is nonetheless getting a lot of play in the “news” media for one very specific reason.

Publications like Politico, for example, are actually suggesting that states like Kansas—which hasn’t sent a Democrat to the United States Senate since 1932—may break a voting pattern that has lasted for nearly a century. “GOP incumbents in Kansas and Nebraska are facing the fight of their careers,” the outlet reported.

But in 2024, Trump won Kansas and Nebraska by 16 and 20 percentage points, respectively. Moreover, according to the Cook Political Report, the Senate races in both states are rated “likely R.” Yet, Politico is stubbornly sticking to the Democrat talking points:

“Absent a drastic shift in voter sentiment, this election is poised to mirror the last time a Republican was besieged by ornery voters upset with corruption, the price at the pump and an unpopular Middle Eastern war: complete Democratic takeover. What gives GOP strategists some hope is that there are fewer red-state voters willing to vote for Democrats 20 years later, and the party’s shift left offers easy fodder for advertising.”

In addition, as AMAC Newsline reported last month, the Democrats are badly underfunded due to disgruntled donors. Consequently, they will have trouble fending off the coming barrage of GOP ads that will accurately define them as far-left extremists.

The legacy media is ironically making this problem worse by lavishing so much coverage on Democrat Senate nominees like closet socialist Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and the truly weird James Talarico in Texas. Both of these characters are toxic to a political party that already has a very real image problem.

Even Democrat-friendly MS NOW concedes that the party’s brand is way under water according to a recent YouGov poll: “Roughly 57% of voters have a negative view of the Democratic Party, compared with the 41% who hold a favorable view.” Democrat elected officials offer lame excuses and some even blame the voters for their brand problem: “‘They [voters] sometimes don’t understand the argument that we’re in the minority,’ Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, told MS NOW.”

The party’s purported leaders don’t even understand their problem when their own voters explain it to them:

“Democrats who spoke with MS NOW returned to a central theme: To improve the party’s public standing, they need to more clearly define and communicate not just what Democrats are against—namely, Trump—but what they stand for. It’s a belief shared across the Democratic coalition—from progressives to moderates and longtime lawmakers to freshmen.”

Yet we are expected to believe that farmers, ranchers, and working-class voters across rural America are about to vote for Democrats, who detest every value that most blue-collar Americans believe in. Why are we supposed to believe that these voters will betray their own beliefs? Because they are (understandably) upset about high fuel costs—which were even higher the last time Democrats were in charge.

The corporate media are gleefully throwing around terms like “Farmageddon,” but they are delusional if they think these hard-working Americans are going to embrace neo-socialism. And that is effectively what the Democrats are offering in 2026. This is a party that actually takes seriously the notion that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) could and should be president.

There is no doubt that some Farm Belt voters are disgruntled, but they haven’t gone crazy. Still, the legacy “news” media keep cranking out stories claiming these voters feel betrayed by President Trump’s trade, tariff, and foreign policy decisions and that the rural coalition that overwhelmingly supported him in 2016, 2020, and 2024 is disintegrating.

Newsweek, however, reports that Trump’s approval numbers have remained largely unchanged in the big cattle-producing states even after his recent decision to import 300,000 tons of foreign beef:

“President Donald Trump’s decision to allow more tariff-free imported beef has triggered backlash from some cattle producers and local leaders, but new polling suggests it has yet to produce a measurable shift in his approval ratings across America's biggest beef-producing states … Kansas was the only state to show movement, with a one-point improvement in net approval.”

Naturally, Newsweek badly wanted to find a black cloud for that silver lining, so it added this tidbit: “Every one of the top 10 beef-producing states has seen Trump’s net approval deteriorate since the start of his second term, according to a Newsweek analysis of Civiqs data.”

But this trend is merely the result of nearly two years of steady carpet bombing by the corporate media. Trump’s poll numbers are themselves the product of a highly suspect polling industry. Moreover, the President’s supposedly declining popularity is not unique to the big beef-producing states, and it may not be as significant during the midterms as the Democrats hope.

The conventional midterm wisdom is that the party in power will likely lose badly if the President’s approval rating is hovering in the 40 to 45 percent range. That rule, however, has less meaning than usual this cycle because there are so few competitive races. Moreover, a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll released on September 2 found that among likely midterm voters, Trump’s approval rating was 48 percent. The same poll showed the Republicans with a two-point edge on the generic ballot among likely midterm voters.

Returning to the Cook Political Report, it indicates that there are only six Senate toss-up races. Just one of them, Iowa, is part of the Farm Belt. Trump won that state by 13 points in 2024, and Republican nominee Ashley Hinson leads Democrat nominee Josh Turek 50 to 45 percent according to a new Emerson poll. Iowa is likewise the only Farm Belt state found on the Cook Political Report’s list of House toss-up races. GOP incumbent Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn are defending Iowa’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts, respectively.

“Farmageddon?” Hardly. The reality is that very few of the truly competitive Senate and House seats are in the Farm Belt.

So, why are the Democrats and the corporate media pushing the “farm revolt” narrative? It is transparently an attempt to dilute the GOP’s enormous cash advantage by convincing them to waste money defending seats that aren’t really in danger. Every dollar Republicans spend defending Senate seats in Kansas and Nebraska is a dollar they can’t spend trying to defeat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan or Jon Ossoff in Georgia.

It’s certainly true that there is real discontent in the Farm Belt concerning some of Trump’s policies, and it is folly for Republicans to take any state for granted. Every voter deserves political leaders who listen to their concerns, and Republicans keep getting elected in these states because they have more or less done a good job of that. That’s how elections work.

Nothing other than media wishcasting indicates that there is real potential to drive these red state voters en masse into the arms of the neo-socialist Democrats.