Obama’s Agriculture secretary: Dems need to talk to rural America

President Obama’s secretary of Agriculture says Democrats need to spend more time talking to rural voters as the party seeks to recover from its loss in the presidential election.

{mosads}“If Democrats show up in these places they are not going to win, but they are not going to get shellacked,” Tom Vilsack told The Washington Post. “And that’s the key. It’s about not getting beat so badly.”

Vilsack is a former Iowa governor who has served as Agriculture secretary for Obama’s entire tenure. He recalled an encounter with Vice President Biden just after Election Day where he talked about the party’s lack of outreach to rural voters.

“We need to speak more directly to our folks in rural America,” Vilsack said he told Biden. “And we have to spend time there.”

Democrats are debating what went wrong following Hillary Clinton’s loss to President-elect Donald Trump.

Clinton lost several states typically won by Democrats, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Some Democrats are sounding the alarm about the results, arguing they reveal a disconnect with working-class and rural voters.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who is challenging Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for House Democratic leader, has warned that Democrats are at risk of becoming “a regional party that fails to get into the majority.”

Trade was one of the issues on which Trump was able to make inroads with Rust Belt voters. He promised during the campaign to cancel and renegotiate trade deals and bring jobs back to the United States.

Referencing trade and how it affects farmers, Vilsack told The Washington Post that “they know their sales are directly related to trade.”

“But we haven’t said, ‘Hey guys, here’s the problem.’ We just haven’t connected with them,” he said.