"Even Iowa Republicans who initially wanted to move on from Trump see hope -- and a mandate -- in his win"

[andym]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/19/politics/iowa-voters-trump-mandate/index.html
By John King, CNN
7 minute read
Published 1:54 PM EST, Tue November 19, 2024

Shanen Ebersole believes if people better understood her life they would better understand her unapologetic vote for Donald Trump. “The majority of people who voted for Trump are not the far-right crazies,” Ebersole said in an interview. “That is not who we are. We are simple Americans who want to live our lives and do our jobs and make our own choices in our own homes.”

Ebersole and her husband have a cattle ranch in southwest Iowa, in a little town of rolling hills and gravel roads.
--snip--
“Care about all of us, don’t prioritize small individual groups first,” she said. “We felt as though Washington and the far edges of our country were governing the rest of middle America.”
[she really believes that Trump cares about them!!]
--snip--
“He wasn’t as respectful as I think our president should be,” Ebersole told us when we first met in December 2023. “Because he didn’t bring us together. Because of the divisiveness. Because of my liberal friends who were literally scared for their safety.”

Once Trump clinched the nomination, Ebersole said her choice was easy because of Biden-Harris administration farm and climate policies she says punish small operators like her family business. “Those policies made it a no-brainer for me,” Ebersole said. “My only reticence was wanting to bring us together.”
--more at that the link--
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This article is part of CNN's "ALL OVER THE MAP" project to see why people voted why they did in different areas of the country.
https://www.cnn.com/specials/politics/all-over-the-map
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My take-- the interviewee voted on the basis of her perceived sense that she needed Trump to survive economically, and thought democratic policies were harmful to her-- that needs to change: there clearly needs to be solutions that do not create the perception of harm to an Iowan farmer but still helps preserve the climate. It's more than possible that the farm and climate policies of the administration actually help such farmers but that the policies have been demonized by the right-- will investigate.
Clearly, perceived self-interest dominates the American voter. The safety of her liberal "friends" is clearly of secondary importance to her as is the unity of the nation.

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Boy, won't they be surprised when the only mandate that they'll see is more tax cuts for the uber rich. That's it. Just

like 2017 again.

[RJ_MacReady]

2. idiot

I hope his tariffs decimate these rubes.

[Yavin4]

3. What will she do when she loses her undocumented laborers are deported?

She doesn't look like she gets her hands dirty on her ranch.

[Macrophylla]

4. Meanwhile in reality

The small farms of Iowa and all over the midwest are now, have been and will continue to get sold to large corporat farms.
It's big farming that is killing off the small farmers and it's those very same small farmers who sell to the corporate farms.
I grew up in the midwest and this story has been TRUE since the eighties.