Pandering to podunk country.
Via Politico:
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) has declared war on almond milk as she prepares to run for reelection in 2018.
Though not a cause célèbre driving political talk on cable news, plant-based beverages called milk are a major sore spot for dairy farmers in Wisconsin, where President Donald Trump swept up to 71 percent of the vote in rural counties last November. Baldwin has introduced a bill banning the nontraditional drinks from being labeled “milk” — one of several rural issues Baldwin and fellow Democratic senators have championed early and often this year.
While many voters in rural areas complained that Democrats forgot them in 2016, and party strategists rush this year to find a new message to bring them back in the fold, Democratic senators up for reelection in 2018 have little time to spare to fix their party’s issues. These battleground-state Democrats are quick to note that they got elected in the first place by tending to voters outside their states’ biggest population centers. And they are focused this year on winning back voters their party has failed to connect with since the last time they appeared on the ballot.
As Sen. Debbie Stabenow visited a dam in Michigan’s far-northern Upper Peninsula — one-time Democratic turf that has grown reliably Republican — during a recent congressional recess, Sen. Sherrod Brown held two separate events on fighting the opioid crisis that disproportionately affects rural Ohio. In Missouri, Sen. Claire McCaskill has this year been holding town halls in places Trump carried by double-digits last fall.
“It’s a matter of earning those [rural supporters’] votes again in 2018. We are definitely mindful of the fact that the Democrats, in general, underperformed with those voters in 2016,” said Scott Spector, Baldwin’s campaign manager in Wisconsin. “It’s not changing who Tammy is or repositioning Tammy, but reminding them why they voted for her in 2012.”