our next guest, the political miracle worker, senator jon tester, who is montana s only democrat elected statewide, has a message for democrats, about how to win back rural voters. the national democratic brand in, i think in rural america generally, is toxic, and it s because quite frankly, we don t show up. i m talking about national democrats. we are not willing to go places where not wanted and answer questions. when i look at who s made the biggest difference for rural america, it hasn t been the republican party. it s been the democrats that have worked for generations to try to empower rural america. and when democrats do show up in rural america, they have to talk about issues that never come up in urban america, often involving agriculture. jon tester is good at that, because he spends a lot of time listening to montana farmers, and he s a former himself.
and it s because quite frankly, we don t show up. i m talking about national democrats. we are not willing to go places where not wanted and answer questions. when i look at who s made the biggest difference for rural america, it hasn t been the republican party. it s been the democrats that have worked for generations to try to empower rural america. and when democrats do show up in rural america, they have to talk about issues that never come up in urban america, often involving agriculture. jon tester is good at that, because he spends a lot of time listening to montana farmers, and he s a former himself. here s a picture of senator tester at work, on the farm. he tweeted that picture last week. most of us just see a man and his dog under a fearsome piece of rolling machinery, but farmers see jon tester, not just in a struggle with that machine, but in a struggle for all farmers to run their forms and their machinery more efficiently. and joining us now is the
done while in office. biden fast and dramatic slide downward explains why mcconnell is nows totally comfortable just telling republican governors to ignore altogetherte the biden administration s guidance on how to spend that infrastructure money they re going to get in other words, ditch the bike lanes, w fix the bridges. and how happy are manchin and sinema that they didn t buckle on that voting rights bill ? pelosi s media bullieslo turned up the pressure campaigni ,but the senators resisted and then they were trashed by the left. they didn t care, but they obviously made the right callsl for the other senators who bill themselves as reasonable moderates but who ve never spoken out therere desperately trying to play catch up. nowow the national democratic brand and i think in rural america generally is hot and it s because quite frankly, we don t show up.
and again to put the tester lines up to help with the conversation. something like this. there s a lot more blue in here. so listen to senator tester. you ve heard this from your conversation. this is why he says a lot of blue then, a lot of red now. the national democratic brand, i think in rural america generally is toxic and it s because, quite frankly, we don t show up. i m talking about national democrats. we re not willing to go places we re not wanted and answer questions. is that what it is? the president of the united states, other democrats need to start showing up more in montana, in idaho, in places where they are losing or is it showing up and taking questions or is it the policies? look, i think it s a combination of both. in 2008, barack obama had the advantage of having to run a 50-state campaign to win the nomination against hillary clinton. and so he competed hard in the
and forth history. you have the pelosi investigation on january 6. republicans didn t want to do that. go back to benghazi investigating hillary clinton. we have this environment in washington and faced with something that as giroir points out is that global pandemic and we can t even get together on trying to make sure that we figure out to the best of our ability where this thing came from. that s disturbing. yeah, absolutely. therein lies the problem with washington. we re so divided that we cut put the health of our nation and our kids first. i look at everything that has happened the last year. the negative impact on our country. i have two kids. i ve seen what it s done to them and their schools and the education and the inability to see their friends and being at risk of getting covid-19. we re not doing the people s work. we don t show up. we should be listening to and following the science even when we disagree.