I grew up in America’s Dairyland, on a farm. Grampa had a dairy farm, mom grew up milking cows. Dad worked on his uncle’s farm, and all his family and friends were farmers. There is a crisis happening in Wisconsin, and nobody seems to care.

Dairy farms clustered in north-central Wisconsin. This is the area that can swing for a Democrat. Suburbs around Milwaukee are gone - racism abounds there.

I shoveled shit in barns, stacked hay bales, picked rocks, fed livestock, planted corn, plucked chickens and drove tractors from the age of 8 on. I figured out early that this was back-breaking, lung-busting work.

I saw some of my friends get hurt & mutilated by farm equipment.

I saw others get cancer early and die from the noxious chemicals that Dow & DuPont inflicted on us as “experiments” back in the 70s.

Rural despair is killing people. Democrats talk about race, Mexican immigrants, and climate change.

This is why I left.

My relatives still there have changed over the years. Poisoned by Hate Radio and Fox News, they voted over and over for right-wing charlatans, who promised a return to the “Good Old Days” and promised that tax cuts would put more money in their threadbare pockets.

Democrats didn’t bother talking to them at all.

My family was True-Blue Democrat; the creed was laid down by my grampa, who said “The Democrats are the only party that gives a shit about the working man. Fuck the Republicans. Fancy rich boys.”

Small farmers have a soul-deep attachment to their land, their families, and their cows. All that is being torn away.

That advice rang through the generations, and my family were Democratic organizers and reliable voters. Until Trump.

The farmers are starting their tractors, running in front of them, and lying down to commit suicide. So it looks like an accident, and their broke, suffering family at least gets some insurance money.

These are the voters that swung Wisconsin for Trump. They are desperate. Drowning men will cling to any little bit of hope offered to them.

Wisconsin is THE swing state for 2020.

Stop fucking around with the border, racist Tweets, or any of that other hot-button issue dogmeat that Trump throws out as a distraction. This election will be swung by whether working people see someone offering a way out of their deep, dark hole.