Thomas Friedman tries to play matchmaker between VP Kamala Harris and rural America

Thomas Friedman wrote in his New York Times column yesterday: 

Harris is too smart and energetic to be just the vice president, a position with few official responsibilities. I’d love to see President-elect Joe Biden give her a more important job: his de facto secretary of rural development, in charge of closing the opportunity gap, the connectivity gap, the learning gap, the start-up gap — and the anger and alienation gap — between rural America and the rest of the country.

President Trump feasted off those gaps in our last two presidential elections to dominate Democrats in rural America. Putting Harris in charge of fixing them would be a real statement by the Biden team.

Most important, lifting rural America is the right thing to do for all of America and fulfills Biden’s vision of a nation that “grows together” in every way.

* * * 

“I fear the word ‘rural’ connotes a geography that is not my problem,” Beth Ford, president of Land O’Lakes, the influential farmer-owned cooperative headquartered in Minnesota, said to me. But, in fact, spreading connectivity and technology to rural America “is an American issue, an American competitiveness issue and an American national security issue,” she argued.

Persistent “underinvestment in rural America will leave us less secure and less prosperous as a nation” — and less competitive with China, which is rapidly connecting its rural heartland, Ford said. “Some 35 percent of farmers lack enough bandwidth to run the equipment on their farms, ensure their kids get a good education and that Grandma has access to telemedicine.”

What should a Biden-Harris rural strategy look like? It would start with showing up regularly. “Showing up” and “just listening to people” with respect goes a long way in rural America, Duluth’s mayor, Emily Larson, remarked to me. Actually, nothing earns more respect than listening to people respectfully.

“Rural areas have their own social networks,” Larson said, but they’re different from the metropolitan ones. “Here, people will show up for you in the middle of the night, but they don’t post about it on Facebook.”

On policy specifics, the Biden-Harris team should commit that in four years every rural community in America will have access to broadband — the basic infrastructure needed for an inclusive modern economy.

I agree with Friedman that Vice President Harris needs an important and high profile portfolio, and I agree that the Biden administration needs to reach out to rural America and ensure everyone has broadband within the next four years--if not sooner!  (Look what Australia just did!)  But Harris and rural America don't strike me as a match made in heaven, not least because of something Jon Tester said in his interview with Jonathan Martin, also in yesterday's New York Times: 

You cannot have Chuck Schumer talking rural issues to rural people; it ain't gonna sell. 

This is an instance when I believe the messenger really matters, and Harris has not previously shown any interest in rural America, as far as I know.