What the farm bill's failure tells us about American politics

That said, farm bills passed without much fanfare for more than 70 years (i.e., more than a dozen such bills were enacted), and suddenly the bottom dropped out. Unless I’m missing something, none of the “fundamentals” about the farm bill changed between 2003 and 2008. That is, aside from the political landscape. Simply put, there used to be common ground between rural and urban areas in America. Friday’s failure of the farm bill — in a unified Congress with a co-partisan sitting in the White House — suggests that this is no longer the case.

The following map of how House members voted demonstrates this. The light blue and light red districts denote districts represented by members (light blue: Democratic, light red: Republican) who voted nay on the farm bill. Given the unanimous opposition by Democrats on Friday’s vote and the Democratic Party’s current seat advantage in urban districts, it is unsurprising that most members from urban districts voted on the opposite side of most members from rural districts.