Janet Lynn Stumbo leaned on her cane and surveyed the two dozen or so voters who had convened in a small Appalachian town to meet with the chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party.
A former Kentucky Supreme Court justice, the 70-year-old Stumbo said the event was “the biggest Democratic gathering I have ever seen in Johnson County,” an enclave where Republican Donald Trump got 85% of the presidential vote last November.
Paintsville, the county seat, was the latest stop on the state party’s “Rural Listening Tour,” a periodic effort to visit overwhelmingly white, culturally conservative towns of the kind where Democrats once competed and Republicans now dominate nationally.
“The gut check is we’d stopped having these conversations” in white rural America, said Colmon Elridge, the Kentucky Democratic chair. “Folks didn’t give up on the Democratic Party. We stopped doing the things that we knew we needed to do.”
It’s not that Democrats must carry most white rural precincts outright to win more elections. More realistically, it’s a matter of consistently chipping away at Republican margins in the way Trump narrowed Democrats’ usual advantages among Black and Latino men in 2024 and not unlike what Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, did in two statewide victories.
The problem is that they’re going to try and appeal to the worst Republican instincts to do it in lieu of substantive economic policies and pure rhetorical non policy.
Probably because there aren’t enough available social workers and psychologists to deprogram the GOP base in any reasonable time frame.
If anyone still thinks the path back to power doesnt include a rebel army and plenty of guns, they’re naive as fuck.
The right has zero intention of giving up control ever again. And the sooner people realize it and start making IED drones, the better.
I’m dumb, what’s an IED drone and how do I make one?
While I wish them luck, haven’t we already proven this a no-win situation? Appalachia is saddled with many disadvantages such there is no clear way out. There is no fast answer. There is no understandable solution. There is only time, whittling away in small bits where you can, and yes it includes a lot of social welfare.
To emphasize, it clearly doesn’t include coal. Even if there were a coal renaissance, it would create very few jobs, distribute very little wealth. There’s like a century long automation trend that made those jobs disappear long before coal use declined
But voters prove over and over they’re not willing to hear that, not willing to even try the hard answer, not vote for their own best interests. I empathize with the desperation that leads you to vote against your own best interests, the desperation opening you to manipulation, the desperation in voting for any one who confidently claim an easy answer. But they have been consistently making it worse for themselves. How can you help them see they’ve been digging their own graves? How can we help them turn it around to start building rather than continuing to sink?
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The idea that going out to speak with voters in a rural area is somehow ‘pandering’ is narrow-minded at best.
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” – Mahatma Gandhi
I think democrats will chase the votes of anyone but the left.
Because at the end of the day the democratic party is still a conservative neo-liberal capitalist party. They aren’t going to side with a bunch of folks against imperialism or capitalism. At best they will argue for not exploiting the middle and lower income people so aggressively and do performative PC stuff.
Propaganda only works till it meets reality. A lot of these places Democrats and others don’t visibly go much. They feel left behind and forgotten. So even when the fascists that cause their problems pay them basic lip service. They latch on to it tightly.
If someone actually went there and did more than empty lip service. They’d take notice. But the problem is, Democrats while not being devoid of useful ideas. Absolutely won’t threaten to topple the status quo to do what would be necessary.
So many places in Appalachia so isolated and devoid of functioning communities and governance. I wonder what would happen if groups funded coops and communes out there that actually helped the people. I bet plenty might take a liking to it.
That’s communism! But yeah, that seems like a good idea for some of those communities. You can’t easily fix isolation, poverty, and lack of industry, nor are changes imposed from outside likely to succeed. However they claim to be independent, resilient, and to look out for their neighbors - why not take that to the next level? Build things their way. Lean on each other. Let their strengths build on each other.
From the outside, the best way we can help is infrastructure: roads, bridges, internet, services like health services, clean air and water, a strong department of education to ensure their kids get a good education even if localities can’t afford it on their own
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