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?
If you’re really dumb definitely don’t make an IED
No, I’m pretty sure the Democrats’ path to victory doesn’t start in a small town that voted 85% Republican. Show up, by all means, but maybe actually try to win voters that already like your words but don’t trust you to implement them.
No, I’m pretty sure the Democrats’ path to victory doesn’t start in a small town that voted 85% Republican.
They’re not there to try to secure victory. They’re there to build a justification for moving to the right.
Do you ever think about how if the Incas like 500 years ago were able to turn the Andes Mountains into an agrarian paradise with terrace farming, that it should definitely be possible to do in the humble hills of Appalachia with a bunch of unemployed miners who have excavation experience and who literally know how to drive bulldozers?
Firstly: the soil is poor. Lots of issue with soil runoff, and it’s not viable to irrigate basically at all.
Secondly: they don’t want to.
I think people forget how much mining paid for a while, even if the cost was the miner’s lives. It’s like the oil workers in the Dakotas, they like that work for the pay.
The only way you could agriculturalize that region would be having a mid to large agribusiness come in and industrialize it, which makes no sense because it’s cheaper and easier everywhere else.
They’re orphaned by geography. The tunnels helped but nowhere near enough.
The irony is terrace farming is in large part a strategy that is designed to literally improve the quality of soil and reduce erosion.
True, but it isn’t cheap, the effort costs more than you’d save in labor.
Couple that with the nightmarish logistics (lived there, it takes 4-6 hours to get in and out of the mountains over tiny roads not meant for trucks, that’s a lot of refrigeration), and the region just isn’t good for much economically.
I definitely don’t want to make it sound like it would be easy or anything. But I definitely think it should be a lot easier than what the Incas did when you consider what they had available to them and that it’s basically some of the rockiest, most rugged terrain on the entire planet. And also keep in mind too that the altitudes are so high that their growing season wasn’t even very long either! Pretty much the only thing that Inca had going for them that made their life any easier was volcanic soil. In basically every respect Appalachia has a 100+ times advantage over them so again I’m just saying that I have confidence that we really should be able to do this if we put our minds to it.
As for nightmarish logistics, that’s actually kind of another reason to do this in the first place because people live there right now and it’s very expensive to get food into all of these very isolated communities. It would be a very empowering thing if a small little hollow that spends a ton of money on food because of the nightmare logistics could just grow its own legumes and grains right there (and I also just want to point out that grains and legumes don’t require refrigeration either after you dry them.)
I also want to address something you said about an agricultural business having to do this. Yes, that is true, but only if we literally do not think that we have some kind of moral responsibility to remediate the destruction of the coal industry in Appalachia. Otherwise, the way I see it: if we have a social problem, we as a society have to find a solution otherwise, it will make everything worse for everyone, even the ones directly experiencing the problem. In solving problems usually will cost us something. So the effort costing us more than the labor involved doesn’t necessarily seem like a problem to me. And in fact, when you really think about it, wouldn’t it be actually insane if it was possible to actually solve the destruction wrought by the coal industry without having to spend more than we would save?
And one last thing I would like to address other things you’ve kind of mentioned in general about like the people they’re not wanting to and stuff. You have to understand that Appalachia was literally like one of the greatest strongholds of labor politics in the history of the United States and a lot of the reason why it became like that was because of ambitious New Deal-style economic projects just like this one. and we’re literally having a conversation on an article talking about strategies for how the Democrats can appeal to voters in places like Appalachia. I just don’t really see a good reason to think that if you give basically any group of economically exhausted people something to believe in that made sense, even if it’s a long shot, why we should expect them to respond any differently this time around.
So, you have excellent points.
Here si where so much of that falls down:
This is worse in the south, but Appalachia had it too: any federal or external program is seen by the ruling elite as a cash cow that they rightfully deserve, and often they genuinely believe that by taking the money they are protecting their community from being bribed into dependence on outsiders.
That’s an odd rationalization, but it’s what I’ve seen in many rural areas.
What you need is a true grassroots movement, and that article suggested as much, I’m just skeptical because you’re asking them to go against a decent chunk of what they consider heritage, as the Virginia lowlands were the rich tobacco farmers that originally mistreated the Appalachians and lead to their oppositional identity.
That, and the cost of labor.
Multiple ag-tech startups have been trying to get a foothold in Appalachia with things like automated greenhouses, but ultimately it’s still cheaper to bring in Central Americans on visas to do all the work than pay living wages to the locals.
absolutely the wrong way, tried again and again, Rs rarely switch parties. thier trying to find potential voters where theres is unlikely to vote for a D, especially if its a poc and a woman. the best ist o motivated more progressive, and other dem voters that are on the fence or not even non-voters voting. discussed in other threads, DNC are just looking for the laziest method of getting votes
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.
empty lip service is enough to convince republicans to vote R all the time, excessive propaganda helps, espeically if its mostly based on racism. doesnt really work with Dem points though.
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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