1d ago

The Democrats' path back to power might start in places like this Appalachian town

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.

19 comments

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.

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

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?

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.
  
  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.

- 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.
- 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.

19 comments