….
Brad Todd has gotten this cultural disconnect for a very long time, reaching back to the 2006 midterm elections that threw his party out of power. Todd, the founding partner of On Message, a GOP media strategy firm based in Washington, has never lost his connection to the five generations of Tennesseans that came before him.
And one of the regions he has really understood is Appalachia, which stretches from the industrial North, through the Rust Belt, down into the Deep South that distinctively follows the migration and settlement patterns of early Scots-Irish Jacksonian Democrats.
These voters are Democrats by birth, a tradition carried on from New Deal-Democrat paternity who fundamentally started breaking with their party when they began cutting them loose after flirting with their support during the 2006 midterm elections. It’s been a decade since they offered voters moderate Democratic candidates.
Since then white, traditional-values, working-class, predominantly male voters have been severed from their party so they could build an urban- and cosmopolitan-centered coalition of minorities, elites and women.
After Tuesday’s election, Todd took a look at the beloved Appalachian voters who he is most connected to and started drawing a map of what just happened in America.
The numbers were devastating to these once-reliable Democratic voters.
“There are 490 counties in Appalachia technically, which is defined by federal law. Hillary Clinton won 21 counties in that region,” he said.
And that is it. She did not win a single county in Appalachia that is mostly white, non-college-educated and has a population of under 100,000 people.
Not one county.
….
What does all of this data tell you about America? Todd says it is simple, “There are absolutely no more blue-collar whites in the Democratic Party. They just don’t exist, even the ones who want there to be have recognized there is no room for them,” he said.
These voters had stayed with the Democrats forever and now 80 percent of them in Appalachia have voted Republican. “That means they don’t know anyone who voted for her,” he said.
Why is this astounding? Because nothing gets eighty percent in this world, especially in politics, except for the numbers Democrats get in the inner cities.
….
For now, the Democrats have lost the very base of support that sprang from both the Jacksonian era and was reinforced by the New Deal Era of FDR. Can they rebuild? Sure. But do they want to? That part is unclear. If they continue to double down on elitism, it is unlikely. And it is certainly unlikely if they continue to make Republican voters appear as though the candidate they voted for requires children to seek a therapist.
- Discussion
-
How the Democrats lost the white working class
by @SalenaZito https://t.co/DR19YfEBdK
— valeriobrl (@valeriobrl) November 14, 2016
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.