What’s eating Appalachia?

Well, Ramona - you seem to disagree with me, so I'm going to assume you're racist.

I don't have any real proof of it, but I can't figure out any other reason, so let's just assume you're racist.

And your parents don't seem to like me either, so I'll assume they're racist too.

And these other people around here argue a lot with me and don't seem to like me much, so you know what? I'm going to assume the whole blog's full of racist peckerheads.

Because it couldn't be anything I've done, so it must be they have a problem with Asian-blooded Tatar-Estonian immigrants, the intolerant racist bastards.

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Let's say someone ran for president and wanted to raise the tax on movies and put a heavy surcharge on incoming shipping to counter Chinese production - how popular would that candidate be in Los Angeles?

Imagine a candiate going to Iowa and saying they were going to cut off corn subsidies - both for ethanol and general support - what would the response be there?

Now, Iowa ain't a whole lot black - would you chalk up the response as "racist"? Do you think John McCain or Sarah Palin could threaten subsidies and walk away with ratings intact?

Could anyone threaten the 2 lifelines of the LA basin and keep popularity?

It might be remembered that West Virginia was the state formed from people who refused to secede from the North, who didn't have slaves (those were the ones in the lowlands). So where supposedly did all the racism come from if they didn't import and work blacks as chattel?

Now maybe it's that Obama's seen there as anti-coal, which is like being anti-beer and cheese in Wisconsin. The article notes the regulation of poultry as another difficulty.

But maybe just the insult of "clinging to guns and religion" hasn't worn off, that it's not Obama's skin color, but his foot-in-mouth disease in 2008, with his supporters insisting that a loss in Penn and WVa would be sure proof of racism?

Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the presidential hopeful said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Maybe a region that's been hit hard since 2008 might still hold it against him, and maybe he hasn't felt a need to reach out that hard since Mr.-expert-pollster knows which swing voters he needs to win the election.

Here's an old comment from a Kos reader from WVa - if it's easy for a former resident to assume rampant racism, how about for the rest of us? Just that, assuming don't necessarily make it true.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/05/13/514869/-Racism-in-WV-hot-topic-today

PS - 43% of West Virginia voted for Obama over McCain. Higher than Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, Alaska, Oklahoma. 

Then again, Georgia voted 47% for Obama and I'm sure the knee-jerk reaction is that Georgia's just another racist state as well. While Indiana, picking Obama by a thread at 49.9% will be God's chosen people. It's so easy to play red state-blue state, my candidate-your candidate.

Well, there are those who suffer the consequences of racism who might not want to wait until we're bored stiff.  Like it or not, a presidential race is one of the main event in the news media so when social issues like racism pop up, they will get attention because they are related to the main event. Steroids wouldn't be a issue in Congress if it was only impacted bicycle racing. 

Of course, voters should not feel obligated to follow party lines.  But it is also the voters responsibility as a good citizen to make their choices based on reason and their sense of values.  If their decision is being driven wholly or in part by racism, then, according to my values, they are not being good citizens and should be pointed out as a such.

The point of intense racism as a factor (beyond it just being a bad thing), is that it means that there is nothing Obama could do in order to convince them to vote for him.  Of course, we would need to have the parallel universe with the Obama candidate of 2012 running - whose administration did everything exactly as Obama's did, the only difference being the candidate is white - to ever know just who is making their choice based primarily or solely on race.

Finally, when Obama does put up the window-dressing to act like he cares, as with the war on drugs, he's bashed for pandering.  When he doesn't put the window-dressing up, he bashed for being dicky.  Probably Obama's team realizes that in a world dominated by coal, and seeing Obama isn't going to be the darling of the coal industry and those dependent on it (even though he isn't the worse president they can imagine), his energies are best spent elsewhere.  In the world of national politics, if someone is going to think you're dicky no matter what, there isn't much a point in trying to get them to dislike you a little less.

Do you deliberately misspell classical names? 

FWIW, the mischief of crossover voting can sometimes go wrong, very, very wrong:

The Georgia gubernatorial election of 1966 was held on November 8. After an election that exposed divisions within the Georgia Democratic Party (giving the Georgia Republican Party a shot at the Governor's Mansion for the first time in the twentieth century), segregationist Democrat Lester Maddox was elected Governor of Georgia by the Georgia General Assembly. The race also brought future President Jimmy Carter to statewide prominence for the first time.

 I was going to spare you my thoughts about the longtime anti-Fed culture in Appalachia vis-a-vis moonshiners vs "revenuers," but I will admit having them, only because I nixed them myself.  It all depends on what the Feds do--see, for instance, the Tenessee Valley Authority.

Ah, yes, whiskey.  Long memories in parts of Appalachia over liquor laws.  However, I would think the coal-mining regions have different experiences with both private and public enterprises that affected them.  The Tennessee Valley is much further south.  Like the local lakes created around the same time, it still irks those who think their land was taken unfairly but it benefited many more.

It does behoove us to remember acts done from eminent domain and federal overreach when trying to understand the locals - if Hatfield & McCoys lasted generations, some mine collapses and other acts might stick in the craw too. (Ruby Ridge a long way away, but certainly seemed unnecessary, and a typical revenuers vs. 'shiners type confrontation that ended bad)

LOL.  I remember pointing out to a friend who declared the whole state of WV racist because they preferred Hillary to Obama that Herman Cain was trouncing Gingrich and Romney in the GOP primaries:  http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/185453-poll-cain-leads-gop-field-in-three-states-gingrich-surging

Not to mention Obama performed about the same as Kerry despite him campaigning about an hour in the state himself.  You would think Democrats would want to appeal to these voters and talk to them if they could be persuadable.  But no.  Let's just give up on them, declare them racist, joke about their lack of teeth and inbreeding, clinging to god and guns, and then wonder why they are trending more Republican.  At least our superiority complex is satisfied, even if we are ceding possibly gettable votes.

Boo hoo?  Lol.  I am not on the sour grapes side of this argument, not by a far stretch. 

Since the map about this is in the comment of mine to which yours responds, please answer the question of why Oklahoma, southern Louisiana, and Arkansas went so much more heavily for McCain than for Bush four years earlier, when the national trend was heavily the other way.  Since none of these states is in Appalachia, you can't go there.  They also aren't all dominated by coal mining, so that doesn't work either.  Louisiana and Arkansas have reasonably sized black populations, which goes to your comment about North Carolina being Obama's because of the 90% black vote you impute to him.  Do you think no one engages in racialized voting in America?  Or that only black people do?  I'd say some white folks and some black folks are influenced by it.  I'd say it helped Obama with black folks in 2008 and in some areas helped him with white folks, and in some areas was neutral, and in some areas hurt him with white folks.  But that's just me.

Your comment upthread has this badly incorrect causal suggestion about the "bitter clinger" remark.  Yes, Obama is not immune from having said stupid or offensive things.  Maybe you supported a politician in 2008 who was, but I didn't notice one running that year.  Did Pennsylvania and Ohio (where Obama performed great in the fall) not have folks who would mind the comment but the Oklahoma-Arkansas-Louisiana-Kentucky belt did?  While you are propagating the mistaken idea that the comment was about Appalachia, the actual comment was directed at Pennsylvania and the Midwest, in its original.  Should have hit there, eh?  Last time I checked, Obama won the entire upper Midwest and also Pennsylvania.  He did better in the Midwest than any Democrat since LBJ, so it obviously pissed off the states to which he referred.  The line from the comment to the votes you draw makes no sense. 

The states to which I referred aren't red states?  Study the House and Senate races from the last decade, and then come back.  Manchin was taking rifle shots at cap 'n' trade to (barely) win his Senate race.  My bagger friends picked his opponent, who led til late before stumbling.  Kentucky elected Rand Paul over a very likeable moderate Democrat with a solid record in his Senate race.  Is Kentucky not a red state to you?  Will it elect a Democrat to the Senate anytime soon?  Conceivably?  Will it vote for a Democrat for President in the next several tries?  If we ask it nicely and tell it what a wonderful place it is?  This is ludicrous.  

West Virginia is less culturally and environmentally liberal than the Kerry states, among other things.  It would be great if a President who acted responsibly in Copenhagen and lobbied with Gore and Pelosi to get cap and trade through the House would play well in West Virginia.  People there hate it, and that's fine (since you hate Obama, you have to somehow take the other side in that argument, which to me as a liberal makes no sense).  But dijamo is right that it's largely about issues.  I don't want a national Democratic party with Kentucky-West Virginia-Oklahoma views of gay marriage or environmentalism.  It holds us back from responsible energy policy in particular to kowtow to those interests.  Any emotionalized defensiveness about anger in West Virginia at the reasonable steps Obama tried to take forward on cap and trade or to improve air quality and move away from coal is badly misplaced (unless you also share the West Virginian dislike for that awful climate change alarmist, Al Gore).  

Whether it makes hurty feelings in Charleston, reducing dependency on coal is good.  (I also find it funny that in the neighboring thread, there's a comment about how Obama can't support real change and has no convictions -- whoops, over here, he's abrasively confrontational about a good green change.  Maybe you guys can caucus on the talking points.)  Oh, and NPR this morning on the $250 billion spent on victims of coal mining and their families in compensation and health care since 1970.  Just because West Virginia for the sake of employment prizes that industry doesn't make anyone sticking up for it pro-West Virginian.  Or sensible.  Oh, clean coal.  Riiiiight.

But the deeper, more fun point to me is this.  It's interesting to see these arguments of dignitary offense (on behalf of states and voters totally unrepresented in this thread and website, holding policy perspectives largely unrepresented here too) rolled out only when it suits Obama-bashing.  By sharp contrast, when the purple and red state Senators don't want to vote for a public option (hell, Lieberman wouldn't, and he's from Connecticut), and barely approved the greatly maligned insurer-focused HCR, today's Obama-bashers defending the voters of Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia don't seem to process that in Montana and Missouri there isn't the same clamor for nationalized health care that there is in the Kerry states or on liberal blogs.  

So on odd-numbered days, your tribe doesn't play the violins for the conservative folks in such states who are the impediments to more liberal policy solutions in the Senate (whether it be energy or health care or anything else).  Instead, those voters disappear from the discussion; Montana and Missouri and Senators from there are held to California-New York standards of liberal purity, and Obama -- instead of being bashed for failing to kowtow to a bunch of miners who hate him anyway -- is bashed for the Senators from the same kinds of voter pools this thread valorizes voting the way their voters will let them vote.  (Please someone, run in and tell me how the intermountain West is clamoring to nationalize healthcare.  Give me a break.)

This is the flipside of the jeering (here I am paraphrasing a comment from the last week that was particularly over the top) that anyone who supports the President is some swirly-eyed dope who worships precious baby Obama in a manger.  It is the reductive management of all discussions, regardless of the deep internal contradictions necessary to do so, to dump on Obama.  He's not nice enough to voters in states that hate Democrats!  He didn't try to cram down nationalized health insurance on voters in states that barely elect Blue Dog Democrats!  These are irreconcilable contradictions in the arguments.  Their true structure is to reason from the conclusion that Obama is bad, even if the cousin arguments run head-on into each other at 80 miles an hour on the freeway.  (Although I guess if they don't collide head-on, the cousin arguments can always hook up offline and get married in some of these redder counties.)

Cheers. 

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