Appalachia is Trump Country.

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice switched from Democrat to Republican.

"The Democratic Party walked away from me.  Today I will tell you, with lots of prayers and lots of thinking. . . . West Virginia, I can't help you any more being a Democratic governor."

Appalachia is lost to the Democrats until their message turns from benefits to jobs.    


Appalachia used to be solidly Democratic.   FDR and Truman and JFK and Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton won there.  JFK and Johnson focused attention on that big pocket of poverty in the "War on Poverty."  The face of poverty and disfunction in Appalachia is white.  When Trump talks about disfunction and total carnage, he refers to a Chicago that is urban and black.

2016 Democratic candidate:  "Jobs. Jobs. Jobs."

Donald Trump won Appalachia overwhelmingly and a Democratic governor just switched parties, becoming Republican.   It is the most Republican part of the country.

Appalachia gives Democrats an opportunity to better decide and define who they are looking at the politics and political messaging of West Virginia governor Jim Justice and by the still-Democratic senator Joe Minchin.    

Should Democrats try to reconnect with Appalachia?   Are these people a plausible part of the Democratic coalition?  They voted for Carter twice and Dukakis and Bill Clinton twice, so can't Democrats re-connect? 

Lots of electoral votes in these states

Yes, carefully, if they represent jobs, not benefits.  Work, not safety net.   That is the bridge issue.   In Appalachia, the archetype example of national disfunction is black, urban Chicago with lazy people sucking benefits from taxpayers, enabled by anti-white over-educated coastal elites.    The problem for Democrats is that, in fact, key elements of the Democratic coalition are people of color and the educated professional classes, who tend to live in cities and have urban sensibilities regarding guns, minorities, the environment, and diversity.

Appalachia itself may be politically lost to Democrats for a generation but the states that include Appalachia need not be.

  
The horror story of social disfunction for the archetypal Democrat is the economy and style of West Virginia, populated as some see it, by uneducated racist whites clinging to religion, guns, and a coal industry that is destroying the planet, sucking benefits from taxpayers enabled by demagogic con men who pretend that coal, not solar, is the future.

The Democratic party can do a light adjustment, and it should.  A party that celebrates inclusion can manage to include people who are religious and rural, even if they must exclude people who are racist.   Democratic diversity and inclusion can re-embrace the blue collar and less educated.  Democrats need to accept and integrate that white people are Americans too:  all lives matter.

Republicans have done a better job of embracing the value of work.  Democrats must not be the "food stamp" party, as Newt Gingrich accused.  They need to be the party of rewards for hard work.  This will require some areas of policy and message adjustment for Democrats. The image in the mind of Appalachian voters when they thought of Obamacare was not their white neighbors, it was those layabouts in cities, which is why there seems to be so much shock at the discovery that repealing the ACA hurts so many of themselves.

There is a style here of clear non-verbal communication that goes beyond the written text:  Justice wears an ill fitting suit, one at least a size too big.  He uses poor--but familiar--grammar ("I got to tell you a couple of stories real quick. . . . listen to me and listen real good.")  The backdrop of people behind Trump and Justice were 100% white, wearing hats and tee shirts.  Justice embraced religion, making reference to prayer, to his soul, and to his parents looking down on him from heaven.  Justice talked about coal and coal jobs.  The crowd cheered.

Friendly faces

These are Trump's people.  This is Trump's style.  Notice it is not about fairness and equality; it is about white, rural, coal identity. Nothing about inclusion nor diversity nor tolerance.  Nothing about transgender.  Nothing about urban poverty.  Nothing about "our precious environmental heritage."  Nothing about education and technology.  Nothing about climate change.

Democrats cannot hope to become Trump-light nor should they want to.  The Democratic voter understands coal to be bad, both polluting and climate killing, and that solar is the future, not coal.  The Nader-Sanders-Stein progressive environmental wing of the party will split off once again if the Democrat moderates here.   Most secular Democrats will tolerate religious talk by their candidate, but not apostasy on race or the environment.  Central values for Democrats are inclusion and environmentalism.

Coal country is likely lost to Democrats because coal is a symbol of identity in this region.  But hard work is also a point of pride and identity.  The Trump-Justice crowd is not cheering  the billions of dollars of federal aid that flows into their region to support their anti-poverty programs, funds pouring in from those coastal urban centers with strong economies and full employment.  They are cheering talk of jobs, jobs in their area.

Recommendation for a Democratic candidate for congress in a red district or a Democratic candidate for president: Promote a targeted jobs program for rural America, a modern version of the Rural Electrification program of the 1930s.  Promote tax advantages for factories and design centers and distribution centers that take place outside of urban areas, argued as a matter of national security and infrastructure efficiency.  Our dense cities  make America less safe from foreign enemies, and proposed infrastructure spending just exacerbates the traffic problems.   Repopulate rural America.

The internet is making this practical.  The value proposition for dense cities is weakening.  Housing prices in cities are sending a signal: move out.  

It may not win electoral votes in West Virginia, but people in red America need to be included back into the Democratic coalition.  A map like this one should be as disturbing to Democrats as would be a graph of black poverty.