John Kerry lost 7 out of 10 of the poorest white majority counties

This is just inexcusable. In the 10 white majority counties with the lowest per captia income, Bush won 7/10. 8 out of 10 of these counties are in Appalacia, 7 out of 10 are in Kentucky. It becomes a little hard to claim we are the party of the working man when so many working class people are voting for Bush, sometimes by huge margins.


10. Magoffin County,
Kentucky

Bush 49.6%
Kerry 49.7%

9. Knox County, Kentucky

Bush 67.4%
Kerry 31.8%

8. Martin County,
Kentucky

Bush 66.0%
Kerry 33.1%

7. Hamilton County,
Florida

Bush 55.0%
Kerry 44.5%

6. Leslie County,
Kentucky

Bush 73.8%
Kerry 25.5%

5. Wolfe County, Kentucky

Bush 43.9%
Kerry 55.3%

4. McDowell County,
West Virginia

Bush 37.8%
Kerry 61.7%

3. Jackson County, South
Dakota

Bush 57.1%
Kerry 40.0%

2. McCreary County,
Kentucky

Bush 72.4%
Kerry 26.9%

1. Clay County, Kentucky

Bush 74.5%
Kerry 24.7%

party of the working class.

The reason Republicans win isn't because they have good ideas, it's because the Democratic leadership has decided to side with the corporations instead of the working class.

Or how about Beverly Hills, CA? Kerry won there 57%-42%. Kerry also won in well to do counties like Fairfield, CT, Westchester, NY, Clear Creek, CO and Teton, WY.

Take a drive through Idaho Springs on I-70 sometime. It's the town that time forgot. Right next door, we also took Summit and Eagle counties, which are quite upscale. However, we should keep in mind that in those counties, many of the houses and condos are owned by Denverites or people from out of state who aren't registered to vote in those counties. Places like Leadville and Minot are just small mountain towns without a lot of wealth.

I still think the fix was in all over the country! Where they couldn't do it with the electronic machines, they did it like they did in Florida in 2000! Conspiracy nut? Well didn't Bush and Blair conspire to start a war?

It is all BS. The fix is in.

more that the poorer, less educated people are more suseptable to be brainwashed by the media than those who can reason things out and think for themselves.

There are no mega churches in Marin. Almost all are strong environmentalists, pro-choice, and pro-gay rights.

and it gives its money to Republicans, mostly. Unemployment is staggeringly high, but the vote tends to vote Repub anyway. Go figure...I suspect it comes from years of unfullfilled promises by Democratic office holders. Kentucky used to be solidly Democratic, a very conservative sort of democratic, but Democratic nevertheless.

It's stupid for the same people who support environmentalism to blame John Kerry and Democrats for being environmentalists. You can't support coal miners and be against coal mining. It's actually amazing Democrats get 50% of the vote in those places.

You are right, the coal business is around for a while yet, but there are varying ways to mine coal. Mountaintop removal is the most prevalent, and the most destructive. It would be a good issue for Democrats to focus on. It has changed the Eastern Kentucky landscape, figuratively and literally, and not in good ways. While the coal companies continue to make out like bandits, the poverty level stays the same. But coal essentially is politics in Kentucky; you are not going to go against the coal companies and get/stay elected.

I don't know; the area is so insular, and conservative -- in the sense of tradition bound -- that there may not be much to do there. Of course, the coal companies are doing there part to end that, largely by destroying the environment that makes Appalachia so special. When the coal is gone, will the tourists come to see mountains with their tops chopped off?

That's why I used it. But it's also why logging, mining and ranching places vote R. I get tired of the hypocrisy on these issues. The second a Dem says "mining" in Kentucky, there's a line of far left PNW Greens who scream corporate whore. Then they turn around and blame Dems for losing mining areas. If anybody wants to know why a working guy in a mining or logging county doesn't trust the Democratic Party, look no further than the tree spiker or their equivalent. It's a very real problem.

I certainly want miners and their families protected environmentally and economically. But too many see Dems as the party that puts pretty trees ahead of everything else. And they'd just as soon a tourist never did come to their town either.

Just another area where we either need to change the way we talk or give up the vote altogether. And when we work towards cleaner mining, some on the far left need to understand why and help instead of threaten to hold their breath and vote Green.

Look at the numbers for McDowell County above. Kerry did well in the places where coal mining is the dominant employment.

One of the stories of WV's change towards a republican state is the move towards service industry jobs as the main employment source. At Walmart and Burger King, it's just you and your TV set telling you what to think. Any notion that your vote might have something to do with your economic future goes completely off the radar screen.

Then it becomes elections about who has the more southern accent and the more militaristic swagger.

The Republicans have been able to latch onto these divisive issues such as abortion, gay marriage, etc. and paint the Democrats as evil Satanists. We've seen what's been going on in NC with ministers influencing people on who to vote for. I'm sure a lot of churches in the South have done the exact same thing.

Yep, that is pretty much it. I bet we could take these counties and find a higher rate of military enlistees (where else will they find decent work?) and thus more casualties.

So not only does the right's use of faux-christianity grab them and keep them in this lower-class spiral, but they end up maiming and killing them, too.

Keep in mind these areas probably lead in a number of other statistics: teen pregnancies (and abortion?), high school drop out rates, methamphetamine junkies, alcoholism, health care benefits, infant mortality, welfare and food stamps, etc. I bet if you would mention this to all of these poverty-stricken Bush voters, though, they would claim "dem-dere blacks in those slums are no-good free-loaders" and "at least we don't have gay marriage".

"The reason Republicans win isn't because they have good ideas, it's because the Democratic leadership has decided to side with the corporations instead of the working class."

At least thats the way it was when I was going up in SouthEastern Kentucky.

Senator Kerry is truly a believer..

Mr. Bush is just a phoney who tries to use a "base" to get elected.. :crazy:

They should have all been forced to see the scene in Fahrenheit 911 when Bush is addressing those mega-millionaires.. I'll never forget those words out of his mouth..

Hearing him address them and saying what he said should have been enough to turn off Americans in EVERY part of the country.

He's a PHONEY.

How about "encouraged," or "offered the opportunity"?

Sometimes the wording on these boards scares me.

I'd be willing to bet the % of Pentecostals is higher in those areas, too.

:toast:

:)

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...and we wonder why Bush won 7 out of 10 of those counties.

.

The Republicans with their bankruptcy bill, their gutting of social security, and their attacks on welfare (most welfare receipients are not urban minorities; there are more rural whites on welfare) are obviously the party of the working/lower classes. These people sure know where their interests lie!

I've seen it before, when corporate logging came into the county. Environmentalists wanted to open up National Forest bidding to local loggers, and at first folks were on our side. Then the corporations hired speakers who came to invitation only gatherings and convinced the locals we were out to take away their way of life. The only thing that was taken away was responsible timber management. The corporations didn't hire a person from the local area, some local loggers were forced to shut down, but since the speakers had been "good old boys", they were believed. Environmentalist's lives were threatened and at least one house was burned down and its occupant beaten badly.

I'm not sure how to go about changing the prejudicial image for liberals the Republican/corporations have painted. I think it will take a rape not of the forest but of Social Security, Medicaid, and other social programs to make these people wake up.

These are the same people who all thought Saddam was directly involved in 9/11 and believed all the other fairytales, too. Heck, W was a good ole country boy jes like them!

religious, super patriotic people living in these areas?....Watching Bush operating from afar, I can see how they would be taken in by his phony "I'm on God's side" pose and his working on their patriotism through his fear-mongering about how he will "keep America safe."....

It's nothing new either. Poor white voters (especially in the south) have been voting for Republicans since the 1960's. That is when social issues have started to take precedence over economic ones, in the minds of many voters. Republicans have successfully been able to use a phony-populism, to convince poor white voters than Democrats are actually the Party of the elite.

Aren't there also a lot of poor white conservatives in rural Canada? I know that there is a big anti-taxation movement there.

The evolution of America's civil rights movement drew many poor whites over to the Pug party in the early 60's. This populaion felt highly threatened with the potential for Blacks to have voting rights, and the formal end of discrimination.

where you live....There is no big anti-taxation movement here...The right wingers in the Conservative Party talk about it but they are no where in the polls....I think most people here realize that if we want the good safety net we have with universal health care etc., you have to pay taxes.....:)

away from giving them a mandatory abortion and making them marry a homosexual right afters...
:eyes:
and this is what we are dealing with people...
they would rather deal with things that don't affect them rather than what does..
because god says so :eyes:

--- and they are just ignoring us, or are we letting the other side rule by allowing them to point the focus on these "wedge" issues.

I feel this is what we need to be addressing.

in Newton County, AR, one of the poorest in the state, Bush won, mainly on the gay marriage issue. Very little else was even mentioned, and the local Democratic Committee did ZIP to get out the vote. An independent group held rallies, wrote LTTE, took out ads-but our membership was primarily of "transplants", and the locals were distrustful of us. The Democratic Party needs to make sure that those in charge of committees at the county level are truly committed to the cause-otherwise, work is undermined.

well being, rather they vote the "values" agenda. And many buy the Bush-Rove bullshit. Actually Appalachia has never been a hugely Democratic area. Overall lower income people, did, however, vote for Kerry over Bush--more than any other income group.

outside of the east he only won Louisville.

Kentucky can certainly be won in 2008, unlike states like Georgia and Alabama where the racial divide is disgustingly extreme. If Democrats can build a political base in eastern Kentucky and add support in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys..winning in Kentucky and West Virginia would become the norm!

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has been reaching these counties.

It's just not known as a democratic hotspot.I don't want to say narrow minded but,eh well you know.Sorry.

Racism has always been exploited by the republicans. A lot of these poor folks are convinced that Democrats favor minorities over white people. They don't realize that the republican leadership considers all poor people to be lower life forms.

America lacks a coherant working class ready to stand up for their own interests, thanks to Ray Gun's gutting of the unions and years of evangelical indoctrination. The two right-wing core votes are always the same everywhere: the ignorant poor and the selfish rich.

seeing some more of it. The results you posted don't surprise me at all since the repubs have done such an effective job at using wedge isssues...in particular the three "G's".

I pulled up the 100 poorest counties in the US on wikipedia's site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorest_places_in_the_United_States), then I clicked on each one, looking at the demographic data. Most of these counties are majority Black, Hispanic or Native American. It took awhile to find white majority counties. Then I reconciled the list of white majority counties with the election data from Dave Liep's election website: http://www.uselectionatlas.org/

heck JFK was nuts to campaign in Texas. He knew it, too.

Besides that everyone knows that the gays were just lining up at the county lines to invade and wreck some perfectly good marriages if Kerry had been elected. :evilgrin:

Propaganda works!! always has..always will:(

Most poor whites who live more racially isolated lives and are out of touch with the rest of America. Because of this, they are too benighted to see that they are actually voting against their own economic interests.

Are these people better off 5 years later?

No.

and many of their kids are fighting thei was or have died in it.

RL

with the "average" person. He speaks their language & comes across as just another regular guy, chopping wood and oozing "sincerity" from every pore with his simple sentences.

His self-proclaimed profundities
are really fat rotundities

His words too thick to see through
show what he has to say

The content makes no difference
as long as the circumference

Is large enough to block the view
of those who look his way.

(written by my first husband, J.A.M., who's on the phone with me now, shocked that I still remember this poem)

and making empty promises. He knows that by pretending to be a "regular guy," they are dumb enough to believe whatever he says and does.

Like it or not, he connects to them and your man Kerry can't.

Clinton's success was that he could connect with people. It wasn't his disastrous policies and it wasn't his lies but damnit the man could connect and sell you an ice-maker in the middle of a blizzard.

And by the way, those people are not "DUMB". They're just too misinformed to realize that the Democrats are willing to throw them bigger crumbs.

Or maybe they're just plain tired of crumbs and prefer to see the whole house of cards come crashing down?

You'll have to excuse them for preferring Bush's simple lies to Kerry's convoluted nuanced lies. Calling them stupid isn't going to help. They're no more stupid than Democratic voters who just look for -D on a ballot and punch it.

Field a candidate who tells it to them like it is and they will vote for that man. Howard Dean, as much as I disliked many things about him, could have reached them. Kucinich could have reached them. Edwards could have reached them.

Kerry? Hell, he couldn't even reach me and I HATE Bush with a passion that makes my blood boil. Kerry got my vote because it was a "vote against Bush". I refuse to ridicule people or poke fun at their intelligence because they straddled the fence differently.

The arrogant stupidity of Democratic Party, with the DLC leading the dance, is more appalling, more unforgivable, than the stupidity of the people in Appalachia & Kentucky.

You seem to be saying that we should ignore the millions of people who did connect with Kerry in order to reach the groups that expect a president to be just like them. I don't relate to chopping wood, planting and farming nor southern accents. Nothing wrong with those things but, there is more to the U.S. than this. I don't like candidates that come across like a used car salesman. It's phony. Bush and Clinton are phony. What they both have though, is a need to connect with people in order to sell themselves. Kerry, is a different type of guy. He doesn't treat people like they are stupid. He tried to lay out the important issues and hopes that people will think about the consequences of Bush's actions and make informed decisions. I think in the long run this is a good thing. We shouldn't have an electorate that votes on a candidate based on phony appeal and propaganda. We have had many presidents that did not behave like Bush and Clinton who were well liked and accepted. Just because this phony good old boy persona has been effective in recent elections, does not mean it will continue to be a winning formula. Many of those considering a run in 2008 do not come across this way. In the end, it wasn't Kerry's personality (which I though was just fine) that cost him votes, it was a trumped up war, fear and Rove, who sold his soul to the extreme religious right in order to get Bush reelected. Kerry was that good a candidate that they had to bring out the most extreme of measures in order to defeat him.

You can live in the past all you want, but the true Dems, Indies, etc. are looking at foresight. I will say this again and again, it doesn't matter who the candidate was, the media would have smeared him or her the same way period. There was no candidate that would have been more qualified than Kerry. You can be mad at him all you want, but the some of us would rather concentrate on fighting a criminal and incompetent administration.

to make the case. People have neither the time nor the inclination to log on to DU and read up on all the research DUers do, and it's ridiculous to expect them to pick politics over watching, say, a football game.

It was their choice to believe the spin, therefore, they have to live with the consequences.

lack of good nutrition..it makes them slow.

How else do you account for people voting against their vital interests..kinda like the chickens voting for the Colonel?

Are we really so certain that Kerry lost those counties? And if so, can we state with any degree of certainty that he lost them because the Democratic party doesn't represent working people?

I would love to see a poll or study, done correctly of course, which addresses what I call the Christian Martyrdom problem. Many of these people know that they are voting against their economic interests by voting republican, but they don't care because they feel righteous in doing so. Abortion, gays, and general "left-wing immorality" all play an incredible role in how so many people will vote. So I'd first like to see those numbers, and of course the votes need to be counted properly.


Having said that, however, I also agree that the Dem party has become far too beholden to corporate masters. If the party was further left on economic issues, would we be able to sway those Christian Martyrdom voters away though? Personally I doubt it- bit it would be nice for the party to at least try!

tia

They are almost Dahaner (lever machines) statewide.

Then again.. look at Tom DeLay the bug killer..

It doesn't take education and smarts in that party. If you're an evil manipulator, you're in..

natural marketer. The cockroach guy is another natural. They can seemingly sell anything to just enough people to stay in power

1. End Time Delusions by Steven Wohlberg

2. Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston

3. What's The Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank

all three, add up the information contained in each one, get that information out and you destroy the Republican party's base in poor angry lower economic strata whites, who VOTE !

..... your are in the back country of Kentucky Mr..
Voting is also a function of education and Kerry cleaned up
in the more education groups. College educated women
went for him in a landslide (this also brings into doubt
the "miracle of the exurbs" story that Rove had he henchmen
float out ....... lot of College educated women in those big
houses out side the suburbs).

This was also the group that the 3 Gs played in Guns, Gays, & God.
Very easy to manipulate these people ..... drop a Jesus or get a tacky
American Eagle in front of "the flag' ready to kick some AA RABBB butt
cause of 9/11 and you will get a visceral response.

One other reason this illegal corporate junta wanted to break the unions
too ...... they educate the workers on how their vote impacts their
wallet ....... (a trial lawyer I know said about 7 years ago he heard a talk
by a former Dow Chemical lawyer she said that the goals of this "gang
was as follow 1. Break Unions 2. Get Control of the media 3. Gut
the EPA and all environmental law 4. Redo the tax and legal structure
so as to benefit the wealthy 5. Get the Trial attorneys)

One more thing in my rant but ....... KERRY WON!

poor whites. It's not impossible, but you have to convince them that voting Democratic will improve their lives. Kerry made a bunch of vague statements, and deep down, his biggest apeal was that he was the unBush. That was fine for those of us who are politically aware and understand what a disaster Bush is, but it wasn't enough for the people who work in the coal mines.

I have to say that I saw Kerry in person twice during the campaign, and I didn't get the feeling that the crowd was so enthusiastic about the idea of Kerry winning the presidency as about the idea of Bush losing it. Kerry himself seemed to be saying the right things, but he gave the impression of acting passionate instead of being passionate.

That's why I get really annoyed when the scaredy cat wing of the party talks about nominating some blow-dried empty suit like Evan Bayh or Mark Warner to lead the 2008 ticket. If the Democratic Party is to survive past 2008, it needs to spend the next three years seeking out politicians with firm convictions who have a history of relating well to the "lost" constituencies.

THAT is what it testifies to, my friend.

The bush campaign was ALL ABOUT fear, fear, fear, and more fear. If Kerry is elected, we'll have another terrorist attack, remember that? Every single bush campaign meme was about fear and loathing.

Fear works. And it works best on the poor and the uneducated.

Oh and not just fear of terrorist attacks but fear/discrimination against gays, minorities, anyone different.

FEAR WORKS.

Fear works best on the uneducated. Fears are created and then exploited. Propaganda about "evildoers" and social change. He's got them coming and going, with AM talk radio blasting away at them day in and day out--it's a slam dunk.

I was just looking at the statistics for the top ten poorest counties in the US. None of them were a white majority and none of them went for Bush.

I know in Texas the two poorest counties listed were campaigned heavily for Kerry. It appears to have worked, too.

If the poor white counties had been given the same approach I wonder if it would have effected the votes any?

The republicans get tens of millions of white racist votes, and still have to steal elections. As racism subsides, the republicans will really have to steal a lot of votes to win.

My History professor was saying this same thing too. No matter the who the candidate was, this would have happened to them too.

Just north of me is Adirondack Mountains. A sparsley populated area. And in upstate NY, this is usually puke country, outside of the big cities like Albany, Schenectady etc..

But in Hamilton County in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains, which went for bush something like 67%, the voters also went for Hillary Clinton in her NY senate race.

How the hell do you figure that?

for his "populist" "class warfare" rhetoric in 2000? Gore stopped and I think it cost him momentum. Kerry didn't use enough of that rhetoric either and it undoubtedly cost him. Democrats need to ditch their current Washington consultant corps and learn again to rally their natural supporters.

they are doing to their own abject detriment.

While the GOP has worked hard at entrenching themselves in these poor white communities, the Democrats only show up a couple of weeks before the election. And then they disappear, only to reappear for the allotted two weeks in the next election cycle.

Increasingly, this is becoming the pattern in poor black urban communities, as Dean pointed out last week.

We didn't even try to reach these types of people. I really believe we ignored them. That is why Gov. Dean has begun a great grass roots effort to reach these types of people and informed them of what our party represents and how we are actually the party of the people.

if they were better off now with * in office than before he came on board....

-- came on board?

The odds are quite high that their individual quality of life has been reduced. That is the fire we need to light. The republicans can not counter it.

Don't give the republicans any room to work a snow job about the absence of terrorist attacks or gay marriage. Simply ask these people if they are living any better now than before the republicans took office.

Like folks having to serve in the military, going on welfare, unemployment, bankruptcy, things most likely to affect them instead of dealing with a Tom and Harry exchanging nuptial vows.

I just didn't want to leave any wiggle room. It's an excellent question, and one I now plan on posing to many of the lower income people I know.


Another thing we need to begin to do is lay the blame at the feet of the republican party. Bush is a lame duck, thankfully.

edit: clarity

Same results there too. We fucked over the Hispanic vote too. Don't blame Kerry, it's all of us as a group. Get the article, look at the graphs. Read the part about the Hispanic group, Coronado, and what they said. We'd better pull our heads out and work more cohesively in the next major election.

I have read that information from other sources, however.

You're right we'd better pull our heads out and get to work.

I also read that a large portion of the Hispanic vote in Texas went for Bush. I've not seen anything to confirm this or deny it, so for now I'm going to assume it's true.

The counties in south Texas went for Kerry, that I do know. They are majority Hispanic communities. Why would these counties go for Kerry if Texas lost a large block of Hispanic votes to Bush? Because the Democratic community and leaders in those counties worked their butts off and reached those people. I applaud them for their success.

I feel that's a success story Democrats, not only in the rest of Texas, but the entire US, should be paying close attention to.

Explains the situation very well. One of the best political books put out recently. Naturally it is ignored by the main stream media and the latest anthrax coulter used toilet paper is promoted endlessly.