Jimmy Carter's Base

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

Listen to this.  This is the McKamys from 1980, somewhere in West Virginia.

The song is very moving.  Simple, but moving.

The people are ordinary.  They aren't perfect, but they love God.  If you listen to Ms. McKamy's testimony, you can know that these folks lived through times where they had no choice but to rely on God and no option for placement of trust but in Him.

These people likely voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and, as likely as not, voted for Carter in 1980.

The Democratic Party no longer feels accountable to these people, but back in 1976 and 1980 they did.  These people were not ridiculed or condemned as enemies in 1980; they were respected for their faith and honored for their hard work.  Supporting a family of 12 as a coal miner was revered and respected, not ridiculed and condemned.  People having Faith in God, and in the God of the Bible at that, was considered virtuous, not ridiculous. 

What is the effect of the Democratic Party not viewing themselves as having to care about these folks?   

[Make America Grumpy Again]

I think they'd have a much stronger EV advantage, likely holding onto IA+OH and possibly expanding beyondthere. They've taken for granted that one of their strongest areas back in '72 & '84 was in the heart of Kentucky, an area now long gone. These voters have lost the Dem's trust and the way some of them speak to/about them, it's hard to blame them. However part of the reason people like John Fetterman won and why Bernie won places like Essex County is because they listen to them. They don't call them rednecks or racists and they give them a seat at the table. They don't come across as elitist and I'd argue that Tim Ryan could've won if his opponent was Josh Mandel. We need a more humble Dem Party, one that really caters to working people and not to the interests of big business, Dem's are going to have to rely on the suburbs like they have since at least 2008.

[RINO Tom]

Without regard to the rest of what you said, this is not representative of Jimmy Carter’s “base,” period.

[vitoNova]

Gross.

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

Without regard to the rest of what you said, this is not representative of Jimmy Carter’s “base,” period.

I might agree with you about 1980 (although Carter carried WV handily in 1980).  I would disagree with you regarding 1976.

[Orwell]

I agree with Tom philosophically, These voters are great examples of that sound like Carter-Carter-Reagam-GOP until present voters.

[OSR stands with Israel]

I mean fundamentally this stopped being the democratic base because Ronald Reagan made the new deal coalition completely unviable . Heck even in 1976 with the Republican Party in truly horrendous shape , and the democrats having a fresh face they barely were able to put it back together .  The fundamental fact is a large part of the new deal coalition was not only working class voters but middle class voters and Reagan was Uber popular with those voters and in doing so made them new deal coalition unviable .

So really once something like that happens it’s not surprising too see the democrats try to change up their coalitions like parties do . Frankly other than the New deal coalition, our politics really never has been class based . Even the so called populist WJB did horribly among industrial workers in 1896 while doing great with rich farmers in the west so maybe the new deal coalition should be viewed as the exception rather than the rule

[SlavicOrthodoxWolf]

I mean fundamentally this stopped being the democratic base because Ronald Reagan made the new deal coalition completely unviable . Heck even in 1976 with the Republican Party in truly horrendous shape , and the democrats having a fresh face they barely were able to put it back together .  The fundamental fact is a large part of the new deal coalition was not only working class voters but middle class voters and Reagan was Uber popular with those voters and in doing so made them new deal coalition unviable .

So really once something like that happens it’s not surprising too see the democrats try to change up their coalitions like parties do . Frankly other than the New deal coalition, our politics really never has been class based . Even the so called populist WJB did horribly among industrial workers in 1896 while doing great with rich farmers in the west so maybe the new deal coalition should be viewed as the exception rather than the rule

Even the new deal coalition included rich Southerners, and did not include a lot of poor rural northern Protestants and Appalachian Unionists.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

No coalition will have absolute support with any group. Hanging on "rich farmers in the west" or "wealthy dixiecrats backing FDR" ignores the larger and much more important picture.

When we say something was class based, we aren't saying it was 100% about class, but that class overrode culture, geographic and religious differences "for most people of said class" to produce a victory around an agenda that was heavily favorable towards said class.

There have always been rich people in the Democratic Party and poor people in the Republican Party.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Without regard to the rest of what you said, this is not representative of Jimmy Carter’s “base,” period.

For many of them, they certainly thought they were. And if anything, realization that the situation was actually not so, is a big part of the impetus for why they ceased to affiliate with the Democratic Party.

Sure Republicans have alternated between being populist or elitist and that effected its ability to flip many of these voters, but the parties have generally held the same ideological positions (even as defined today) for decades prior to the 70s (and if you use more expansive and contextually dynamic definitions of the ideologies then its centuries not decades).

[Statilius the Epicurean]

There's a lot to say on this topic. Most obviously that left-of-centre parties losing ground since the 1970s in rural areas is a worldwide trend (although of course not uniform everywhere). Another point is generational replacement: the people voting now in WV are largely those people's children, who will not have lived in the shadow of the Great Depression etc.. And the collapse across society of localised institutions that in many cases bound voters to the Democratic Party such as, obviously, unions, and the replacement of local media with a nationalised political media, and changes in party structure with McGovern-Fraser and issue activists gaining power over political machines.

But IMO most importantly, today there is a larger urban and educated electorate with values and issue preferences that are antithetical to those OP is talking about. A significant chunk of the US electorate supports gun control to prevent mass shootings, supports ending coal and fracking to address climate change and supports marriage equality for same-sex couples, and considers these issues extremely salient, and is large enough to control a major political party. They can't be ignored, and the Republican Party is sure as hell not going to have them. And even ignoring everything else, there isn't a national Democratic Party that is pro-gun control, anti-fossil fuel and pro-LGBT rights that will win the vote of large numbers of rural, working class evangelical West Virginians. Is making the above choice on the issues about "not caring" for those people? Perhaps in the sense of having other priorities and tending to the values of other demographics. But the US is a big, diverse country, and the sociocultural chasm in its politics is too large for any one party to bridge. To win back the sort of Carter 1976 West Virginia voter in the video Democrats would have to largely junk what is considered the progressive agenda these days, and abandon the values of its core groups like urban liberals, who have been the heart of the party since God knows when.

But yeah, the alliance for much of the 20th century between urban progressives and working class West Virginians was based on the institutional strength of unions, the centrality of distributional disputes over cultural issues and the electoral weakness of social liberalism that forced the two together. A Democratic Party in the 21st century that tried to recreate the alliance simply wouldn't be electorally viable.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Jimmy Carter's base and the historical Democratic Party base in West Virginia were not the same thing. Perhaps one reason why what has happened did was because too many people were unable to tell the difference.