I was prompted to write this diary after reading VetWife’s plea to Kossaks to stop bashing Florida out of hand. She cited the barrages of comments she would see on any diary about Florida about how “they are getting what they deserve.” and on and on and on with comments like that.
I have in interest in this topic as I have moved back to Ohio to take care of my mom from Blue stronghold Portland Oregon. So I am now back into blood red country. Even before I knew I was moving back to Ohio I put together a few topic related diaries though (linked to original story with an excerpt following:
So, how is it we have made it clear to people in these areas we do not care about them if they agree with us on most of the issues? Simple, we do not ask for their vote, we do not seek to represent them. In the last election cycle, 1,479 state legislative districts were not contested by the Democratic Party… We did not care enough about them to ask for their vote. Not contesting a seat is a powerful statement about your priorities, it is the most powerful statement of who a political party desires to represent.
People in "Red America" are not voting against their own interests; they are simply voting for those showing any interest in them.
Electoral politics that reflect Democratic Party values should fundamentally be a process of expanding our reach. However, in the era of "big data," we have ruled too many places out as "too red" to win. As Republicans gain control of more seats, our reach contracts. Just one example, we had majorities in both state legislative bodies in the state of Arkansas as recently as 2009. Now we do not even field enough candidates to win a majority even if we won every race we enter for their house chamber.
Great, you’ve linked and excerpted some old diaries of yours, why the new diary
The good thing about VetWife’s diary is most of the comments were expressions of solidarity. A few people pondered briefly how to respond to the attacks that are made by too many blue state Kossacks, but most of the others just expressed frustration.”I’m from Texas, the same thing happens to us.” Some of them mention actually getting timeouts here on KOS for fighting against people just dismissing Texas out of hand.
After reading through some of those comments I started poking around some election figures from the 2016 campaign. My first thought was, boy I bet a LOT of Californians voted for Trump. They did. Nearly 4.5 million of them. More Californians voted for Trump than in all but 2 other states.
Then I decided to keep digging into the numbers a bit. What I found actually kinda surprised me a little bit, particularly with our cavalier attitude about “Red America” or the “Trump States.” I mean, I just did not expect this to be the case….
at all.
32,453,846 Clinton votes came from Trump states.
That is almost half her 65,853,852 votes. I am not even using “almost half” as a loose term like she got 45% of her vote from Trump states. I mean it like 49.3% of the, as we are fond of saying, total popular vote winners vote total came from states Trump won. Comparatively, she got 33,399,806 votes from Clinton states.
Trump, on the other hand, had only 1/3rd or so of his vote that came from Clinton states.
Come on people, half our freaking vote came from states that too many Democrats and Kossacks bash on a routine basis.
One commenter on VetWife’s post asked why do you take it personally? When people are bashing Florida, they aren’t talking about you specifically.
I am going to say this once, and this is something we must internalize:
PEOPLE DO TAKE THESE THINGS AS PERSONAL ATTACKS, SO WE SHOULD NOT LAUNCH BROADBRUSH ATTACKS LIKE THAT ABOUT PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING.
The English language affords many ways to state things very specifically, if you want to condemn Rick Scott voters to the firey pits of hell, fine (so long as you are not specifically calling for violence as per site rules) condemn Rick Scott voters to the fiery pits of hell. Just don’t condemn all the hardworking Democrats trying to make for a better state, country and world on a daily basis too. They deserve our help, not our hate.
This goes for Texas, or “rural America” or better yet, let’s stop making broad statements about any region or group. If you have something to say, think it through and be specific.
The good news is, Democrats are everywhere! Everywhere I tell you!!!