Not the people, let's start there. Yes, this is a conflicted state. The Lexington Herald-Leader front-paged a poll last week which said 46 percent of the state wanted Kim Davis impeached, 47 percent wanted her to stay in office.
That's not why we lost big last night.
We lost big because we didn't get out the votes. And that, in part, is the inevitable result of a pragmatic national strategy.
Let's start with this: Barack Obama has never been here. OK, he's been to Louisville because that's where all the votes are. And maybe he flew out of the airport in Northern Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati. The point is he's never been to Appalachia, and I can speak only for Kentucky but I'm confident it's true of much of the region.
Not once that I can remember.
Not just Obama. Major candidates don't come here. Not at all. Not ever.
Why does this matter? The Tea Party has an energized base. They appear to be winning (surely they won last night), and so their base is growing. We Democrats...we don't count. The national apparatus has looked at our region and said, "Yeah, not enough votes, and we can't win there." And so they don't spend their resources here. I mean, sure, they spend money, just to piss off Mitch McConnell and friends.
But they don't send serious national candidates our way. They spend no time in this region. They make it clear they simply don't care. There aren't enough of us, we don't donate enough money, we're not important.
We don't count.
Hell, maybe they're right. Surely they're right if you're trying to win this immediate national election.
But if you're trying to build or rebuild a dispirited state organization....if you're trying to motivate people to fight increasingly difficult fights...show up every once in a while. Act like you give two shakes of a rat's tail. Stand on your hind legs and argue for what you believe even if the audience is small and half of them disagree with you. Especially if.
This is how the Republicans seize control of state legislature. One of Kim Davis's preacher friends just filed to oppose State Representative Rocky Adkins, the sitting Speaker of the House. Correction. Majority Leader. When I saw the headline yesterday I thought it foolish. After last night's election returns -- and Rowan County went for Conway, despite the fact that he apparently never left his desk in Louisville -- I'm not so sure.
It's easy, especially in big city echo-chamber enclaves, to write off rural America. It's hard to campaign here, and without an early presidential primary every four years, there's no obvious reason to do so. Unless you want to win down the road. Unless your party is about ideas and governance, and not simply about raising money.
There. I don't feel the slightest bit better, but the words are gone.