Who Turned My Blue State Red? (NYT)

New York Times ^ | November 20, 2015 | By ALEC MacGILLIS

[Brad from Tennessee]

IT is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net. From Our Advertisers

In his successful bid for the Senate in 2010, the libertarian Rand Paul railed against “intergenerational welfare” and said that “the culture of dependency on government destroys people’s spirits,” yet racked up winning margins in eastern Kentucky, a former Democratic stronghold that is heavily dependent on public benefits. Last year, Paul R. LePage, the fiercely anti-welfare Republican governor of Maine, was re-elected despite a highly erratic first term — with strong support in struggling towns where many rely on public assistance. And earlier this month, Kentucky elected as governor a conservative Republican who had vowed to largely undo the Medicaid expansion that had given the state the country’s largest decrease in the uninsured under Obamacare, with roughly one in 10 residents gaining coverage.

It’s enough to give Democrats the willies as they contemplate a map where the red keeps seeping outward, confining them to ever narrower redoubts of blue. The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.

But this reaction misses the complexity of the political dynamic that’s taken hold in these parts of the country. It misdiagnoses the Democratic Party’s growing conundrum with working-class white voters. And it also keeps us from fully grasping what’s going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers have detected alarming trends in their mortality rates.

In eastern Kentucky and other former Democratic bastions that have swung Republican in the past several decades. . .

[FerociousRabbit]

Actually, the networks used to use red for the incumbent party and blue for the challenging party.

[This I Wonder32460]

Even people on food stamps don’t won’t to be murdered by those who follow an authentic form of islam just like the originator.

[Chode]

and what happened to that???

[Colorado Doug]

Maybe people are sick and tired of having their good jobs taken from them and forced into the so called safety net. Democrats create struggling towns where many rely on public assistance. In the mean time, I WANT MY RED STATE BACK!

[tanknetter]

IT'S much the same across the border in eastern Kentucky, which, like southern West Virginia, has been devastated by the collapse of the area's coal industry.

This one sentence really sums it up. Here's how it SHOULD read:

IT'S much the same across the border in eastern Kentucky, which, like southern West Virginia, has been devastated by the deliberate destruction of the area's coal industry by Democrats.

People in these areas get it. Liberal flacks for the New York Times who hold "flyover country" in something between contempt and disdain, don't.

[DiogenesLamp]

Who Turned My Blue State Red? (NYT)

Those communist bastards who have been living there for the last 100 years. That's who.

[DiogenesLamp]

All of the MSM reversed the colors in their 2000 election maps. Probably because they didn’t want the Dems to be identified with the Red commies.

The did it in 1992 because making Clinton "RED" was just too obvious, and would have cost him the election.

They have been doing it ever since then. We all know it's a propaganda technique, but until we are willing to hammer the media corporations into a bloody paste, they are going to keep using their power to push Democrats on the populace.

[Reeses]

Meanwhile, many people who in fact most use and need social benefits are simply not voting at all.

Most welfare spending actually goes to fund the welfare bureaucracy, which is given the day off on election day at taxpayer expense. Those are all the votes the Democrats need.

[mjp]

The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.

They are finally realizing that welfare statism is not in their best interest in the long run.Libtardism is what is causing the never ending and worsening group warfare in and the decline and decay of the country and impoverishment of the masses and middle class.

[RKBA Democrat]

So then. According to this article, not voting is a good thing for America.

I couldn’t agree more.

[IronJack]

safety-net programs

Code for "welfare giveaways."

[kcvl]

who are voting against their own interests

Because we know better than you what is in your best interest. What an arrogant prick,

[Mr. Jeeves]

“They won’t stay bought, damn it!” :)

[kcvl]

[Publius]

Cherryl Brooks ping.

"Mr. Taggart" -- she jerked her head in a shudder and looked straight at him -- "we were stinking poor and not giving a damn about it. That's what I couldn't take -- that they really give a damn. Not enough to lift a finger. Not enough to empty the garbage pail. And the woman next door saying it was my duty to help them, saying it made no difference what became of me or of her or of any of us, because what could anybody do anyway!"

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Part I, Chapter IX, p. 261

People are beginning to get it. Not enough to scrawl dollar signs on walls in protest, but the light is starting to come on in people's heads. There is something profoundly immoral about our welfare state.

[FerociousRabbit]

During Bush-Gore all you heard was red state-blue state during the never-ending recounts. The colors that were in place at the time just kind of stuck for all future elections as people just remembered Bush and Republicans = red and Gore and Democrats = blue.

[VOR78]

Who turned the author’s blue state red? That’s easy. Democrats did...by abandoning any semblance of the principles this country was founded upon in favor of the clown freak show that they’ve become and fully embraced.

As it turns out, a good number of people won’t completely sell out and abandon their core beliefs quite so easily.

[okie01]

IT’S much the same across the border in eastern Kentucky, which, like southern West Virginia, has been devastated by the collapse of the area’s coal industry. Eastern Kentucky now shows up on maps as the most benefit-dependent region in the country.

The idiot writer seems unaware that it is Democrat policies that have caused "the collapse of the area's coal industry".

After having her first child as a teenager, marrying young and divorcing, Ms. Dougherty had faced bleak prospects. But she had gotten safety-net support — most crucially, taxpayer-funded tuition breaks to attend community college, where she’d earned her nursing degree.

The idiot writer fails to make a distinction between "safety-net programs" that help people get jobs and "safety-net programs" that allow people to stay at home and watch TV.

Ms. Dougherty wanted a job so she could support herself and her child. I don't mind helping her get a nurse's degree. I DO mind paying Ms Fatstuff to watch As The World Turns.

Why is it that liberals seem totally unaware of these distinctions?

[MNJohnnie]

Probably because the rabid Anti-American Leftism of the current crop of Democrat leaders is so obvious that not even the traditionalist “Granddad and Dad were Democrat” crowd can ignore it any longer.

[Thibodeaux]

the red is the blood the terrorists will shed in the streets of NYC

this time though america will not compassionately send millions of $$$ to people that are anti america