Posted on 05/24/2025 4:38:04 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
PAINTSVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Janet Lynn Stumbo leaned on her cane and surveyed the two dozen or so voters who had convened in a small Appalachian town to meet with the chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party.
A former Kentucky Supreme Court justice, the 70-year-old Stumbo said the event was “the biggest Democratic gathering I have ever seen in Johnson County,” an enclave where Republican Donald Trump got 85% of the presidential vote last November.
Paintsville, the county seat, was the latest stop on the state party’s “Rural Listening Tour,” a periodic effort to visit overwhelmingly white, culturally conservative towns of the kind where Democrats once competed and Republicans now dominate nationally.
Democrats’ path back to power may start here, one small meeting at a time, because it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the party to regain U.S. Senate control or win the presidency without competing harder for rural and small-town voters.
The party recently lost senators from states with significant rural populations: Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Also, Democratic-led states are losing population to Sun Belt states led by Republicans, with some projections suggesting Democrats would lose 12 seats in the Electoral College in the 2030 census.
“The gut check is we’d stopped having these conversations” in white rural America, said Colmon Elridge, the Kentucky Democratic chair. “Folks didn’t give up on the Democratic Party. We stopped doing the things that we knew we needed to do.”
It’s not that Democrats must carry most white rural precincts outright to win more elections. More realistically, it’s a matter of consistently chipping away at Republican margins in the way Trump narrowed Democrats’ usual advantages among Black and Latino men in 2024 and not unlike...
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
About time Babylon Bee got some competition.
Ass Pimps wishful navel gazing..
Then again it might not.
Yeah cause these rural areas want open borders am I right sarc
The Democrat’s path back to power depends on what degree the GOPe sucks. The bill they just passed is a great example of what will kick them out next year, as typical.
That town sounds like it would be all in for trans-rights, open borders and reparations. /s
The Democrats path back to power is simple - but they probably aren’t going to take it.
Power. that is all it is about for them. They don’t care much about policy, just about being in charge.
Janet Lynn Stumbo leaned on her cane......paid for by Medicare which Orange Man is taking away!!!!
The democrats making believe their base isn’t INSANE!
Remember the love the Demonrats gave to Appalachian after the hurricane. Lean on that cane.
Asspress thinks the whites are stupid and want to be a combination of Sodom and South Africa.
Why does it occur to me that AP would never write a hopeful article about how or where the Republican’s path back to power might be?
The way to get through to these Democrat operatives is to bring them to a snake handling
Bible church. If they don’t handle the snakes, dump them at the county line.
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LMAO! I once read a book about the Pentecostal Holiness Churches of West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Not sure how things have evolved since the ‘50s and ‘60s but back in those days, and for years before, attendees would sometimes leave their last Sunday service in a pine box and be carried straight to the church graveyard!
The bill they just passed is a great example of what will kick them out next year, as typical.
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Trump and the Pubbies are gambling that the economy will rebound bigly before the next election.
I don't fault them for taking the Bible literally. But on the other hand:
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” — Matthew 4:7
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