Republicans haven’t taken over red states; Democrats have lost them by not running as real Democrats.
That’s my big takeaway from Alec MacGillis’ fascinating look into the biggest political mystery of our time: why poor white people in red states are not bothering to turn out to vote, leaving the field to Republicans elected by more affluent whites in those states.
There a lot of theories as to why this happens.
One of the most famous comes from Thomas Frank, who argued in his book What’s The Matter With Kansas? that poor white people vote Republican because Republicans have duped them into caring about social issues like abortion, guns, and gay marriage.
There is a lot to be said for that line of analysis, but Alec MacGillis, has a different theory.
As he explains in a new piece for ProPublica and The New York Times, the problem isn’t that poor white people who should vote Democrat vote Republican.
No, the problem is that “the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large… not voting, period.”
To put it in less wonky terms, Democrats are losing out to Republicans in what have become red states because the people who should vote for Democrats aren’t voting whatsoever, full-stop.
A great example of this, according to MacGillis, is Pike County, Kentucky, which is both a place where 18 percent of households get some sort of government assistance and a place where Kentucky governor-elect and Tea Party favorite Matt Bevin just won 55 percent of the vote.
All logic suggests that Pike County should vote Democratic, and it used to do so pretty much every election,
“but 30 percent fewer people voted in the county this month than did in 2003 --11,223 voters in a county of 63,000, far below the county’s tally of food-stamp recipients, which was more than 17,000 in 2012.” If all of Pike County’s 17,000 food stamp recipients had come out to vote, we could be talking about how that county was a democratic stronghold in a sea of red.
But that didn’t happen, and now we’re left with the same old problem of a county -- and a state, for that matter -- that should go Democratic but instead falls to Republicans.
