Kentucky food stamp recipient would prefer a "Pakistani" president to Obama

[Sol]

Does the guy in this story seriously believe the Republicans were "raised up like we have"? Who believes this nonsense?

The people in these blue counties, unfortunately.

I live in Campbell County, one of the many blue counties on that map. NOBODY in Campbell County who is THAT poor believes it. I don't think I even know any poor Republicans.

Campbell County is not rural Appalachia, Bandit.

Yeah, and this thread is a perfect example of the ultra-elitism which turns so many folks off regarding the Dems.

[DINGO Joe]

Very sad to continue to hear about the problems in appalachia.


Coal is dying, and its not Obama's fault. This is the 21st century and relying on a 19th century resource simply is not a viable way to run a regional economy. These regions need a major economic overhaul, or else this loop is going to be endless.

This is what happens when the welfare programs are set up to continually trap people in towns that lose their economic viability. I see it in Appalachia and I see it in nearby Gary.

And yet Gary, Detroit and CAPPalachia continually lose population.  And for the ones that remain behind, it would take considerable effort and money to make them successful anywhere, plus in CAPPalachia, they like where they are, they don't want to move to a big city with their abortions, laws against shooting street signs and Obamas.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What's the point of this thread, exactly? It's a particularly odd one of its 'type' as the OP includes an implicit critique of the sort of lazy journalism that leads to such articles, while also... endorsing it?

[AggregateDemand]

Obama's done more good for these people through the ACA than any president since LBJ.

Best backhanded compliment anyone has ever paid Obama

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Campbell County is not rural Appalachia, Bandit.

But it's just as white.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Because I live among them - because I am of them - I can say of the white trash lumpenproletariat what would get a latte-liberal strung up as a classist: they are worthless, of objectively less value than the cultural elites they rail against in their inverted class consciousness, and I scorn the Party which appeals to them.

See, this is why we shouldn't ban the word "sociopath".

[Sol]

Campbell County is not rural Appalachia, Bandit.

But it's just as white.

Yeah, but white people are not the same everywhere, not even in Kentucky.

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

Because I live among them - because I am of them - I can say of the white trash lumpenproletariat what would get a latte-liberal strung up as a classist: they are worthless, of objectively less value than the cultural elites they rail against in their inverted class consciousness, and I scorn the Party which appeals to them.

Jawohl?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Because I live among them - because I am of them - I can say of the white trash lumpenproletariat what would get a latte-liberal strung up as a classist: they are worthless, of objectively less value than the cultural elites they rail against in their inverted class consciousness, and I scorn the Party which appeals to them.

Not, however, of less value than somebody who describes others as 'of objectively less value' on the basis of their class or cultural identification. You should still be strung up as a classist, very much so, because that notion is--'despicable', I think, is the word I'm looking for.

Poverty does not ennoble.

Yes it does. It doesn't mean that poor people are always right or that their views or the views they're perceived to have on certain types of issues should always be treated as somehow more valid but it does ennoble at least insofar as the poor deserve a preferential option on other certain types of issues.

It's not the idea that poor people are somehow 'better' (as individuals; as a group they are because they have less opportunity to exploit, but that doesn't really obtain to relations between individuals in quite the same way). It's the idea that their well-being is relevant and important precisely because it's insecure and oft-denied, and that while poor people disproportionately having or having a reputation of disproportionately having unsavory views on some things doesn't somehow make those views less unsavory, it also doesn't somehow make those people less worthy of help and care.

[The Free North]

Because I live among them - because I am of them - I can say of the white trash lumpenproletariat what would get a latte-liberal strung up as a classist: they are worthless, of objectively less value than the cultural elites they rail against in their inverted class consciousness, and I scorn the Party which appeals to them.

Impressive blend of arrogance and backhanded elitism.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Because I live among them - because I am of them - I can say of the white trash lumpenproletariat what would get a latte-liberal strung up as a classist: they are worthless, of objectively less value than the cultural elites they rail against in their inverted class consciousness, and I scorn the Party which appeals to them.

Impressive blend of arrogance and backhanded elitism.

Yeah. Assuming that Meursault is telling the truth about being from this background himself, it is like that quote from Wilde (or Steinbeck, or whoever else it's attributed to) about poor Americans identifying more with 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires'. Except that's generally meant as a criticism of rightist tendencies--the kinds of tendencies we're discussing in this thread in the first place--yet here we see it coming from the 'left'. Not the real left, which practically by definition is concerned for and (at least by its own terms) in the corner of the poor and the salaried working classes, but the kind of what we might call right-sybaritism that because of its contempt for traditional priorities would easily pass for 'left' in certain circles, the kind where it's really no surprise if someone turns out to hate Christianity or monogamy or whatever because they're, perhaps even falsely, associated with those damn dirty poors always keeping everyone down with their unenlightened worldviews.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Poverty does not ennoble. This idea on both the 'workerist' Left and the 'producerist' Right that the socially reactionary views of the much-mythologized White Working Class ought to be privileged or respected is absurd.

I know, because I know them. I come from a long line of tornado-bait white trash. I've never been to university, and likely never will. But I will not hide behind my status as an excuse for backwardsness, and I hate those who do.

Isn't lumpenproletariat basically a producerist concept - beggars and intellectuals vs the workers  ?

[Joe Republic]

I don't understand this focus on how poor people vote.

Um, because collectively they're a pretty big chunk of voters?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I don't understand this focus on how poor people vote.

Really? Why not?

[dead0man]

I don't understand this focus on how poor people vote.

As Joe said, lot's of 'em and they are easy to sway just with stupid slogans or fear.  It's part of how the GOP and Dems stay in power.  Money buys ads, ads sway stupid people.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I don't understand this focus on how poor people vote.

Um, because collectively they're a pretty big chunk of voters?

Meh. They vote at a much lower rate than the middle and upper classes. And a pretty strong majority of those who do vote are Democrats.

That would itself be a good combination of reasons for a Democrat to care about how poor people vote.

[The Mikado]

I'd love to see a reverse article interviewing a bunch of millionaires in Manhattan and Connecticut and then proclaiming that the GOP is wrecked because it's losing its core constituency and needs to run a Mike Bloomberg to win those people back.

That article would be missing the point on roughly the same scale.

[Fed. Pac. Chairman Devin]

Okay, and the opinion of this random nobody matters why?

[Indy Texas]

I'd love to see a reverse article interviewing a bunch of millionaires in Manhattan and Connecticut and then proclaiming that the GOP is wrecked because it's losing its core constituency and needs to run a Mike Bloomberg to win those people back.

That article would be missing the point on roughly the same scale.

I did my best:

Falls Church (United States) (AFP) - Jim Feltner's days are empty. He is a rich man in one of the richest counties in the United States and has never used unemployment benefits or food stamps in his life.

But the Northern Virginia resident has nothing but scorn for the Republican Party, which wants to relieve people like him of the burden of paying for those who actually do use food stamps and unemployment.

Feltner sits in a hard wooden chair at an Au Bon Pain in Alexandria, his MacBook Air perched in front of him.

People around here, he says, are "thriving, indisputably. I know, because I'm one of them."

Armed with two master's degrees, he lives off a salary he receives working as a healthcare management consultant in Deloitte's public sector consultancy practice.

Feltner voted for George H. W. Bush in 1988 when he was an undergraduate at Tufts University, but now says: "I will vote for anybody against the Republican Party."

"I don't care who the Democrat is, I'll vote for him or her. I don't care if they're a pedophile, a convicted felon, an Indian, a Pakistani, even someone who attended an SEC school!"

"They talk about this Real America and Fake America and make fun of the president for going to Harvard. I mean, I did post-graduate work there,'" Feltner alleged.

"Is that something for a major political party to say?," he added. "They have a problem with the educated people."

The same aversion to the Republicans is heard to the north, in Suffolk County, New York.

Alison Dahlberg-Tate, 38, whose necklace of pea-sized pearls hugs her slender neck, says she does not care about politics. She hasn't thought about it since her senior seminar at Sarah Lawrence. But one thing is clear: she does not like the Republican Party.

"I guess Republicans just worry about money in their pocket, what they and their friends are doing. They're not worried the poor, about the women, about the people who have been victimized in this patriarchal society," Dahlberg-Tate said, stepping onto her sailing yacht.

"The Democrats, they are the ones who get us," Dahlberg-Tate added, as her husband Hugh Marsden "Skip" Tate, IV, climbed aboard the vessel with a picnic basket.

"And what if we make poor women pay for birth control? I mean we might as well be in Somalia," Dahlberg-Tate said. She and her husband receives $3,800 each week from the H. M. Tate, Jr. Family Trust, the bulk of which goes to supporting their dogs Millie and Beckett. Skip's freelance public relations work for a New York City-based tech startup is their only other source of income.

"It's unfortunate, when the checks come out, there's a festival atmosphere in the bank," said Mike Bryant, director of client relations for Northern Trust's wealth management division, which oversees the distribution of trust fund dividends to their heirs.

"If someone dared say, I already paid for four years at Haverford and grad school at Yale and you're not getting anything else out of me, it's going to be a really awkward Memorial Day Weekend at the Cape," he said.

[GaussLaw]

Does the guy in this story seriously believe the Republicans were "raised up like we have"? Who believes this nonsense?

The people in these blue counties, unfortunately.

I live in Campbell County, one of the many blue counties on that map. NOBODY in Campbell County who is THAT poor believes it. I don't think I even know any poor Republicans.

Isn't Campbell County pretty wealthy for KY standards though Bandit?  According to Wikipedia its poverty rate is 9.30%, below the national average and way below the KY average.  I doubt there'd be poverty that's that bad in that county.

Poor whites are more liberal than rich whites just about everywhere.  It's just that they're more conservative in the South.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Isn't Campbell County pretty wealthy for KY standards though Bandit?  According to Wikipedia its poverty rate is 9.30%, below the national average and way below the KY average.  I doubt there'd be poverty that's that bad in that county.

It's mostly suburban, but it has some very poor people. (It does have some very urban and very rural areas.)