“Trump country”? Nationally, 27 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump. Only 34.7 percent of eligible voters voted in McDowell’s general election, versus 56.9 percent nationwide. The non-participation rate was much higher than that of the country as a whole. That’s a decisive victory - for political alienation. Hillary Clinton: 1,438 (less than Sanders received in the primary). The general election results were as follows: That’s right: the democratic socialist got more votes than Trump or Clinton by a factor of nearly two to one. Here’s how McDowell County voted in the 2016 primaries: And yet, Black people rarely figured in their condescending, Beverly Hillbillies-themed narrative. For one thing, McDowell County’s population was 8.2 percent Black, which isn’t all that different from the national average of 12.4 percent. And yet, despite coverage like “Why the poorest county in West Virginia has faith in Donald Trump,” the picture wasn’t nearly as clear as their coverage would have it. The county’s voting results fed the media’s perennial appetite for exoticizing rural people. Step right up, city folks! See the strange creatures with whom you share a nation! A typical post-election photo essay on McDowell County was headlined, “This County Gives a Glimpse at the America That Voted Trump Into Office.” Snake-handling features prominently in their coverage, even though it’s only practiced in a tiny handful of mostly informal churches.Īccording to the media narrative, in 2016 the reptile-loving hillbillies of journalistic imagination embraced another cold-blooded creature: Donald Trump. When they cover them they sound like amateur entomologists pondering the consciousness of bugs under glass. Economic Bill of Rights! youtu.be The Invisibles: McDowell County, WVĬoastal journalists view rural people as an alien species – that is, when they think of them at all. It concerns McDowell County, WV, the state’s poorest county, which I researched as Bernie Sander’s speechwriter for a speech he gave there in 2016. We discussed the party’s recent adoption of an updated version of FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights.Ĭould it revive their political fortunes? Here’s a clue, from something I wrote several years ago and never published. I spoke with Troy Miller, executive producer of the Zero Hour, in his capacity as a member of the Executive Committee of the West Virginia Democratic Party.
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