No Elegy Needed
Welcome to the inaugural post for No Elegy Needed: Appodlachia's substack newsletter. We cover some introductions, Chuck muses about ditching "red state, blue state" terminology, and dog pics!
No Elegy Needed is a newsletter and supplemental musings in word form from Appodlachia.
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What you can expect
We want to use this newsletter not just to update you on the pod, but also to push out new ideas and thoughts we have about what is happening in Appalachia and beyond. Oh yeah, and dog pics!
Sleep on it: Should we retire “Red State-Blue State” labels?
[From Chuck Corra]
“Sleep on it” is a term I grew up using that I inherited from my parents. It means to take a piece of information and mull it over for a while before coming to a conclusion or making a decision about it. I’m naming my column in our substack “Sleep on it” because I hope that’s what readers will do with the information in it.
I made a commitment recently - a New Year’s resolution if you will - to stop referring to particular states as “red” and “blue” states, and I wanted to expand on my reasons why. I want to be perfectly clear that I don’t expect others to necessarily adopt this idea, nor should anyone be “canceled” for continuing to use the terms “red state” and “blue state.”
The TLDR of this: I think these labels lead people to cast broad, simple, and sometimes harmful generalizations about places that are much more complex and diverse. States are complex beautiful beasts and their boundaries are arbitrary.
Sitting down to record and produce a show about Appalachia 121 times and counting has given me some perspective and appreciation for nuance that I may not otherwise have had. Places like Appalachia have been oversimplified and packaged into easy-to-consume sound bites that are then injected into the public conscience, oftentimes without us realizing it.
It’s very easy to make broad generalizations about a place when you’re constantly exposed to simple explanations about it. If your only knowledge about a state is what color it shows up as on an electoral map, there’s a good chance that may inform how you think about it.
West “By God” Virginia: A Case Study
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, I encountered many people who had never been to West Virginia and knew very little about it. What they did know was that it was a “red state”. And not only that, Trump won it by a bigger margin than any other state.
Yes. West Virginia is a very republican-voting state. Even if you discount efforts at voter suppression etc., it is still a very republican-voting state.
It wasn’t always so “red”
In 2008, the year I graduated high school, John McCain won the state with 56% of the votes cast in the presidential election. Isolate this number and many people would say “Red state!”
But consider this….
In 2008, the same year McCain beat Obama by nearly 13 points in West Virginia:
80% of West Virginia’s congressional delegation were Democrats1
5 of the 6 statewide elected offices were held by Democrats2
Democrats controlled both legislative chambers (and in 2009, held supermajorities in both)
Now obviously this was 14 years ago and a lot has changed in West Virginia and the country, but I cite this as an example that one election result - or one statistic in general for that matter - shouldn’t dictate anyone’s entire perception of a state.
For example, if you view West Virginia entirely from the prism of a “red state”, then you’re liable to miss the thousands of incredible people pushing for progressive change every single day.
Elections ≠ the consensus
Social media enables people to draw simple conclusions about things that are complex. Sometimes this is helpful, but many times it isn’t.
Kentucky has been the victim of this numerous times.
A more recent example of this was from a blue checkmark resistor on Twitter (yes, I know Twitter isn’t real life but bear with me).
This isn’t a personal beef with Don Winslow, but this tweet - I think - illustrates my point.
Don Winslow is essentially saying the following:
The senators from Kentucky are bad
A majority of Kentuckians voted for these senators.
The election results illustrate the views of all Kentuckians
Therefore, Kentuckians are deserving of scorn and ridicule.”3
Now it goes without saying that no election is a true representation of an entire population. Mitch McConnell, for example, won re-election in 2020 by 57.8% of the vote to Amy McGrath’s 38.2%. Over 816,000 people voted for Amy McGrath but in Mr. Winslow’s world, those 816,000 people apparently don’t exist.
Consider this from a Louisville Courier-Journal article about support for abortion:
65% of Kentuckians’ survey in 2019 supported women having access to abortion and other reproductive healthcare services.
Support for abortion in Kentucky is significantly higher than support for Mitch McConnell (who currently polls at around 41% approval)
So why isn’t Kentucky viewed by the general public as a bastion of support for abortion?
To summarize: states are complex, and labels force us to ignore the full story
I say all this as a rambling way of building to a point: I think the labels “red” and “blue” force states into simplified boxes that go on to distort people’s viewpoints about them.
When people hear California, many think of it as a bastion of progressivism devoid of any Republicans whatsoever. That’s the narrative that wins the day on social media and in mainstream media. However, that ignores a significant portion of the state that votes differently. In fact, you could take a large chunk of the western part to create the 26th most populous state in the country that voted for Trump by a 7.4% margin in 2020.
States are complex and boundaries are arbitrary. An electoral map shouldn’t inform your entire view of a piece of the complex tapestry that is our country.
As promised….dog pics
WV-01: Alan Mollohan (D)
WV-02: Shelley Moore Capito (R)
WV-03: Nick Rahall (D)
Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D)
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D)
Governor: Earl Ray Tomblin (D)
Secretary of State: Betty Ireland (R)
Attorney General: Darrell McGraw (D)
State Auditor: Glen Gainer (D)
State Treasurer: David Perdue (D)
State Ag Commissioner: Gus Douglass (D)
I very much acknowledge Twitter is where nuance goes to die.