RFK's visit to Appalachia, 50 years later: How Kennedy country became Trump country
BARWICK, Ky. – The line of big cars pulled up outside the one-room schoolhouse, which had a potbelly stove for heat and an outhouse in back. The senator burst in the door, followed by a pack of politicians, aides and journalists.
Robert F. Kennedy had come to learn about rural poverty. Instead, his arrival petrified the students, who sat riveted to their ancient desks with their heads down, afraid to even look at the great man and his entourage.
He sized up the problem. Instead of making a speech for the media, Kennedy moved quietly among the students, stopping to reassure them. He’d squeeze a hand, murmur in an ear. “What did you have to eat today?’’ he asked one girl. “I know you’re scared,’’ he told a boy, “but It’s gonna be all right.’’
Few who were there would forget how this powerful man reached those poor children with nothing but what the author William Greider, then of the Louisville Courier-Journal, would call “his physical humanity.’’
That was 50 years ago — Feb. 13, 1968. Bobby Kennedy was a month from declaring for president and four months from an assassin’s bullet. For two days, he met people as poor and isolated as he was rich and famous. Somehow, they clicked.
Kennedy, heir to a fortune, “is now one of the faceless hungry,’’ reported the Knoxville News Sentinel: Not since FDR’s Depression-era campaigns in the South “had so many forlorn turned out with such hopeful enthusiasm.’’
The implications were not lost on Peter Edelman, a Kennedy aide. “I was certain that these people would be Democrats their whole lives,’’ he recalls, “and their children’s lives.’’
But no. Beginning in 2004, the six counties Kennedy visited began to shift Republican in presidential races. And in 2016, Donald Trump carried each with 70% to 80% of the vote.
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In the midst of his agonized deliberations, he came here to study the effect of Johnson’s 4-year-old War on Poverty. Already, there were complaints about training programs for jobs that didn’t exist and signs that assistance from government was turning into dependence on government.
Eastern Kentucky had 20 of the nation’s 30 poorest counties; coal mining, one of the few sources of prosperity the region had known, had begun its long decline. Many people lived in conditions not that different from those of their ancestors in the 19th century.
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In a speech outside the courthouse in Whitesburg, Kennedy acknowledged his Boston accent — “You must think I talk funny.’’ The crowd roared in recognition. Almost every one of them, at least once, had been told by an outsider, “You talk funny!’’
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Nowhere was Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory more striking than eastern Kentucky, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans and people of both parties fondly recall the Kennedy brothers.
That includes two Republican Trump supporters: Tyler Ward, a 32-year-old lawyer whose father, a Democrat, is the chief executive of Letcher County, and Colin Fultz, 46, an entrepreneur whose father was elected magistrate as a Democrat.
Ward’s grandfather was a “yellow dog’’ Democrat (he’d vote for a yellow dog before a Republican) who always said that Democrats care about people and Republicans care about money. “But now it seems the roles have been reversed,’’ Ward says: Republicans care about people, like coal miners; Democrats care about intangibles, like climate change.
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Kennedy in 1968 promised to use government help people; Trump in 2016 promised to get government off their backs. Kennedy promised to help miners recover from what he described as the irreversible decline of coal; Trump promised to bring coal back.
Trump blamed others — immigrants, environmentalists, the Chinese — for America’s problems. Kennedy blamed Americans: “How can we allow this?’’ he asked of hunger here.
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But in 1968 and in 2016, these different politicians possessed — or projected — similar qualities that appealed to voters here, and in areas like it.
Celebrity. Although mountain people can be suspicious of outsiders, they felt they knew Kennedy before he came and knew Trump even though he came no closer than Huntington, W.Va. Their fame introduced them. “It was like meetin’ someone you know,’’ Jimmy Daryl Farler, a Barwick student, later recalled.
Authenticity. Each seemed to speak his mind — honestly, not eloquently. Kennedy had a high voice and could be tentative. Trump’s profanity offended Bible Belt ears, and he wandered off message. “They both seem unscripted’’ — and thus sincere, Dee Davis says.
Empathy. Despite their privileged backgrounds, each seemed to identify with the people of eastern Kentucky. “They didn’t view Kennedy as a liberal Democrat’’ or Trump as a conservative Republican, Tyler Ward says. “They viewed them as someone who cares about them.’’
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/12/rfks-visit-appalachia-50-years-later-how-kennedy-country-became-trump-country/310267002/
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I went in search of this because I would like Democrats to campaign this way, to go and visit the poorest among us who could benefit from talks of hope and not... Russia interfering. But, obviously, I am in the minority here.
