Why do Democrats do so poorly with rural voters?

[KoKo]

266. Interesting...

Your family background is fascinating, thanks for sharing. Mine were FDR Dems and I had an aunt and uncle who were avid Adlai Stevenson supporters who d did a fundraiser for him in Charleston. I had forgotten all about him.


BTW: Colbert grew up on the island next to the one I grew up on outside of Charleston.

Charleston when I grew up was "cosmopolitan" compared to the rest of the state. In some ways it retains some of that...but in other ways it's succumbed to the Religious Right influence plus the old South habit of hating taxes, and government that fed into the Johnny Reb forever ideology. In the Post War period the Baptists (and other evangelical split offs) grew in numbers and outpaced the Episcopalians, Presbyterians (the former Planter Class) who tended to be more liberal an tolerant in their views on social issues but still against taxes and government interference in business. The alliance meant the state is manipulated by Big Business/Evangelical issues to the detriment of everything else.


Interesting about Colbert. I, too, lost my accent when I lived and worked in NYCity. I worked in publishing and felt looked down on because there was an "attitude" about those from the South...particularly SC. The Carolina Lowcountry accent that Colbert and I originally had, though, is very different from the drawls and twangs of other parts of SC and other Southern States. It was easier to morph into a bland non-regional accent from the soft Gullah accent of the Carolina coast than from the other regional dialects. Our accent in the lowcountry was influenced by working and living with the slaves in the planter culture on the coast and is considered unusual. I've heard something close to the accent here and there in parts of coastal Virginia, though.