Who Turned My Blue State Red?

I find this article contradictory.

The first sentence: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net.

Later: In eastern Kentucky and other former Democratic bastions that have swung Republican in the past several decades, the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period.

So why start the article saying they vote against, to later say they don't vote? Clickbait maybe?

Anyway what I take away from the article is something I have observed for all my years - Pain (economic or other) is a motivator. If you are struggling, you are much more likely to do something about it.

When a person is handed something for free or little effort, they become apathetic towards that thing. I am not saying that this is a rule - it is a generality. A lot of how people behave in that situation depends on a great deal of outside factors. Maturity, life experience, intelligence can all have an affect

When I was young, a friend of mine had his 4 year old car totalled. It was hit on the side, so the damage was limited to the body of the car. He sold it to me for $100 because that's what the junkyard offered him.

It drove great, no alignment problems or any problems at all except it looked bad.

Within 3 weeks I had pushed the engine way past redline (it was a manual) in a short race, and the engine began to fail.

I kept that lesson with me - if I had not done that, I could have driven that car for years to come, saving me money on insurance, gas, etc. Lack of maturity was my biggest problem.

People vote to give themselves something when they are struggling, but after that motivation is removed they will mostly fall back to old habits.

Struggle is a critical part of the human condition. Take that away and you take away a big part of us.

The last line of the article seems to imply that it is shame keeping people from voting.

"If fewer people need the safety net to get by, the stigma will fade, and low-income citizens will be more likely to re-engage in their communities — not least by turning out to vote."

I don't see it as an issue of shame, it is more likely to be apathy. What their neighbors saw, the pollsters are also now seeing: the poorest are also the most disengaged. The nurse at the dialysis center looks on in bewilderment as otherwise able-bodied people go in on the government dime. The Democrat leaders look on in bewilderment as otherwise government-dependent areas continue to turn Republican.

What breeds this apathy? I think if you ask why people become dependent on government benefits in the first place, you get the answer: because there are very little opportunities. When the most they can aspire to is surviving day to day, they have little motivation to do anything, much less go vote.

Indeed, the article mentions economic opportunity in the last paragraph as a means to combat this apathy.

"The best way to reduce resentment, though, would be to bring about true economic growth in the areas where the use of government benefits is on the rise, the sort of improvement that is now belatedly being discussed for coal country, including on the presidential campaign trail."

For this, there seem to be two competing approaches. On the Democrats' side, the idea is to fund clean energy, transition the Kentucky and West Virginia economies to clean energy, and help former coal workers transition to working in clean energy. On the Republican side, it's reducing costly regulations on the coal industry, the goal being to make more money available to expand operations and hire more people back. On this issue, it seems voters in Kentucky and West Virginia prefer to stick with the devil they know.