Sean Trende on Greater Appalachia

Greater Appalachia

Sean Trende weighs in on the realignment of Dixie’s north flank:

“What we’re really talking about here, and as I explored in great detail in “The Lost Majority,” is “Greater Appalachia,” an area that was settled by Scots-Irish immigrants in the late 18th century and that has retained an attachment to Jacksonian populism since then. This region begins in western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, stretches through the Appalachians and across the Cumberland Plateau, and spills over into southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, across Missouri and Arkansas, and into north Texas and Oklahoma. It also brushes along the northern edges of Mississippi and Alabama.

Now, no one expects West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kentucky to be a part of Obama’s coalition this fall. But lots of people are looking at Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. These states are where this primary weakness becomes potentially significant.

All four of those states have substantial populations in areas geographically and culturally similar to these “problem areas”: southwestern Pennsylvania, western Virginia and North Carolina, and southeastern Ohio. In all of these states, Obama’s path to victory is to hold down his losses in rural areas, and then maximize his vote among upscale and minority voters in urban areas… “

A year ago, Trende had an excellent post that explained why Virginia has turned red in recent election cycles.

It was because the Cracker Nation in western Virginia had abandoned the Mark Warner coalition of blacks and suburbanites in NOVA, Hampton Roads, and Southside.

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9 Comments

  1. ….. southwestern Pennsylvania, western Virginia and North Carolina, and southeastern Ohio.

    West Virginia is the vortex.
    Montani Semper Liberi

  2. Outside of Northern Illinois it is Cracker Nation. Years ago before the whites became “typical whites” (as HNIC says) it was well accepted that south of I-80 was “hillbilly” country in some respects. Our latest ding bat govenor won two counties and beat the GOP challenger (in part because the ring county GOP hacks threw the election so their bipartisan schemes wouldn’t be threatened by a down state Republican). Illinois outside of Northern Illinois (Puritan country) would be solid Red.

  3. Yes, southwestern, western and central Pennsylvania is mostly very conservative in stark contrast to the densely populated mostly liberal east and southeast. Daryl Metcalfe represents some of this area. There’s even a county on the southern tier, statistically the most rural county in Pennsylvania, from which West Virginia can be seen, looking across the narrowest part of the Maryland panhandle, where people of what they call “SOUTHERN Fulton County” say they identify with Dixie more than the North, and the place where Confederate forces held some northern territory the longest.

  4. NC and Virginia reference Nyc, NJ, and DC now, and the demographic shift from those areas has made them “Areas of Change”— between the Northeast migrants (who THINK they are conservatives —and all the colleges).

    Idk— can you really be a “Progressivist AND conservative”? (I mean, I know the neo-cons, neo-fascist, republican mainstream, Romney-Santorum “religious conservatives” / Militarist-progressives, whatever you want to call them, are that way)

    Progressivism cannot really reflect Biblical teaching, (in fact, things such as always naming the future, the way they do, —like feeling assured whites will be a minority by year X, used to be called blasphemy).

  5. Tennessee is the next previously conservative area that will change. It’s become trendy for the Northeasterners who now feel VA/ NC are “too crowded.”

    It never ceases to amaze me that people see “crowds” as the problem. NYC was just “too crowded.” But now, where they went, is “too crowded.”

    The structure of society is not seen, or so naturalized that they really don’t understand people create the circumstances they live in. Changes in demographic is never identified as the problem.

    AA may be onto something when they talk about people making “Geographical Cures.”

  6. ” Tennessee is the next previously conservative area that will change. It’s become trendy for the Northeasterners who now feel VA/ NC are ‘too crowded.’ ”

    Yes, Tennessee, and also Kentucky from what I hear lately, build your border fences! Northern city people will come as long as there is air conditioning. “Too crowded” is any place they are.

  7. Dixiegirl and Mosin Nagant: That’s what I fear most. I really do. If true diversity was respected, every effort would be made to protect these people, but modern diversity, as you already know, is about no-diversity, at least for whites. They come to our lands for the kind heartedness of the people and beauty of the natural environment, but then they immediatley want to change it to the image of whatever shithole they just left.

  8. “They come to our lands for the kind heartedness of the people and beauty of the natural environment, but then they immediately want to change it….”

    I was referring in my comment to WHITE northern “city people,” as we call them, who to buy up properties in all our remaining conservative rural enclaves, and crowd into them, working to change our traditional, Christian way of life with their heresies and atheism, miscegenations and other fornications, divorces and “re-marriages,” drinking, drug use, endless proliferation of laws and regulations, bureaucracies, welfare, lawyers, lawsuits, insurances, loans and investments (usury), big chain restaurants and groceries selling strange deceitful foods, big box superstores selling foreign-made junk, constant shopping, travelling and entertainment — bringing with them and on us their CITY people’s “rat race” lifestyle. “Too crowded” is wherever they are.

  9. I was referring in my comment to WHITE northern “city people,” as we call them, who to buy up properties in all our remaining conservative rural enclaves, and crowd into them, working to change our traditional, Christian way of life with their heresies and atheism, miscegenations and other fornications, divorces and “re-marriages,” drinking, drug use, endless proliferation of laws and regulations, bureaucracies, welfare, lawyers, lawsuits, insurances, loans and investments (usury), big chain restaurants and groceries selling strange deceitful foods, big box superstores selling foreign-made junk, constant shopping, travelling and entertainment — bringing with them and on us their CITY people’s “rat race” lifestyle. “Too crowded” is wherever they are.

    Mosin

    I hate those people brother. With a burning rage

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