As some liberals forsake rural America, one in Va. offers a platform that challenges orthodoxy

Anthony Flaccavento has a rural platform.
(Photo by Justin Fleenor via Roanoke Times)

Some liberals have come to hate Appalachia because its recent votes don't match their values, raising a fascinating debate "over what a liberal agenda for rural America might look like," The Roanoke Times said in the first of a pair of editorials on the topic this week.

The paper ran excerpts of a discussion on the liberal site Daily Kos, where several posters argued that Appalachia no longer deserved taxpayer assistance. One wrote, "Why bankrupt the government to benefit folks who will never, ever agree with your policies? I have no ‘collective experiences’ with these people. I don’t believe in coal, guns, religion or just about anything else these people believe in. That’s the basic problem. We are two very different countries and only one can survive. None of that is an excuse for knowingly voting for a racist, bigoted, lying, ignorant buffoon for president."

The editorial said, "If there were a conservative website somewhere that was discussing whether conservatives should help, say, inner cities, and the responses were similar to the ones above, we’d have a very ugly word for that, now wouldn’t we? So why are some liberals — again, the key word there is ‘some’ — so vicious against rural areas? Why aren’t they being called out for their prejudices?"

The Times acknowledged that the quoted excerpts "are coming from the far left wing, not mainstream, establishment liberalism. Still, they are instructive; conservatives would say quite revealing. These viewpoints also aren’t confined simply to Internet trolls. They’ve shown up in various ways in such well-known publications as New York magazine and The New Republic. In one much-quoted article headlined “No Sympathy For The Hillbilly,” writer Frank Rich urged Democrats to simply ignore rural voters because they — we — are essentially irredeemable bigots who are too stupid to appreciate any government help."

A possible liberal agenda for rural voters comes from Anthony Flaccavento, a Southwest Virginia farmer, 2012 congressional candidate and consultant on rural economies, who has written national magazine articles in the topic. The second editorial says his rural platform on the site Rural Progressive Politics "challenges Democratic orthodoxy in some surprising ways. National Democrats are big on regulating banks; the Rural Progressive Platform urges 'regulatory relief for community banks' on the grounds that they’re the ones most likely to be serving rural communities." It also calls for “environmental regulations that are ‘scale appropriate’, i.e., less burdensome on small to mid-sized farms, businesses and manufacturers.”

"The most provocative passage in the platform," the Times says, "hints that maybe Democrats shouldn’t adopt one particular litmus test that usually fells their candidates in rural areas: 'Mountains, forests, valleys and streams are a practical part of our lives and economies. No doubt this is at least part of why we look at a chainsaw or a rifle so differently from most city folks.'"