Democrats ignore working-class white voters at their own peril

I grew up in a small hamlet called Crimora, Va., zip code 24431, population 2,207, number of stoplights, zero.

Number of Terry McAuliffe voters last week: 161.

Glenn Youngkin won my hometown precinct with 86.7 percent of the vote.

I grew up in a trailer park, of which there are many in Crimora – six in all, and I’m having to guesstimate here, but if you add ‘em all up, parents and grandparents and kids, you might be close to half the population of Crimora being in those trailer parks.

Crimora, putting it mildly, won’t be better off with Youngkin in office the next four years. He’s pledged to cut taxes to the bone, which will force dramatic budget cuts that will impact public education, public health, job creation.

Tax cuts help folks like the current me – I live in a $350,000 home in a tony neighborhood in Waynesboro.

Median household income in Crimora, per the U.S. Census Bureau, is $36,286, a little more than half the median household income nationwide.

If your household is bringing in $36,286 a year, tax cuts aren’t going to help you all that much week to week, and in terms of what they mean when it comes to schools, healthcare spending, job training programs, efforts to attract new business and industry, they make you materially less better off.

Augusta County schools, for instance, are underfunded as it is. When Richmond has less money to send to local school districts, it will be up to the tight-fisted Augusta County Board of Supervisors to make up the difference, which, fat chance of that happening.

So many of my neighbors growing up were people who made just enough to not qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to be able to buy health insurance, and didn’t have jobs that offered health insurance.

That was remedied in recent years with an expansion of Medicaid coverage that was fought tooth and nail by Youngkin’s Republican friends in the General Assembly, and may very well be in their crosshairs when they take power in January.

Training that can help you get a better job, economic development efforts to bring better jobs within your reach, also cost money.

Thing is, states can’t run massive deficits like the federal government can. When you cut taxes for upper middle class folks like me, you have to cut government spending, which primarily impacts people like those living in trailer parks in places like Crimora.

People I went to elementary school with, played little league baseball with, so many of them still there, because economic situations tend to be generational, unfortunately for a lot of folks.

Almost nine in ten of them voted Republican in the last election.

I’m not mad at them for not voting what should be in their best interests.

I’m mad that Democrats don’t try harder – OK, at all – to give them an option.

Virginia Democrats have written off the west, southwest, south central, as unwinnable, citing years of voting data that have our parts of the state going 70 percent plus for the GOP, and years of data from Northern Virginia that show putting the focus of their efforts there pays off in the end.

This, to me, is the height of folly.

I mean, it would require work, and some give – namely, giving attention to the kinds of things that people out this way want from Richmond.

It’s easy to dismiss the west, southwest and south central parts of the state as Redneckistan, that the only things that people out here care about is who wins the NASCAR race, their Second Amendment rights and making sure their kids don’t have to go to the bathroom with LGTBQ+ kids.

People here are like people anywhere: we want better for ourselves, better for our kids, better for our parents in their senior years.

I believe that Democrats are better on those issues than the folks on the other side. Where we err is in ignoring people who don’t live in tony neighborhoods who are largely already doing pretty well for themselves.

You’ve seen the election maps with little areas of blue and wide swaths of red, here in Virginia and nationally.

You’ve figured out by now that I’m not just writing about Democrats needing to try harder to get more votes specifically in Crimora, Va.

Our coalition is white liberals in big houses and African-Americans.

The reason we have 50-50 elections isn’t because America is polarized; it’s because we Democrats have decided it’s just not worth it to try to reach out to working-class white voters.

We ignore those voters at our own peril, as was evident last week here in the Commonwealth.

Story by Chris Graham