The popular, two-term Democratic governor of a deep-red state, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, sees an opening for Democrats to turn rural America blue.
Beshear, 47, is considered a moderate, pro-choice Democrat, and won re-election in 2023. Last year he was ranked the second-most popular governor in the U.S.
“Democrats won huge victories up and down the ballot this month,” Governor Beshear wrote in The Washington Post on Monday, “by relentlessly focusing on the pocketbook pressures families across our country are facing.”
He called those wins “a direct repudiation of the Trump agenda,” but said that “affordability is not enough. To truly lead again, Democrats must be the party of aspiration.”
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“Democrats should be the party that will make it possible to build a better life — one in which you’re not just making ends meet but setting your family up for long-term success,” Beshear writes.
By focusing on reviving the American dream, “Democrats can win back voters who have been leaving the party in droves.”
He notes that President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” — which he calls “a slap in the face to rural America” — would kick millions off their health care and shut down rural hospitals. It has, therefore, “given Democrats a huge opening.”
Trump “is making it so much harder for people to even get by. During the government shutdown, he was willing to use the hunger of Americans — including children and seniors — as a bargaining chip. It was cruel and wrong, and, importantly, it backfired.”
He urges Democrats to focus on creating good-paying jobs, as he did, in “a former coal town that, like too many places in my state, had felt forgotten.”
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And he’s urging Democrats to “start talking like normal human beings again.”
“We’re not going to win the messaging battle if we say that Trump’s policies make people ‘food insecure.’ No, they make people hungry. Kentucky was hit hard by the opioid epidemic. I didn’t lose … friends and acquaintances to “substance use disorder”; I lost them to addiction. Addiction is hard, it’s mean, and it kills people. So when people triumph over it, we should give them the credit they deserve by calling it what it is.”
“Finally,” Beshear writes, “we have to start communicating our ‘why.’ For me, it’s my faith. I vetoed the nastiest piece of anti-LGBTQ legislation in the country knowing full well that the Republicans in the Kentucky legislature passed it to use in an election year. But tens of millions of dollars of misleading attack ads against me didn’t work. Why? Because I gave Kentuckians the respect of explaining my veto — that I believe all children are children of God and that I didn’t think the legislature should be picking on vulnerable kids.”
“Democrats,” he notes, “are good at explaining our ‘what.’ Let’s get good at explaining our ‘why.’”
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Image by Kentucky National Guard Public Affairs Office via Flickr and a Creative Commons license
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