Why a key to the 2016 Southern vote lies centuries ago on another continent

… Democratic candidates, who used to campaign aggressively in the heavily Scots-Irish rural communities of Appalachia, have shifted their attention to liberal whites and ethnic minorities, as Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012. Now, as she builds her 2016 campaign, Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be focusing on reigniting the Obama coalition. …

Yet some Democrats say the descendants of the Scots-Irish immigrants who arrived in the Shenandoah Valley in the 18th century, and are still imbued with their ancestors’ hardscrabble values, should remain a target for the party’s eventual presidential nominee — particularly in a battleground state such as Virginia. CONT.

Frances Stead Sellers, Washington Post

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