There's a powerful new voting block in America. They're white, working class, and they live in places that have been left behind.

Jackson, Kentucky is an eastern Kentucky coal town, so about 6,000 people live there. Most people are pretty

poor. The schools aren't doing especially well. There are huge problems with addiction and prescription

opioid abuse. It's pretty tough. This is J.D. Vance describing his hometown, where generations

of his family grew up. It's the kind of place a lot of people would look down on.

But what JD sees is a place where no matter how poor and hard scrabble the life,

people treat each other with kindness and respect.

It was in Jackson where I first noticed that whenever the funeral motorcade passed by,

everyone would get out of their cars and stop and stand in detention.

And that's the only place I've ever really seen that.

I've never seen it outside of eastern Kentucky.

And there was just this sense that people were a little bit slower in the ways of living

and consequently were much more respectful of each other and, you know, even after they died.

I'm Anne Strange Champs, and today, onto the best of our knowledge,

the kind of people who live in places like Jackson, Kentucky,

get characterized as poor, white, and angry.

Worse as redneck and racist, hillbilly white trash.

J.D. Vance knows them well. They're his people.

He grew up in Kentucky coal country and the Ohio Rest Belt, places he left behind when he went

to Yale Law School. Today he practices in Silicon Valley, but he's just written a book called

Hillbilly Elegy, which frankly should be required reading for this

election year. Welcome to Jackson, Kentucky. It's this sort of place where people are really, really

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