Think of it as both a legal and cultural divide layed out by a couple of fellows from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, UK. I'll use this old marker stone to explain.| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Land of the Free |
| What The Left Really Thinks About The South |
| 2014-12-09 |
| I don’t remember a much sadder sight in domestic politics in my lifetime than that of Mary Landrieu schlumpfing around these last few weeks trying to save a Senate seat that was obviously lost. It was like witnessing the last two weeks of the life of a blind and toothless dog you knew the vet was just itching to destroy. I know that sounds mean about her, but I don’t intend it that way. She did what she could and had, as far as I know, an honorable career. I do, however, intend it to sound mean about the reactionary, prejudice-infested place she comes from. A toothless dog is a figure of sympathy. A vet who takes pleasure in gassing it is not. And that is what Louisiana, and almost the entire South, has become. The victims of the particular form of euthanasia it enforces with such glee are tolerance, compassion, civic decency, trans-racial community, the crucial secular values on which this country was founded… I could keep this list going. But I think you get the idea. Practically the whole region has rejected nearly everything that’s good about this country and has become just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment. A fact made even sadder because on the whole they’re such nice people! (I truly mean that.) With Landrieu’s departure, the Democrats will have no more senators from the Deep South, and I say good. Forget about it. Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise. The Democrats don’t need it anyway. Good idea. If the voters reject you it's them that're wrong, not you. Don't bother taking a look at your policies to see why they don't like them. Actually, that’s not quite true. They need Florida, arguably, at least in Electoral College terms. Although they don’t even really quite need it—what happened in 2012 was representative: Barack Obama didn’t need Florida, but its 29 electoral votes provided a nice layer of icing on the cake, bumping him up to a gaudy 332 EVs, and besides, it’s nice to be able to say you won such a big state. But Florida is kind of an outlier, because culturally, only the northern half of Florida is Dixie. Ditto Virginia, but in reverse; culturally, northern Virginia is Yankee land (but with gun shops). So Democrats still need to care about those two states, at least in presidential terms. And maybe you can throw in North Carolina under the right circumstances. And at some point in the near future, you’ll be able to talk about Georgia as a state a Democrat can capture. And eventually, Texas, too. Don't count on it too soon. The Dems ran a guy named Sam Houston last month and he lost. Texans are pretty smart folk, outside of the ciy of Houston. North Carolina's blue around Chapel Hill, pretty sensible most other places. But that’s presidential politics. At the congressional level, and from there on down, the Democrats should just forget about the place. They should make no effort, except under extraordinary circumstances, to field competitive candidates. The national committees shouldn’t spend a red cent down there. This means every Senate seat will be Republican, and 80 percent of the House seats will be, too. The Democrats will retain their hold on the majority-black districts, and they’ll occasionally be competitive in a small number of other districts in cities and college towns. But they’re not going win Southern seats (I include here with some sadness my native West Virginia, which was not a Southern state when I was growing up but culturally is one now). And they shouldn’t try. I quite agree. As I mentioned yesterday, the Dems are the party of blacks and really rich donors. Everybody else is prey. Let them withdraw from the south and the conservatives and libertarians can argue with each other and both get stronger from the exchange of ideas. |
| Posted by:Grunter |
| #17 South needs to take this seriously and charge up their economies like Texas. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2014-12-09 15:25 |
| #16 "trans-racial community" was one of the "secular values on which this country was founded"? in what alternate reality was "trans-racial community" one of the "secular values on which this country was founded"? Seems to me the only trans anything community was a 'trans-religious community", Maryland was Catholic, Pennsylvania was Quaker, New England was Puritan, etc, etc. That's why the Constitution makes such a big deal about freedom of religion; no state wanted other states to be able to gang up on it and impose their religion on them. But "trans-racial"? Everyone in the country was pretty much ENGLISH or AFRICAN, and we all know how that "trans-racial community" was organized. That is presumably not the model "trans-racial community" the nut-brain writing this article endorses as a foundational "secular value". |
| Posted by: DLR 2014-12-09 13:30 |
| #15 Juxtapose this with California, solidly Democrat, saying "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead". I would threaten to move my little family out of the state again, mom and dad being professionals, but what would be the point. They don't care, they'll replace my family of three with a family of 15 illegals that cant speak english, write in any language or support themselves in the rat race. |
| Posted by: bigjim-CA 2014-12-09 13:18 |
| #14 Before the Civil War 80% of Government money came from Southern states. I've lived in Boston and the overt racism was worse there than in Birmingham, Alabama. There were very many really good people in Boston and the surrounding areas but the very small racist population was very vocal. Reminded me of Alabama in the 50's and 60's. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2014-12-09 11:59 |
| #13 If the south is "Dixie" how come only those stores in the north are "Macy's"? |
| Posted by: Fred 2014-12-09 11:50 |
| #12 The thing I remember about ex-Sen. Landrieu was right after the Louisiana Purchase and her constituents called her offices to complain. They couldn't get through and Mary claimed her phones were down. James O'Keefe snuck into the offices and discovered the phones were working. They just weren't answering incoming calls. Mary's response was to try to prosecute O'Keefe. Mary Landrieu had a conservative rating of 20%. Her predecessor had a rating of 40%. She was a left wing senator in a red state. She did not represent her people. She should have been gone long ago. |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2014-12-09 11:02 |
| #11 Well, I saw Mike Tomasky write about her Well, I saw ol' Michael put her down Well, I hope Mike Tomasky will remember A Southern man don't need him around anyhow |
| Posted by: Matt 2014-12-09 09:28 |
| #10 I believe the southern states had the same idea quite so.e time ago. Anyone remember the civil war. |
| Posted by: chris 2014-12-09 08:30 |
| #9 world |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-12-09 08:20 |
| #8 What The Left Really Thinks About The South Or anyone else who lives outside the artificial word of the urban bubble. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-12-09 08:20 |
| #7 Should read "28" votes not 18. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2014-12-09 08:10 |
| #6 Here's the problem, TW. The way things are right now, the Dems have an absolute lock on 240 electoral votes. These are states that will not vote for a Republican for president even if the Democrat admits to being a Nazi who kills puppies for fun. So that means that they only need to win enough states to get 18 more electoral votes to win the presidency. Conversely, it means hat the Republicans must win essentially every swing state or they have no chance at all of winning the presidency. As much as I like your idea about the Dems being a permanent opposition party, the reality of this seems to indicate not. As long as there are populous states where 50% +1 people who depend on public funding to have food and shelter and status, it will always be an uphill battle for Republicans. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2014-12-09 08:09 |
| #5 The thing is, presidential candidates are developed through the political farm system. Without learning how to handle the rough and tumble of q political campaign, and the rougher and tumbler of of being in government at the state level, if not the local level, one doesn't develop the skills and the resume to win and then govern at the federal one. Some of the issues the voters have with President Obama stem from the fact that he was pushed through too fast, and lacked both the skills and rolodex to do the job he was given. So by given up that farm system in most of the country, the Democrats are accepting being the opposition into the foreseeable future. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2014-12-09 07:45 |
| #4 the state of Maryland just elected a republican governor and one of the reasons was the voters recognizing the need to stop high taxes in Maryland pushing the successful people and businesses to the free capitalist South. The left should be worried about giving up the South. |
| Posted by: airandee 2014-12-09 06:19 |
| #3 These people just can't deal with not getting their way. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-12-09 04:48 |
| #2 Fine. Then we'll go back being to the Republic of Texas. And keep our oil. We really don't need you. I thought you liked us down here. We are friendly, just don't piss us off. |
| Posted by: texhooey 2014-12-09 04:42 |
| #1 Think of it as both a legal and cultural divide layed out by a couple of fellows from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, UK. I'll use this old marker stone to explain. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-12-09 01:59 |