Word


I can't count the number of times I've tried to put into words, either here or in comments elsewhere, why a to-hell-with-the-South attitude is a foolish, and losing strategy.

Bob Moser did just that in the latest issue of The Nation--and, of course, it's better than anything I might've been able to come up with. It's a long article, but damn if it's not worth reading in full.

However, if you're strapped for time, here's the conclusion:

And yet a stubborn belief in the poor, backward, reactionary cracker South of myth still shapes and distorts American politics. By surrendering the region, Democrats have simultaneously abandoned the old hope of a durable national progressive majority. They have passively allowed right-wingers to build a mighty fortress for the defense of free-market excess in a region that is home to almost half--47 percent--of the Americans who call themselves populists. They have allowed economic, racial and cultural divisions to fester. And now, even with the Republicans' Southern strategy wearing thin, they are lurching toward an even more dramatic break with the South.

It ain't wise, and it ain't right. I can't say it better than Chris Kromm, director of the liberal Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, North Carolina. "For Democrats to turn their back on a region that half of all African-Americans and a growing number of Latinos call home, a place devastated by Hurricane Katrina, plant closings, poverty and other indignities--in short, for progressives to give up on the very place where they could argue they are needed most--would rightfully be viewed as a historic retreat from the party's commitment to justice for all."

Yes.