The New South

Michael Tomasky, writing The Daily Beast, has an epic meltdown over the loss this weekend of the last Democrat senator in the Deep South.  Perhaps his editors should have questioned his sanity, and the publishers should have questioned the editor's acumen.  There's lots wrong with that article.

With Mary Landrieu’s ignominious exit, the Democrats will have lost their last senator in the Deep South. And that’s a good thing. They should write it off—because they don’t need it.

I don't know so much about that, Michael.  The South still has a lot to recommend it.  And, the loss of one seat doesn't speak to the whole region, although I admit that the Democrats haven't been doing well here in national elections.  But, we still have a lot of elected Democrats on the local level.  My sheriff is a Democrat, as is our District Attorney.  We elect a fair portion of Democrats, but Mary forgot where she came from, and who she represented.

 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.)

Well, thanks, Michael.  I'm pleased that you think we're nice people, even if we have no tolerance, compassion, or civic decency. (Just what passes for Nice in the North, anyway?)

Cohen thinks maybe some economic populism could work, and that could be true in limited circumstances. But I think even that is out the window now. In the old days, drenched in racism as the South was, it was economically populist. Glass and Steagall, those eponymous bank regulators, were both Southern members of Congress. But today, as we learned in Sunday’s Times, state attorneys general, many in the South, are colluding with energy companies to fight federal regulation of energy plants.

Yeah, we mouth-breathing rednecks love populist politicians, like our own Bobby Jindal. (snerk, Bobby ain't no populist).  But we do love a good stump speech.  What we don't like is damnYankees trying to regulate us.  Especially progressive damnYankees.

It’s lost. It’s gone. A different country. And maybe someday it really should be.

You don't mean that.  We tried that 150 years ago, and y'all objected strenuously.  During your objection and your war of aggression, y'all destroyed our economy and burned much of the infrastructure.  I doubt you mean it today, but you are feeling a bit unappreciated.  Well, good.  We don't appreciate folks like you telling us how to live.  Or who to elect.  That's the nature of the South.