The Huffington Post had a link to a Politico article on red state Democrats having kittens with Bernie Sanders and populism. I will freely admit that I did not read the article because I don't have to. Nor will I link to it. I have read red state Democrats complaints before about progressives for over thirty years now. I'm sure it was the same old line of BS that we have all heard before.
Let me guess the salient points. Liberal economic policies don't do anything for economic growth and alienate the business community. Democrats have to embrace the business community - always portrayed as small farmers and business owners - and show we are for economic growth. It is only through economic growth that all boats will be lifted by a rising tide. Therefore, taxing the wealthy, regulating the banks, raising the minimum wage, and fighting free trade are all turn offs for red state voters that Democrats need to appeal to regain power.
Funny how all of the above is straight out of Republican talking points.
And for over thirty years, Democrats internalized all that as economic dogma. Red state Democrats seem to forget about Bill Clinton. And they conveniently forget that Democrats have struggled to remain in power for any length of time in the House and Senate. Democrats lost the Senate in 1980, and didn't get back into power until 1986. This only lasted until the 1994 Election. The House remained in Democratic hands, but was lost in 1994 until 2006. We kept the House for 4 years before losing again. And while we got the Senate again in 2006, the Senate was made dysfunctional by 2010. Republicans finally got control, formally, with the 2014 Election.
And I might remind our red state Democrats that it was their brilliant idea NOT to have Obama do anything by executive action on immigration because it might piss off the rednecks. We can all see how well that bit of sage political advice worked for red state Democrats. Mitch McConnell and his fellow political nihilists are now in charge of the Senate.
And as a resident of three different red states - Kentucky, Indiana, and North Carolina - I have seen up close and personal how well red state Democrats operate. I have had the misfortune to watch Kentucky Democrats make every DC establishment mistake there is to elect Rand Paul and re-elect Mitch McConnell. The latest was Alison Lundergan-Grimes failed campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2014.
Grimes embraced raising the minimum wage, but a number of other economic policy positions were straight out of the red state corporate Democrat playbook. She could have made plenty of space between her and Obama on free trade, but Grimes is for free trade, at least from her wimpy statements on the issue. And she is in the Clinton wing of the party. And she was still making noises about balancing budgets, so there was the lovely hint of austerity with Grimes. And she was an absolute chicken shit when it came to Obamacare, which has helped hundred of thousands in KY.
But she was a dirty bird on environmental policy and trying to be a redneck on social issues. She loved herself some coal companies And she was showing how she shoots a gun, and she ran a despicable ad on "illegal aliens." Those are her words.
She got beat in a landslide.
Basically, red state Democrats are just Republicans who don't scream racial epithets. And the problem with that is that real Republicans are more than happy to pander to bigots and rednecks. Red state Democrats, at least the ones in the South, are dependent upon African American voters to have any chance of winning. So red state Democrats can't get up and bash minorities with glee like Republicans.
So where does that leave red state Democrats? It leaves them pushing Republican economic policies while aping redneck behavior up to a point. And like Republicans, red state Democrats reject empiricism. Otherwise, they would look at how few there are in the South nowadays, and this is after pursuing their me too political agenda.
You cannot out redneck a Republican.