"The Duality of the Southern Thing"

"That’s my Alabama: a lot of hard-working people trying to get by while publicity-seeking retrogrades live to embarrass the rest of us. This manifested in last month’s special election for the U.S. Senate, as the perfectly sane candidate Doug Jones stood up against the evangelical zealot and defender of the Old South, Roy Moore. The fact that Jones eked out a victory—and today puts his hand on a Bible and takes the seat that Moore still seems to believe is rightfully his—does not mean the balance has shifted in Alabama yet. For me, a very liberal Southerner, the Jones victory has me thinking about how priorities need to be realigned by national progressives and by the Democratic Party if the South is ever going to be pulled away from the Republicans’ chokehold... 

Alabama has different needs than urban states. Infrastructure and military defense spending, due to Alabama’s five active military bases, are central issues for both conservatives and progressives in Alabama.

Maybe there’s a “third way” that holds hope for Democrats like Jones: to tap into authentic populism—not just the sense of grievance that Trump exploits, but a populism that offers real benefits to actual working people. Sarah Smarsh, a Kansas writer who covers issues...

I’m trying to be radically pragmatic, and trying to recognize that until the Democratic Party learns to speak to the fears of the poor of all races we’ll continue to have apathy instead of outcry. At the same time, Senator Doug Jones would be foolish if he didn’t recognize that among those mythical “working-class voters” Democrats want to win is a huge bloc that already stood solidly behind him: about 98 percent of African American women cast their votes for Jones. He should make a habit of imagining a black woman every time he speaks of the working class.

But to hold on to his seat, maybe the thing he most needs to convey to all Alabama voters is that he represents a party that does not look down on them."

https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-duality-of-the-southern-thing-bryan

FB:" poor and working-class voters in Alabama could foreseeably be rallied by the Democratic Party—but only when Southern poverty is no longer the punchline of a joke."