The Left has a problem

When you go so far left, you make a right.

America has a problem but the Left has a very specific one. Recently, Senator Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) launched an anti-oligarchy tour. This tour focused on pushing back against big corporations and their destruction of the middle class. The tour stretched across the American West including cities like Greeley, Colorado, Tempe, Arizona, and Los Angeles, California.

I will be honest. When I first saw this tour, I was intrigued. However, I quickly became irritated, and the reason for my irritation was for the stops on this tour, or lack thereof. There was not one stop in the South. As a Georgia native, this bothered me more than I realized.

The problem that Democrats and the Left at large have in America is a southern problem. Many still subconsciously participate in this narrative that the South is culturally irredeemable. Too religious, too backwards, too segregated, too racist. Too bigoted to make any meaningful inroads, and so year after year, election cycle after election cycle, we are ignored. This narrative is not only incredibly elitist but it requires you to completely ignore the history of the region. The Civil Rights movement, the movement that completely altered the social fabric in America and paved the way for others, such as the feminist movement, grew out of the South. It was born out of Southern black people being exhausted by the degradation and violence of Jim Crow. Montgomery, Nashville, and Jackson were the battlegrounds for civil rights and racial equality, yet they are not good enough for a stop on the tour? Georgia flipped blue during the 2020 election, contributing to President Biden’s win, but it’s too much to swing through the Atlanta airport?

I am not trying to ascribe any prejudice to these elected officials, nor am I even criticizing their policies. However, this pattern of behavior is why the Left will continue to lose. How can you be the change when you perpetuate the exact same stereotypes that have existed for decades? Let’s not forget that southern states have served as a testing ground for some of the harshest policies related to abortion, immigration, and mass incarceration. Furthermore, much of the backbone of the Democratic voter base, the black community, still lives in the South yet this does not seem to be a convincing enough point for a rally in a middle school gymnasium on a Wednesday night.

This also begs the question: do we want to win? Winning elections requires more than just ideas and rhetoric. It requires strategy. It requires intentional engagement and mobilization of key groups in order to garner votes. Yet we seem to have lost sight of that and feel more comfortable posturing than governing. In the words of one of my favorite rappers, Latto, “do you rap or do you tweet? Cus I can’t tell. Get in the booth”. Do you want to win elections so that you can enact progressive policies to help the American people, or do you want to beef with your colleagues on social media?

Again, this is not a critique of their policies. However, at some point, even the most progressive of people have to be self-reflective. You have to ask yourself why in the face of one of the most polarizing political opponents, your ideas still were not enough to win an election. If you think an entire region of the country is not worth your time, how can you possibly build a meaningful coalition. We alienate southern and then wonder why we see young voters in the region drifting toward the opposition. At the least the opposition says what they have to in order to get their vote. The left cannot even manage that. Even with better integrity and better policies we still cannot win. So maybe it is time to accept that we may be our own worst enemy. You can rap or you can tweet, but it is proving very hard to do both.