“Congressional Republicans in the Obama era have largely been defined by their insistence on standing in front of the administration and yelling stop. Democrats call them the party of “no.” But in state legislatures, Republicans are finding both rewards and peril in being a vigorous party of “yes” when it comes to promoting conservative social issues.”
This is what I wonder: for Democrats – progressives, liberals and everyone in between – 2018 will be a crucial moment. At the state level, Democrats have completed their transformation into the “liberal opposition”, the “Negro Party” (the latter being what the Southern GOP was described as in the 1890s), the “anti-gun party”, the “pro-abortion party”. They’re fighting different battles than what Beltway Democrats are fighting in Congress, on a different playing field.
But we’ve also become the “party of No” in states which have gerrymandered state legislature district lines. We’ve come to this point from embracing minority, disadvantaged, young, migrant, creative, urbanized and/or educated identities, and fighting fights from a minority, disadvantaged, young, migrant, creative, urbanized and/or educated position.
This means that at this level, we will have to get used to being the opposition in so much of the rurally-spread United States for a long period of time. The rural agenda and historic rural privilege (pro-gun proliferation, pro-patriarchy, pro-religious establishment, pro-austerity, pro-racial privilege) runs ship at the state level. And I don’t see a turnaround happening without either one of two things happening:
- a hypocritical repeat of the Southern Strategy in which Democrats drive out the “non-traditional Americans” who they’ve accrued since 1968 and curry favor with the “traditional Americans”.
- Creating new, Democratic-leaning states from existing ones, a la State of Baja Arizona, State of South Florida, State of Atlanta, State of South Louisiana, State of South Texas, etc.
I think, with the latter option, those minority positions – Afro-American and Latino, college student, LGBT, women, urbanites, creative types, service worker, types who have better representation in city government – will have greater autonomy and home rule in the South than they have in this forever-disadvantaged position against these hopelessly-rural state legislatures. Hawaii is one example, D.C. is another. Why be held in this minority position forever? If bigoted rural interests hold back whole state governments, why let them hold back those who have a more diverse agenda? Statehood for Southern New Democrats. Think about it.
