A LIBERAL SOUTHERN WOMAN

It’s time to take the L-word back

THE WORM HAS turned for the Democrats, and for Democrats electing the next President. I know it’s far from a done deal, but I’m optimistic about the upcoming election. And I’m declaring that the “Years of The Woman” are almost upon us. 

For quite some time, I’ve been saying that one of the obstacles to moving forward in this country is that there are too many old dead white men who just don’t know they’re already dead. They just keep plodding on in their canyon-sized ruts—even digging them deeper—and holding us all back. Just look at Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and his legislative thugs silencing the Tennessee Three as they attempted to change the gun laws after a horrific school shooting in Nashville. (Ironically, these arrogant bullies inadvertently paved the way for The Three to gain a national audience and fan club for standing up to them.) Yet these legislators and their ilk keep stomping down any progress in the gun laws while proclaiming blah-blah-blah thoughts and prayers for child victims. It’s no surprise that the NRA endorsed Bill Lee for governor. 

And then there’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders merrily destroying public education in Arkansas (yes, she counts as an old dead white man). Not only that, as Gene Lyons said in this piece: Indeed, the long-term impact is clear: The act would re-segregate Arkansas schools — by race, by class and by religion.

So Republican.

And let’s not forget almost the entire GOP contingent in Congress who kowtow to their sociopathic, narcissistic leader Donald Trump as he becomes more and more crackbrained. Nor should we forget that during this years-long Trump fiasco, the American press has normalized him while their companies use him for profitable clickbait.

Trump is the epitome of an old dead white man—he understands nothing except how to keep a spotlight on himself. He counts on his instincts, which have repeatedly failed him in his own businesses not to mention netting him a hefty number of criminal indictments and convictions. 

But in this evolving political landscape—after Joe Biden set the Democrats free—new life is bubbling up. The Dems are rising from the morass of what was partly a self-inflicted wound. There was some point or points in the last few decades in which we lost our own plot. It’s not that we became “elites,” as the slur against us goes. But we didn’t pay enough attention to—or listen to—the people who should’ve been our base and were suffering. Most importantly, they did not feel seen or heard…by us. 

Enter the Republicans, who manipulated the hell out of them and then pushed the buttons of the triggers they’d set up—pro-life (who’s against life?), patriotism (making Democrats Civil War-style domestic enemies), and elites (coming from Donald Trump who has spent his entire life as an elite—or, in view of his vain attempts at social climbing in NYC, at least a hard-core elite wannabe). 

No, what we Democrats did to drive our voters away was to intellectualize the issues as well as our view of how their lives should be. Yes, Bill Clinton made some mistakes—and, like NAFTA, some big ones—as did Obama. How did we let Mitch McConnell hijack that seat on the Supreme Court?  And even when Biden was doing good for our country, the specter of Trump hung over us like a haint from the underworld, pervading Biden’s every move and our consciousness. Even after Trump led an insurrection against his own country, the GOP continued to hold us hostage. This was at least partially because they know how to hit voters in their guts where people actually live and vote, while we were frou-frouing.  And along with that, we let them.

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NOW, HERE WE are at this dynamic moment in United States history and a tremendously important election, and the Democrats are back. We’re rediscovering our strength as well as our identity. We’re not trying to be Republicans Light anymore. We’re being loud and proud progressives—or should I say liberals?

It feels like we liberals have been hiding, especially in the South. And what about liberal Southern women? Do they exist at all?

Despite the national public perception, we live and breathe. But there’s nothing in the media out there about us. Not really. The halcyon days of Texas columnist Molly Ivins are long gone. And even among Democrats, and to our shame, liberal had become a dirty word on our path to mollifying conservatives. Progressive has been the best descriptor that we could do, and when Hillary was running for president, we were attacked by Conservative Democrats as the Fringe Left. But with the candidacy of Kamala Harris and especially Tim Walz, our politics are catching up to the future that Bernie Sanders envisioned and Bella Abzug once lived by. 

And I’m taking the word Liberal back.

As we all know, the South is now problematic for Democrats in all U.S. elections, and it’s troublesome for liberal Democrats to even live here. Though I’m from Arkansas, I lived in France for 10 years.  When I moved abroad, Arkansas was still Democratic. When I returned, it was Republican. Not only was it Republican, but America had dumbed down. The dumbing down of America is one of the themes I keep going back to. Plus, people had become religious nuts and gun nuts. The seeds of Christian Nationalism were being sewn among people who had not been Bible-beaters when we were growing up. It was shocking.

When I came back from France, I wrote a piece called The De-Evolution of Arkansas, which got 25,000+ Likes on Facebook. Arkansas Liberals were hungry for what I said. No journalist there was speaking up. But if Kamala Harris is elected, it’s going to be four years of woman POV. And as a Southerner and a woman, I intend to address what’s happening in these conservative states from a personal and knowledgeable point of view. 

Where does most of our national political commentary come from? Washington or New York. And the rest of the country is Flyover Land. I was once at a television Town Hall with “Hardball’s” Chris Matthews in Little Rock when Bill Clinton was president (my daughter went to nursery school with Chelsea) and the Monica Lewinsky scandal was being discussed. I pointed my finger in Matthews’ face and said that I was sick of hearing how bad the politics in Arkansas are from journalists in Washington when they knew better—when they knew just how dirty the politics in Washington were. I told him I thought all Washington journalists should be required to spend six months of the year in the middle of the country. 

After that lively exchange, the Hardball crew put powder on my nose and got me ready for the next segment. They also used a clip from that exchange for their Hardball end-of-year teaser.

There needs to be a voice that isn’t from D.C. or New York. And it needs to be female. And we need to hear from the South. Liberal females exist here, and we’re sick and tired of shutting up.