Keep gilding that lilly

Karen Carter-Peterson has a blog now, apparently. She begins,

"The state of the Louisiana Democratic Party is unquestionably stronger than where we were just four years ago."

And we all get up and walk outside to scream/laugh for twenty minutes before continuing.

In the meantime, take a look at the back and forth between Mike Tomasky and some other people and Charles Pierce.

If the question we're really asking is as stupid as, "Should the Democrats abandon the South?" then, obviously, Pierce is on the correct side of that. On the other hand, we might be asking the wrong question.  Anyway, here's Pierce.

I sympathize with Mike. I truly do. But I still will stand with Governor Dean and the 50-state strategy, at least applied judiciously. To me, the key to the problem is to break the stranglehold of the Washington-based consultant class over what candidates will be run in what places. It wasn't the Beltway crowd who found Jon Tester in Montana, or Jim Webb in Virginia. The national party should be involved in these races only as a means by which money can be shrewdly spread around, and as a means of employing some sense of party discipline. No, Mr. Breaux, we won't be following your easily rented ass any more. We will find progressive populists, white or black, and we will run them and support them, and maybe the first five tries won't work but, sooner or later, there will be a breakthrough, and it will not be led by the next Bill Clinton and the next DLC.

For example, Bernie Sanders is drawing big crowds in South Carolina and in Mississippi. He wouldn't come close to winning anything in either of those states, but there is a working-class audience there that is interested in listening to him, and that is worth respecting in our politics.

Wait, stop. Notice something?  Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat.  Also, Howard Dean was fired by the Democrats as soon as Barack Obama became President.  Pierce goes on to talk about the populist tradition in the South and the importance of what, quite frankly, should be the central focus of any American political movement worth its salt. 

But it's 2014, and forging an actual alliance of working people, black and white, in the places that need it the most, is a worthwhile effort whether it fails initially or not.

But if the Democratic Party has taught us anything over the past 30 years it is that it is either unwilling to or incapable of taking that mission seriously.  But it is the most important mission in American politics and the South is its front line.  The people who are working hardest at it are either not Democrats or are working on the fringes of the party. 

Maybe the question we should be asking is whether or not it's time for the South to abandon the Democrats.