Jackson Free Press

We've said it before: It's tough to be even marginally progressive in Mississippi. It's as if the DNA of old habits has gotten into our water, and it won't work itself out. Politicians in our state, right and (so-called) left, think the only way to win elections here is to play to the ridiculous-right on about every issue, the rest of us be damned.

Even a moderate Mississippian is supposed to just understand that—wink, wink—the only way to get public education even marginally funded or keep the crazies from taking over the entire state is for all of us to hold our noses and vote for candidates on Election Day who pander to the most right-wing ideologues who then end up keeping the state on the bottom.

Guess what? It's not working. Note the crazies taking over the state as everyone panders to the extremists behind the "personhood" initiative or we listen to our Democratic attorney general extol the virtues of the death penalty even as DNA is releasing innocent "killers" from Parchman.

It is as if we're supposed to turn our even remotely educated brains off on Election Day, and to hear Democratic Executive Director Rickey Cole tell it, we're supposed to start sending lots of little checks to the Democratic Party that couldn't figure out how to run someone for secretary of state or lieutenant governor while its chairman was off fighting about his wife's affair.

Meantime, this state is perhaps poised to be majority moderate/progressive statewide and even in national elections due to a very simple (and complicated) fact: our racial demographics. At 37 percent, we have the highest proportion of black residents in the nation, and most of them vote Democratic—or would if inspired to turn out for progress.

But, let's be frank: The Democratic Party in Mississippi is a disaster. It relied almost solely on donations from trial lawyers until one of its own, Ronnie Musgrove, sold his party up the river on "tort reform," which was anything but evidence-based. (read "Hoodwinked" to get the real skinny on that scam.) Its candidates pander to the radical right almost as much as Phil Bryant does (OK, not quite that much). And worse, it does little if anything to figure out how to inspire a new generation of voters of all races who do not hate government, but who do not go along with pretending to be a wingnut to get votes (and many, thus, take their brains and leave the state).

In the 2004 presidential election, John Kerry (of all people) drew 63 percent of voters under 30 in Mississippi to Bush's 36 percent—the highest proportion of any southern state including Texas and Florida, where the below-30 crowd chose Kerry only 52-48 over Bush. If that wasn't a call for Democrats to stop playing wink-wink politics, nothing was. What did state Dems do with that information? Ignored it. As they keep doing to educated progressives.