What about the red states in the Plains, Mountain West, and Midwest? Brownback from Kansas certainly is a whackadoodle.
I’m certainly not blind to the backwardness of the South and the state where I live. But it’s not just here. This is a national problem with the GOP. Look at LePage in Maine. It’s not the South, it’s the GOP period. Our white population is more susceptible to the racist dogwhistles perhaps than in other states, but the GOP is strong in various states throughout this nation.
When good Democrats/liberals/progressives say things like “Let the South secede already,” they’re forgetting our large AA, Native American, and Latinx populations here. Let’s work on mobilizing them and progessive whites and doing something about these problems of GOP hegemony. My personal experience is that most whites here who are Republican/conservative simply do not know what Democrats stand for. They have a lot of misconceptions that need to be corrected. It’s difficult, sure. But we must not give up.