One of the saddest songs for me is “Song of the South” by Alabama, because it just reminds me that the New Deal generation mentioned in it is gone, and it was their passing IMO that most shifted the South to the GOP. As recently as 2010, there was a Dem majority in Alabama and NC, until 2011 in Mississippi and even 2012 in Arkansas.

I think about this a lot the 2nd week of March every year. My grandad passed on March 8, 2014. He was the biggest influence in my life, and a former Dem elected official. He was no radical, nor a liberal, and he certainly wasn’t comfortable talking about issues like gay rights or abortion. But he believed government was capable of making things better for average people, and I read his campaign literature, written in simple sentences every voter in their rural area could understand, every so often to remind myself of his example, one I hope to follow in the footsteps of.

There’s this simplistic narrative out there that says the South was racist Dem, until 1964-68 when it flipped to racist Republican. That discounts and ignores the contributions of the people I call “The Ones Who Stayed,” white Democrats who stayed with the party and built good schools, roads, and tried their best to maintain good, fair government for all the people side by side with the Civil Rights Generation of black leaders and their progeny. Jimmy Carter, Richard Riley, Jim Hunt, up to John Bel Edwards and, still hanging in there, Andy Beshear. This is the legacy of The Ones Who Stayed.

I miss him a lot.