"We should just let the south secede"
"Indiana is the worst state in the midwest, it has no redeeming qualities"
(In regards to Flint Michigan when the electoral map was showing the district as red) "Don't come crying to us asking for clean water"
All three of these statements are ones I have seen stated by supposed liberals in regards to the areas of the country that went for team red. These sentiments are common in the comments section of just about any liberal news or opinion site. There is a sneering contempt for the south and midwest that oozes from in between every line like these. This concept that there are the good and righteous blue states and that, conversely there are the bigoted and evil red states is endemic on the left.
Never mind that the south is home to America's largest populations of LGBTQ+ people as well as the largest concentration of black folks in the country.
Never mind that in red states anyone on the left has to fight through decades of calcified voter suppression and intimidation.
Never mind that the most racist place I've ever been hasn't been when I've visited the deep south or even here in rural Indiana, but is instead my hometown area of upstate New York, where all my cousins fly confederate flags outside homes that sit less than 20 minutes from the Canadian border.
Never mind all that because by God it feels good to shit on states that went red. It feels so nice to be able to be smugly superior and make pronouncements about how 'those people' over there are bad, not like us people over here in the good states that voted the right way, and those people in the bad states should be punished, abandoned, looked down on, and ignored.
Let's get one thing out of the way ahead of time. I am not saying any of this to suggest sympathy for Trump supporters themselves. Admitting you voted for Trump needs to be seen by society the same way as admitting you fuck the family dog on weekends. I am not talking about shunning or shaming Trump supporters being bad, they need shunned, they need shamed, they need to be shown their views have no place in a polite society.
What I AM talking about is this knee jerk tendency to point at certain areas of the country and crow "There's the bad people! Right there! Everyone there is awful and we shouldn't care what happens to them!" Doing that is bad, and you should feel bad.
I live in a county of 25,000 people. The county seat, where I live, has a population of 4,000. Our county voted for Trump in this last election 73/26. And that sucks. But in an election season where red areas mostly went even harder for Trump than they did in 2016, our 73/26 split was a 4+ point improvement over the 78/20 result from 2016 here. And while that might not seem like much, that improvement came as our local Dem party ran the most diverse slate of candidates in our county's history. (Full disclosure: my husband ran for county coroner as the nation's first ever transgender candidate for that office).
We had our first ever trans candidate in the US for coroner (my husband), our first ever lesbian candidate for county council, our first ever Latina candidate for county clerk, and our first ever black candidate for county commisioner.
We didn't win. Only had one race come even remotely close. But we could have won if the prevailing attitude of the national party (and to a major extent the state Dem party as well) hadn't been "fuck you, you bunch of hicks"
We were told that in order to receive any funding, we would have to prove we could fundraise on our own. So we went out and did so. I was acting as my husband's campaign manager and put together two virtual fundraisers that raised nearly 2,000$, more than any Dem candidate had raised in this county since the 60s. I emailed, called, and wrote my heart out, trying to get out the message that "hey! we can flip this place we just need a few grand to get the word out" and was met with either silence or the indifference of "pfft, Dems can't win there, that place is full of nothing but rednecked bigots".
So we lost, and lost fairly big, even if we did move the needle a few inches, this county has been under one party rule since the days of Lyndon Johnson and moving that needle even those 4 points was backbreaking work.
I see people on here still wistfully talk about Howard Dean's 50 state strategy. Hell, I miss it too. It was a good idea that got strangled in the crib. But how on earth do y'all expect to execute a 50 state strategy when you're throwing 30 of those states under the bus, just so you can pretend that the bigots are over there somewhere, and not where you are?
So the next time you feel like dismissing somewhere as a lost cause, as a shithole state, if you will, remember that when you do so us blue dots in those red areas see what you really think of us, and we won't forget it.