The Landmass Times: Populism is Dead

While old news at this point, the infamous rightwing populist Mississippi Senator, Chris McDaniel, failed to win the lieutenant gubernatorial Republican primary against Establishment incumbent Delbert Hosemann with 42.8% of the GOP vote. Of course, this is of no surprise. Hosemann refused to debate McDaniel and had many of his Democrat friends encourage cross party voting in a Republican primary in order to win. Furthermore, it is incredibly rare for an incumbent to be unseated in Mississippi. These Boomers do not seem interested in passing the torch anytime soon even though they have already snuffed out the flames.

With this in mind, Southern politicians loathe populism. It historically thrives among working-class Whites and has not changed from that demographic today. To give some context, the Redeemers who ousted the Radical Republicans from Dixie and brought an end to the Reconstruction Era paled in comparison to their forebears. The antebellum aristocracy had been eradicated and was replaced with a political elite comprised of lesser sons, businessmen, lawyers, stakeholders, middle managers, and railroad executives. To put it bluntly, these men were neither prepared nor bred to rule, and their track records by the end of it all reflected this. By the 1880s, they had already turned to the same sort of corruption the Radicals were universally accused of.

Various agrarian populist movements, to include the Greenbacks, Farmers’ Alliance, and the Populist Party, occurred during the 1880s and 1890s, most of which failed. The Southern political machines were simply too powerful to vote out in most places. It was not a secret that these machines were based in the densely populated Black Belt counties. As such, populist rural Caucasians began pushing for restrictions on negro voters due to the politicians using the latter as a means of negating White votes and staying in power. Seeing the writing on the wall, Mississippi ratified its 1890 “Jim Crow” Constitution, the only state to do so prior to the Populist Party movement of the 1890s. Whereas this would have the effect of restricting the negro vote because of property and literacy requirements, it also provided a check on Caucasian populist voters via the implementation of the poll tax. The poll tax disfranchised a large number of poor Whites and was designed specifically to target that demographic, a fact often forgotten. Southern populism would not find the true extent of its potential until the adoption of White primaries in the early 1900s. For more information on the topic, read Redneck Liberal: Theodore G. Bilbo and the New Deal by Chester Morgan, Revolt of the Rednecks: Mississippi Politics, 1876-1925 by Albert Kirwan, and Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 by C. Vann Woodward. After a slew of populist leaders during the first half of the 20th Century, Southern populism has been effectively dead since the end of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

Fast forward to today, and modern populism has failed to penetrate any political machines or seize any real political power despite the various movements since the 1990s. Pat Buchannan, Ron Paul, the Tea Party, MAGA, the Alt-Right, and more have all failed. At the state level all across the South and conservative America, this also rings true with the only real success within 30 years having been Ron DeSantis in Florida, and there is no telling who will fill his shoes once he is out of the governor’s mansion.

To bring this all back full circle, it is amazing how staunchly “conservative” states seem incapable of passing any right-of-center legislation or allowing any voters to actually vote in major social policies. This rings especially true for Mississippi, the supposedly most conservative state in the Union. Gay marriage, abortion, immigration, selling off of vast swathes of rural land to timber for New England companies, and the state flag have all failed to receive any public votes. It also has not yet escaped this author’s notice that not a single public opinion poll of the Magnolia flag has been released, and all sorts of political corruption shenanigans occur, quite openly, during every major social push by the Left or during elections. While unremitting populism of the masses is generally not something to be desired, but it does provide an excellent check on unrestricted tyranny of the business-lawyer political elite. Aristocracy is not a bad thing, and the South has languished since its extermination in the 1860s. Even the Bible makes it obvious that a social hierarchy is needed for civilizational stability and health. Where do you think high culture comes from?

So, it came as a bit of a shock to myself when I came across an article advocating for allowing citizens to vote on abortion in a similar manner to how other states do it. I find it pretty wild when Establishment “journalists” push for a bastardized left-populism when they feel as though it could potentially be beneficial to them. Funny how that works.

It is also pretty striking just how non-Boomer these conservative populist politicians are. Chris McDaniel and Melanie Sojourner of Mississippi, Ron DeSantis of Florida, Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia, Corey Stewart of Virginia, and others are all of Generation X stock; Trump is merely an exception to this. These Gen Xers are facing the political Good Ol’ Boy systems built up by people born during and before the mid-1960s. Southern rightwing populist politicians draw from Caucasian working-class and younger crowds. All the things discussed here should really paint a picture for the new readers here or the politically unaware.

Not much else to say about this topic which has not already been said before. Regarding this series’ namesake, I do believe Tate Reeves is a conservative at heart who did not desire to change the state flag, albeit he is very weak-willed. However, with Mississippi’s GOP voters’ desperation to vote party-line and ensure Boomer incumbents remain in power so as to continue bleeding the state dry and allowing it to languish, I hope Brandon Presley beats Reeves; at least Presley seems like a decent guy. If this does not force the GOP back to the negotiation table with populist blue-collar voters, especially given the state’s political backstabbing since the 1990s regarding Ole Miss’ rebel flag issue, abortion, gay marriage, immigration, the job market, land prices, the anti-Southern education curriculum, selling out to big business and the SEC, and the state flag, nothing else will.