On Georgia, Democratic in-fighting, and Shutting the Hell Up.
By: Candi Mathis
Tags: Georgia, Senate, Democratic Party

As I've mentioned before, James Carville is a religion to me.

I’m not sure what Sunday mornings looked like for most, but for me, when they were spent at my Uncle Chunky’s, it involved a full spread of breakfast and the Sunday morning shows. Burns Church of Christ started incredibly late then -- like, horse and buggy to town late -- and I remember standing in front of the television watching James Carville while my Uncle Chunky would tell me, "Come on, Abner, we’ve got to leave right now or we’re going to be late!"

Of course, we only lived a one minute drive from the church and we were never late so there was always time for just "one more minute” as I turned my head and shuffled my feet slowly out the door. James Carville was mesmerizing to me. When he spoke, I listened. When he preached Democratic politics, I felt powerful. And over the course of my life, everything I’ve learned about the political system and party structure within the United States only solidifies why I’m a Democrat. If I didn’t believe in Democratic politics, I wouldn’t be one. It’s as simple as that.

I’m a Southern Democrat. And a proud one.

Over the last few election cycles and the rise of internet streaming with everyone having access to cable television networks, it's been fun to watch people discover James Carville. Or rediscover James Carville. As many forgot how much they used to love him until he's resurfaced as sort of a political wonk pop culture hero. Ragin Cajun never disappoints.

But for me, I have never forgotten a man that holds such a deep spot in my soul.

Our heroes of then are our heroes of today.

But when I look out to today’s Republican party, what is it that you believe in? We’re no longer arguing over the privatization of social security or the best way to provide government services with our tax dollars, we’re arguing over whether Nazis are bad, whether racism is real, and whether or not science is good and important.

Trump is gone but Trumpism will not go away. So, as a southern Democrat, I say this with all the fire that dwells in my literature loving spirit, let’s win Georgia. Let’s win Georgia and then let’s pass some effective legislation to actually influence the lives of the American people, and let’s hope, through competence, strength, and integrity, that we can restore some of what’s been lost in America to the people who believe that they’re "saving babies" while hating the brown ones and dismissing the rest as soon as they are born.

It is my hope that the Republican party will find its way back to one that didn't just elect QAnon members to Congress who believe that Democrats are a part of a blood-drinking baby eating cabal, but until that time, we can't wait for sanity to be restored across the aisle.

As for unity....

It’s hard to have unity without accountability. That’s like saying you should forgive those narcissistic and abusive people in your past who did bad things to you while they still can’t even apologize or take ownership for what they’ve done. There are cruelties carried out by the Republican party that will never be forgiven or forgotten -- and they shouldn’t be. But as for the sane members, if there are any left, let’s work with them to do what we can for the next four years. Beginning with undoing every executive order that Trump signed just to repeal good and necessary protections simply because it had Obama’s name on it. If you are so far gone into Trump cult membership that you disagree with protecting animals and federal lands just because Obama is the one that signed the order to do so, then you’re not who I’m speaking to.

As for the rest, hear me.

We’re going to need Georgia to do it. What we do and say now matters. We can’t say "vote like Black women" and then not listen to Black women. Black voters aren’t the ones calling to defund the police and calling themselves socialists. White people are. White people don’t get to decide what’s racially insensitive for people of color, and when Black voters tell you to stop co-opting a movement for your own messaging that’s not helpful, listen to that. In that spirit, I, along with many others more qualified to do so, are saying that our messaging going into Georgia matters.

Before weighing in on the Georgia Senate race and furthering your own narrative, ask yourself this? What is Stacey Abrams saying? What is Lucy McBath saying? What is Jon Ossoff saying? What is Raphael Warnock saying? What would John Lewis say? Or, refer to the grand daddy of southern politics, Representative Jim Clyburn. If they’re not saying it, you shouldn’t either.

Or ask yourself this....

Did you grow up in the South? Did you grow with Al Gore and Bill Clinton and Phil Bredesen. Did you grow up sitting at the table with grown men drinking coffee and talking about politics. Men who raised the generations of voters that we’re going to need to win Georgia? Did you grow up -- and still live -- a half a day’s drive from multiple swing states where you have your finger on the pulse of what the conversation is in those communities? Because the ones I see being the loudest online don’t have a clue but keep insisting that they’re right because they "feel" that they are. Even though we have three elections now that say otherwise.

The entire Senate and the possibility to press back on the Court hinges on these two races.

Black voters under 25 voted for Joe Biden by 98%. Black women voted for Joe Biden by 91%. Trump’s appeal to Black folks in general was anywhere between 87 to 90% depending on which exit polls you’re looking at. So I’m talking to white people, here. The city of Atlanta went for Joe Biden by 74% so I’m speaking directly to the suburbs. To carry those Suburban women that we need during this election, we need to be clear and concise about what a democratic majority is and what it will look like.

But we need to be even more clear about what it isn’t.

I honestly don’t give a shit what flies in the Squad’s district where some haven’t voted for a Republican since the 1940s, but I will point out that Joe Biden outperformed every single one of the Squad members in their districts -- and one or two by a lot. I give a shit what works a few hours over. I have friends who have always voted for the Democratic Party who were terrified that Bernie Sanders might win the election because they didn’t want to vote for him. I’m sorry if that hurts feelings. I’m sorry if you believe that they’re uninformed or that it’s a messaging problem. That’s the reality, and the entire state of Georgia is going to hinge on voters just like that.

I’ll also remind you that when Joe Biden dog-walked Sanders in South Carolina by the Black voters who put him on their shoulders and carried him across that finish line, there were “progressives” that called the entire electorate of South Carolina "low information" then. So let that marinate.

Listen to us.

“Why can’t we all just get along?”

What is all this infighting? Here’s an example. AOC ran her reelection ads in multiple swing states including Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia. Why would you run your ads for a congressional district in New York and why would you specifically do so on Facebook which is a hotbed of everybody that’s scared of "socialism?" Answer? Because she was trying to raise money from her national coalition. Which means people outside of her District.

Here’s the problem with that.... while we had a specific messaging that we needed in order to win places like Pennsylvania -- like, no, we’re not banning fracking -- AOC is on her social media and in every interview she can to "well, actually...." AOC-splain to the Democratic party and correct the party on how we are going to ban fracking and how fracking is bad. Specifically aiming her response at Kamala Harris who was, coincidentally, the GOPs target of "she’s going to take your fracking" nonsense. All while running her ads online in that state. Even while being aware that she, the Squad, and Sanders are the number one thing that Republicans are turning into an attack -- like her "watch list" tweet which we will, no doubt, see in the Georgia Senate race -- and are going to be a liability right now, she still can’t stop herself.

Florida, for example, we lost gains with Latinos in Florida, and AOC, on election night, is pretending that she knew it all along and she "had a plan for Latinos." What was it? Turn Venezuelans into Republican voters for five decades just like Cubans? Florida is a state where "socialism" is the most offensive word imaginable. Republicans are doing nothing but fear-mongering, sending mailers daily, running everyday attack ads all while knowing that all they have to do is successfully portray the Democratic party as a party embracing this Democratic “socialism” and it will work. So what does AOC do? She purchases ads in Florida so that if you’re on Facebook in Florida while you’re simultaneously getting scare ads that are trying to tell you that the mainstream Democratic party subscribes to the ideals of the far-left, she’s going to make sure she shows up on your feed to remind you that that’s true. Of course people who proudly calls themselves a Democratic Socialist are going to scare people who are terrified of socialism. It’s not "low information," it’s reality and common sense.

She then defends her stance, basically, by claiming that anyone afraid of socialism is really just racist. Like, black and brown voters are the ones who have been telling you this, progressives!

Black Twitter has been after you for a while.

We lost seats in Miami, FFS.

When facing some very real and very legitimate criticism from honest and genuine sources, AOC then publicly complains that no Democrats asked her to come out on the campaign trail. Think about what that says and think about why that is. If no one wants you campaigning with them because you are a liability to that campaign, it might be time to listen to your colleagues.

Does AOC hear that criticism and recognize its validity? Of course not. She doubles down on her message that she’s just trying to save us. Yes, she is the lone freshman savior of the Democratic party who never recognizes the sacrifices and hard work of those gone before her or the barrier breakers like Hillary Clinton. It’s so Trumpy, it’s nauseating.

If my recollection is correct, the only time I’ve observed AOC putting the party over her own ego and interests is when her reaction to Kamala Harris’ being announced as the vice presidential pick -- which was that she just ignored it -- unleashed the K Hive and Black Twitter. And even then, her unity attempt was only on Twitter. Her Instagram was the same old Ocasio-Kardashian scheme. As soon as election night rolled around, she started all over again.

As for the rest of the Squad, I’ve never even seen attempts at party unity as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar infamously booed Hillary Clinton (during the 2020 Presidential primary where Hillary Clinton wasn’t a candidate) and Rashida Tlaib refused to even endorse Joe Biden. Which is, again, why he out performed her by double digits in her own District.

So the "infighting" is really just Democrats who have had enough and Democrats who have realized what they’ve had to overcome in their own districts because of the messaging intentionally put out by some who seem to only care about their own rise, saying, "Can you just not for a minute? Can you just not?" and then AOC attacking the Democratic party and people like Claire McCaskill and Conor Lamb to prove that she knows more than them because she can live stream make-up tutorials and her insta-pot cooking sessions on Instagram. There comes a point where when you vote with Republicans quite often just to make a name for yourself and all that name is is intentionally and willfully hurting your own party, then you need to sit down. And that party needs to tell you to shut the fuck up.

This all came to a head when it was addressed privately on a Democratic Congressional Caucus call, and then the audio of that call was leaked. AOC then ran to social media to claim that everybody was wrong but her and to talk about how mean we (Democrats) are to them.

So why does AOC seem to exist only to draw attention to herself and attack Democrats?

Because she does.

You can like AOC all you want, but it doesn’t change this reality from being fact. AOC isn’t just someone who decided to run for Congress to push her own ideals. AOC isn’t just a bartender that took down an incumbent, although that story feels really good. AOC was recruited by two organizations headed by Dude Bros -- one of them an arrogantly derogatory, sexist, misogynistic piece of flaming shit -- who put out an open casting call looking for minority women that they could run to challenge the Democratic party.

They didn’t want to take on Republicans who are really problematic, now.

Let that sit.

No, they wanted to take on Democrats.

They put out an open casting call and out of 10,000 people, they chose AOC. Why? Because she’s Latina, she speaks Spanish, and she’s beautiful. You can even watch interviews of AOC saying "I really didn’t think I would be picked" as if this was some Congressional Miss America contest. Again, the idea that AOC just decided to run for Congress and did this on her own is as fraudulent of a notion as Trump being a good businessman. One of those dudebros-- Cenk Uyger -- then used his enormous platform of The Young Turks to begin to interview this young woman running for Congress as if he didn’t know anything about her when he had handpicked her all along. She was recruited to push the Justice Democrats’ agenda.

The reason that you don’t see AOC defend women like Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris or Claire McCaskill or Amy Klobuchar or Kirsten Gillibrand is because she was recruited to not. She was chosen to push an agenda of the Justice Democrats. She was hand-selected to run on a platform of Democrats being bad, of Democrats being the problem. That’s why, as a many have observed, the Justice Democrats seems to attack Democrats more than they do Republicans. While voting with Republicans. That was always their goal.

The higher the profile someone like AOC is given, the more money they can pull in. The more money they pull in, the more they can challenge Democratic representatives and brag about it. As AOC recently did on her Twitter, taking credit for the races where “she” primaried Democrats and won. They then leave out the truth that most of them — almost all of them — lost to Republicans in the general. They primary Democrats to lose to Republicans.

So the "infighting" is really just Democrats saying that we aren’t going to continue to lose seats to a side show of egos and internet fame.

The "infighting" is really us rising up and pressing back against those whose only goal was always to take us down, and saying, "Yeah, those few do not speak for us" as a whole.

Which is what we should have done a while ago.

And we need to continue to do that if we want to win Georgia.

Do not dare lecture me or any other Democrat about being divisive until you have acknowledged the presence of Democratic Representatives whose entire purpose is to portray Democrats as the antithesis of progress. While accomplishing nothing themselves.

Flashback to 2016, flashback to what you were feeling in that moment, and imagine watching that election and thinking that the Democratic party is the problem. Imagine thinking that you needed to recruit people, not to defeat the party that elected him, but to defeat the party of Hillary Clinton. The mouthpieces for faux progressive misogynists are well past their expiration date in the minds of most of us who have given the bulk of our lives to effectuating change for the Democratic party.

So the infighting isn’t infighting so much as it is party heavy hitters rightfully saying, “It’s time you sit your ass down.”

We’ve got Georgia to win. And if it means telling somebody to shut the fuck up and distancing ourselves from people who only exist to portray us as the problem in the first place in order to do it, I’m game. Are you?