The mainstream media is losing its grip on power. And some of the biggest players don’t know what to do.
Now Joy Reid is flailing after Republicans hit her with a devastating reality check.
Joy Reid’s Latest Pitch: Democrats Should Chase the Voters Who Keep Rejecting Them
Former MSNBC host Joy Reid took to the “I’ve Had It” podcast to lecture Democrats on their supposed failure to woo rural America, claiming the party has all but surrendered the South and Heartland to Republicans.
The “Just Show Up” Fantasy in Deep-Red Territory
Reid scolded her party for not pouring resources into states it hasn’t seriously contested in decades, as if a few photo-ops in Mississippi or West Virginia would magically reverse decades of voter preference.
“When’s the last time a Democrat was in Oklahoma, or Mississippi, or Tennessee, or when was the last time they spent real money to try to win races in these states? They’re absent without official leave in the whole South,” Reid argued.
“And Democrats, first of all, they have to get better at just showing up. When’s the last time Democrats went into the hills of West Virginia?”
Class-First Theory, Same Old Identity Footnotes
Reid insisted that poor White voters are secretly yearning for Democratic outreach and have more in common with poor minorities than with wealthy Whites—conveniently ignoring turnout data and the persistent cultural gulf that keeps many of them home or voting Republican anyway.
“Poor White people don’t vote. Poor White people, poor Brown people, they don’t vote,” she said. “They generally just sort of let it happen, right? But if you went into the We — I mean, Bishop William Barber goes into the hills of West Virginia. Those people want the same thing that we sitting around this table want.”
“They want a decent life,” she continued. “They want to be able to feed their kids. They want to be able to have a decent home that they can’t lose. They don’t want to, you know, go broke because they need health care. They would like to go to a doctor every so often, go to a dentist. They would like normal things. They don’t have them. And so, but they’re left out there, not just by Republicans who didn’t give a s— about them.”
“As long as they stay racist and stay angry at gay people and the trans people they’ll never meet, they’re happy with them. Democrats just don’t go there at all,” she said.
Blaming the “Brand” While Laughing About the Stereotypes
In the end, Reid argued the real obstacle isn’t policy but the Democratic “brand” itself—then promptly illustrated the very cultural baggage she claims is the problem by joking about pronouns, Black people, and “Brown immigrants” in the same breath.
“The brand is the issue in a lot of these red states because they view the brand as associated, to your point, with these cultural things with gay marriage and with trans,” Reid said, who has recently expressed some uneasiness of transwomen and female lockerrooms.
“Pronouns,” host Jennifer Welch agreed in a humorous tone. “Black people.”
“Brown immigrant,” Reid agreed as they laughed. “They’re just like, ‘That’s that brand’ and so people won’t even hear you if you say Democrat.”
