I think you make some good points here, but I scratched my head at this part:

"People tend to forget that Hillary and Bill Clinton come from the South."

Yes, they do. So does my partner, an incredibly smart and passionate feminist. So did Barbara Jordan. So did Molly Ivins. So do a lot of folks who are committed to a progressive future. I appreciate the attention to issues of race here, but it seems ironic that a blog post about overcoming outdated ways of thinking would hold to a monolithic notion of how everyone in a region thinks. Whatever the Clintons are doing, reading those actions as indictive of a whole category of Americans, and engaging in the casual smear of the South, feels counterproductive. Jesse Helms was an asshole. But Jesse Helms is not the whole South.