So in last Thursday's debate in Brooklyn, Bernie Sanders dismissed Hillary Clinton's lead in both votes and delegates by saying, "Secretary Clinton cleaned our clock in the Deep South, no question about it. We got murdered there. That is the most conservative part of this great country. That's the fact. But you know what, we're out of the Deep South now. And we're moving up."

Sanders has previously waved off the region by saying the Southern primaries "distort reality" and claimed he didn't try compete there when he actually did.

Memo to the Bernie Sanders campaign: You know who actually achieved a revolution in this country? Black Southerners. You know, the people voting for Hillary by 6 to 1 margins in the southern primaries. As the political handicapper Nate Silver put it last week at FiveThirtyEight, Clinton is winning the states that most look like the Democratic Party. "In fact, these states are among the most demographically representative of the diverse Obama coalition that Clinton or Sanders will have to rely on in November," Silver wrote.

Nor does Bernie's arrogance go over well with Southerners themselves. As Texas Twitterer @PropaneJane put it Sunday:

We don't have time for your purity bullshit down here, we need Democratic Party funding to beat back Jim Crow and wire hanger abortions. — Propane Jane (@docrocktex26) April 17, 2016

Speaking as a born and raised Southerner (Texas and Tennessee) I can testify that there is a history in the region of counting some votes more than others. And it's no more appropriate, or less offensive, now than then. And the idea of doing so is also a godawful message to send to all the Democrats in the South, black and white – that they're not worth bothering with and should be written off. There are a lot of Democrats in Southern states that are working their hearts out against tough odds and, in some cases, succeeding.

Deep South Democrats just elected a governor in Louisiana, John bel Edwards. He has already announced he will expand Medicaid to help that state's poorest citizens and he's overturning the anti-LGBT executive orders of his predecessor, Bobby Jindal. This is why electing imperfect, even conservative, Democrats in the South matters.

Are Democrats in the South fighting an uphill battle? Absolutely, especially given the gerrymandering and voter suppression laws being passed by Republicans. But as we learned in the bel Edwards race, candidates still matter and good ones will win. And when Southern Democrats don't vote – perhaps because they're being told they don't count – we get governors like Pat McCrory of North Carolina and the bigoted, anti-gay law HB2.

As Clinton herself put it when asked about Sanders' statement on ABC News This Week:

.@HillaryClinton responds to Sanders' claim that her wins have been mostly in the "deep South." #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/1CHmNcgP8O — This Week (@ThisWeekABC) April 17, 2016

Her experience as a first lady of Arkansas would certainly lead to that conclusion.

But the Sanders' dismissal also reveals the most irritating aspect of his entire campaign and indeed his entire career. It's not the issues, it's the sanctimony.

Bernie Sanders, while falling to the left of the dial, is as flawed and at times politically compromised as any other candidate. His unwillingness to apologize to the Sandy Hook families after voting to give gun manufacturers a liability exemption is particularly unpleasant. He's also voted to support a trillion-dollar Pentagon boondoggle, the F-35 stealth fighter plane being built in Vermont by Lockheed Martin, making his railing against Hillary's Iraq votes (for which she has apologized) somewhat lacking in sincerity.