Relevance

 One of the most interesting comments on the election in Georgia came from one of the most conservative members of the General Assembly. State Rep. Steven Sainz, R-St. Marys, said he’d talked with a manager of a grocery chain that tracks the percentage of customers who must put items back because they can’t pay the entire bill. The usual rate of 3 percent had jumped to 14.

I think Sainz has his finger on a good index of relevance. The party that wants to be considered relevant will pay attention to that number and to other numbers that suggest that people are sliding into the kind of poverty that involves hunger.

I’d say a party that can’t pause its culture wars agenda long enough to address that problem is going to be irrelevant overnight.