Dems In The South

3:06 am EST June 22nd, 2006 | Politics | 4 Comments

I don’t think Democrats should simply pull up stakes in the south and look for votes elsewhere. But it’s also folly to think that it’s a problem that’s easy to overcome

Consultants like Saunders are paid to figure out how to persuade just the small fraction of white voters needed to win in places like the Magnolia State. It s not an easy task, to be sure. Along with Steve Jarding, his more measured co-author of Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland and What the Democrats Must Do to Run  em Out, Saunders calls for a  bubba-plus-blacks Democratic coalition. If only wishing made it so. Though they write powerfully about southern Republicans political exploitation of race and the appalling inequities rural Americans face, Jarding and Saunders provide few solutions beyond semiotic gimmicks like putting candidates in flannel shirts, or symbolic gestures like Bob Graham s sponsorship of a NASCAR driver.

Foxes in the Henhouse left me unconvinced, and as noted the races recently won by Democrats in Virginia were not won by candidates acting like “good ole boys”. Tim Kaine won on Mark Warner’s coattails, and the nucleus of their electoral success was addressing the issue of suburban sprawl and other exurban problems like schools and the like. I certainly don’t think Dems need to pander to the angry white male demographic, because for whatever worth it may have down south it just turns off people in swing states and in the solid blue areas that are the Democratic core. Not worth it.

The Democrats lost the south by embracing civil rights (President Johnson said “We have lost the South for a generation” when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964). The segregationist Dixiecrats became Republicans and the base of the conservative movement (first with Goldwater then with Reagan and now Bush). Good riddance.

Florida has gone more Republican since 2000, but I certainly wouldn’t give it up for dead and there are more than enough votes to be mined in the midwest and southwest without Democrats lurching backwards. And even then, you don’t completely abandon the region. Just as the RNC is pouring money by the millions to prop up right wing gubernatorial and senate candidates in solid blue Maryland, so too should Democrats stand shoulder to shoulder with folks like Rep. Harold Ford who could be the first black senator from the south in a generation or more.

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4 Responses to “Dems In The South”

  1. deets says:
    June 22, 2006 at 5:06 pm

    I am from Georgia, and I have one thing to say to Democrats out there, please, dear God, don’t abandon us. We are not a “cut and run” party. We won’t do it in Iraq, please don’t do it to the South!!

  2. Frank_D says:
    June 25, 2006 at 12:06 am

    One reason the Democratics can’t go after the South is because every dollar and every day they spend there is another day and another dollar they can’t spend in the Midwest and Northeast, which they absolutely, positively must have to win.
    That’s why Ohio cost them the election in 2004.

  3. Frank_D says:
    June 25, 2006 at 8:06 am

    And yet another:

    Howard Dean is one of those who are convinced that the reasons the Democrats don’t win is because they don’t push a sufficiently left wing program. In this thinking, the American people are all ready for leftist governance, but until someone steps up to the plate and really offers it to them, they won’t vote for it.

    This is fun. Could you keep this thread open until, say, NOV 2008, and call it, “Why The Dems Can’t Possibly Win”

  4. Frank_D says:
    June 25, 2006 at 8:06 am

    Slightly OT, but here’s another reason they’ll never take a southern state: They know nothing about freedom.