At what point did the Southern Strategy begin?

[Skill and Chance]

In 1935, southern Democrats were given a fairly important exception to the expansion of the Fed's power over labor relations (which I think is probably the area in which they were the most uncomfortable with the New Deal). The Social Security Act of 1935 specifically excluded domestic workers and agricultural workers. Black southerners did this work, and the exclusion of domestic workers and farm workers simply does not make sense without this context (fyi: the SSA wrote a hilarious article trying to deny that this exclusion was racially motivated by drawing on some scant legislative history, but their argument is pretty weak and doesn't capture the Administrations frequent backroom dealing with Southern Dems, imo – check it out if you're interested).

This is the Ira Katznelson thesis from "When Affirmative Action Was White", which I remember doesn't hold up to scrutiny in this instance. Interesting review of the evidence for why domestic and agricultural workers were excluded from Social Security in this article. It notes that about three times as many white workers were excluded as black, that there was no unified Southern opposition to the inclusion of agricultural and domestic workers, that every unemployment insurance scheme in Europe before 1935 excluded either or both categories of workers, and the architects of Social Security in the administration, inspired by those European programmes, were concerned with the administrative difficulties in covering informal workers like farm labourers and servants. For example it notes that Senator Tom Connally of Texas, who wiki says "led the opposition to federal anti-lynching legislation in the late 1930s, filibustering the Anti-Lynching Bill of 1937", actually advocated for the inclusion of agricultural workers out of a concern that they would be excluded from the benefits.

Probably the most relevant passage to the general discussion about Southern Democrats and the New Deal:

Southern Democrats acted in concert against Northern Democrats only nine times between 1933 and 1949: five times to block anti-lynching legislation, twice against wage increases for the Works Progress Administration, once against an antidiscrimination provision in federal education financing, and once against a Fair Employment Practices measure. Southern Democrats failed to display their characteristic "solid" tendencies for the other 580 roll call votes (...) As a whole, southern legislators were more liberal than northerners between 1933 and 1937.* The one additional issue that tended to unite southern Democrats was the strong concern that federal funding should not be biased against their region.

*I wonder if that's partly because the Democratic landslides added a lot of moderate Northern members in traditionally conservative Republican districts? Although that would still indicate the South as a whole was significantly more pro-New Deal than the North as a whole.

This makes sense when you look at the demographics of the regions in question, as well as the fact that although you had the solid South and its restrictions on voting, the poor farmers still dominated the Democratic Party, in what was backwards after thought economically for the rest of the country.

This is a bit that Vosem would actually agree with, but "conservatism", at least economically so, depends on a strong middle class or wealthy vote unencumbered by the votes of the working class or minorities whose interests would naturally be in conflict.

This means that only in the Black belt of the South and some of the big cities (where the rich whites dominated elections and the working class being mostly black could not vote in this period) did you have a geography where this could manifest and it should be noted that most deviations from Democratic Party line on Vote View's DW Nominate scores (yes I get that it only measures against the party line) in the South are those in black belt districts and those representing formerly Republican areas from the 1920s (Western NC/VA for example).

The largest concentrations of middle class voters, would be in the Northeast and Midwest. And with the Republican collapse, a lot of these districts would have been held by Democrats during the 1930s, until the 1938 and 1942 elections at least. This means that it is very reasonable to see more reliably pro-New Deal support among Southern Democrats than Northern Ones. In the North you also had people like John J. O'Connor and Al Smith, representing the ascended Irish middle class reject the Democratic Party and start to go over to the Republicans.

The Republicans did not lose much ground in Massachusetts in the 1930s, and it was only once the diversification of the Boston suburbs accelerated in the 1940s and 1950s, that you saw the GOP collapse in the state accelerate. This is because a lot of the Democratic support was isolated to Boston and the mill towns, but later this spread out, thanks in part to the GI Bill and unlike in other states, there was not a corresponding shift towards the GOP among this urban flight at least until the 70s and by then it was going to Southern New Hampshire.

The power of Unionized Labor was probably also not ready yet in the 1930s and so a lot of old school classical liberals were being elected as Democrats in the 1930s, whereas by the late late 1940s, it is on the back of union labor that Truman is able to win reelection and regain congress. It is with the 1940s that the North's delegation becomes considerably more liberal than the Southern one, and with the 1958/64 elections more Democratic as well.

This would also be before the impacts of the New Deal took hold on transforming the upper middle class and wealthy areas of the North in a more liberal direction, a process that Phillips goes into far more detail in Emerging Republican Majority, but it is really not until the late 50s and 60s that its impacts are seen first with electing more liberal Republicans and then electing liberal Democrats. This was still the days of Bruce Barton representing the Upper East Side, as a militant anti-New Dealer.

So in a world before powerful unions, and with a militantly hostile upper and upper middle class electing anti-New Dealers like Bruce Barton in the UES, Lewis K. Rockefeller in the 1930s in the Lower Hudson Valley, James Wadsworth (opposed the FDA under TR and women's suffrage) in the Rochester area and Dan Reed (one of the most conservative Republicans in the house between 1919 and 1959) in the Southern Tier, you begin to see the importance of the Southern/Western Farmer in any progressive economic coalition.

In 1940, FDR only won New York by 3.5%, New Jersey by 3.6%, Ohio by 4.4% and Illinois by 2.4%. He actually lost Michigan narrowly. All of the rich and middle class conservative voters, that would eventually move down to the south once its infrastructure was built up thanks in part to the New Deal, the invention of air conditioning and ironically in part thanks to the support provided by Social Security thus eliminating the need to stay close to their children and the family hardware store in Fort Wayne were still in these states, voting Republican.   

This was true in a majority of Southern states, but not all.  I would put the Southern influenced states into 3 categories.  Green = least rigged, substantially competitive, free elections either statewide or in many localities, Yellow = somewhat rigged, but enough room for poor farmers/ranchers to retain influence, Red = hopelessly rigged until federal intervention, with local elites essentially picking the winners.  LA and GA were once red, but both repealed their worst restrictions by the end of WWII.

[Skill and Chance]

In 1935, southern Democrats were given a fairly important exception to the expansion of the Fed's power over labor relations (which I think is probably the area in which they were the most uncomfortable with the New Deal). The Social Security Act of 1935 specifically excluded domestic workers and agricultural workers. Black southerners did this work, and the exclusion of domestic workers and farm workers simply does not make sense without this context (fyi: the SSA wrote a hilarious article trying to deny that this exclusion was racially motivated by drawing on some scant legislative history, but their argument is pretty weak and doesn't capture the Administrations frequent backroom dealing with Southern Dems, imo – check it out if you're interested).

This is the Ira Katznelson thesis from "When Affirmative Action Was White", which I remember doesn't hold up to scrutiny in this instance. Interesting review of the evidence for why domestic and agricultural workers were excluded from Social Security in this article. It notes that about three times as many white workers were excluded as black, that there was no unified Southern opposition to the inclusion of agricultural and domestic workers, that every unemployment insurance scheme in Europe before 1935 excluded either or both categories of workers, and the architects of Social Security in the administration, inspired by those European programmes, were concerned with the administrative difficulties in covering informal workers like farm labourers and servants. For example it notes that Senator Tom Connally of Texas, who wiki says "led the opposition to federal anti-lynching legislation in the late 1930s, filibustering the Anti-Lynching Bill of 1937", actually advocated for the inclusion of agricultural workers out of a concern that they would be excluded from the benefits.

Probably the most relevant passage to the general discussion about Southern Democrats and the New Deal:

Southern Democrats acted in concert against Northern Democrats only nine times between 1933 and 1949: five times to block anti-lynching legislation, twice against wage increases for the Works Progress Administration, once against an antidiscrimination provision in federal education financing, and once against a Fair Employment Practices measure. Southern Democrats failed to display their characteristic "solid" tendencies for the other 580 roll call votes (...) As a whole, southern legislators were more liberal than northerners between 1933 and 1937.* The one additional issue that tended to unite southern Democrats was the strong concern that federal funding should not be biased against their region.

*I wonder if that's partly because the Democratic landslides added a lot of moderate Northern members in traditionally conservative Republican districts? Although that would still indicate the South as a whole was significantly more pro-New Deal than the North as a whole.

This makes sense when you look at the demographics of the regions in question, as well as the fact that although you had the solid South and its restrictions on voting, the poor farmers still dominated the Democratic Party, in what was backwards after thought economically for the rest of the country.

This is a bit that Vosem would actually agree with, but "conservatism", at least economically so, depends on a strong middle class or wealthy vote unencumbered by the votes of the working class or minorities whose interests would naturally be in conflict.

This means that only in the Black belt of the South and some of the big cities (where the rich whites dominated elections and the working class being mostly black could not vote in this period) did you have a geography where this could manifest and it should be noted that most deviations from Democratic Party line on Vote View's DW Nominate scores (yes I get that it only measures against the party line) in the South are those in black belt districts and those representing formerly Republican areas from the 1920s (Western NC/VA for example).

The largest concentrations of middle class voters, would be in the Northeast and Midwest. And with the Republican collapse, a lot of these districts would have been held by Democrats during the 1930s, until the 1938 and 1942 elections at least. This means that it is very reasonable to see more reliably pro-New Deal support among Southern Democrats than Northern Ones. In the North you also had people like John J. O'Connor and Al Smith, representing the ascended Irish middle class reject the Democratic Party and start to go over to the Republicans.

The Republicans did not lose much ground in Massachusetts in the 1930s, and it was only once the diversification of the Boston suburbs accelerated in the 1940s and 1950s, that you saw the GOP collapse in the state accelerate. This is because a lot of the Democratic support was isolated to Boston and the mill towns, but later this spread out, thanks in part to the GI Bill and unlike in other states, there was not a corresponding shift towards the GOP among this urban flight at least until the 70s and by then it was going to Southern New Hampshire.

The power of Unionized Labor was probably also not ready yet in the 1930s and so a lot of old school classical liberals were being elected as Democrats in the 1930s, whereas by the late late 1940s, it is on the back of union labor that Truman is able to win reelection and regain congress. It is with the 1940s that the North's delegation becomes considerably more liberal than the Southern one, and with the 1958/64 elections more Democratic as well.

This would also be before the impacts of the New Deal took hold on transforming the upper middle class and wealthy areas of the North in a more liberal direction, a process that Phillips goes into far more detail in Emerging Republican Majority, but it is really not until the late 50s and 60s that its impacts are seen first with electing more liberal Republicans and then electing liberal Democrats. This was still the days of Bruce Barton representing the Upper East Side, as a militant anti-New Dealer.

So in a world before powerful unions, and with a militantly hostile upper and upper middle class electing anti-New Dealers like Bruce Barton in the UES, Lewis K. Rockefeller in the 1930s in the Lower Hudson Valley, James Wadsworth (opposed the FDA under TR and women's suffrage) in the Rochester area and Dan Reed (one of the most conservative Republicans in the house between 1919 and 1959) in the Southern Tier, you begin to see the importance of the Southern/Western Farmer in any progressive economic coalition.

In 1940, FDR only won New York by 3.5%, New Jersey by 3.6%, Ohio by 4.4% and Illinois by 2.4%. He actually lost Michigan narrowly. All of the rich and middle class conservative voters, that would eventually move down to the south once its infrastructure was built up thanks in part to the New Deal, the invention of air conditioning and ironically in part thanks to the support provided by Social Security thus eliminating the need to stay close to their children and the family hardware store in Fort Wayne were still in these states, voting Republican.   

This was true in a majority of Southern states, but not all.  I would put the Southern influenced states into 3 categories.  Green = least rigged, substantially competitive, free elections either statewide or in many localities, Yellow = somewhat rigged, but enough room for poor farmers/ranchers to retain influence, Red = hopelessly rigged until federal intervention, with local elites essentially picking the winners.  LA and GA were once red, but both repealed their worst restrictions by the end of WWII.

But even with the restrictions, you still had people like Bilbo get through in Mississippi and Pitchfork Ben Tillman in South Carolina. The former was a down the line pro-New Deal vote and the latter being in a much earlier period obviously, worked with TR (for a while anyway) on trying to regulate the railroads once he hit a brick wall of the NE business establishment types like Nelson Aldrich.

Perhaps in the SC case it is a matter of mutual interest between the planters and poor farmers seeking to stick it to the corrupt Yankee railroad men.

You still have the up country vote, and even if tinier than it should be be, it is still likely to outnumber the Plantation elite at the state level. Phillips highlights select examples in majority black counties where just a few hundred whites were able to vote. So they can dominate those county elections, and they can dominate those congressional districts in their area with very low turnout elections, but the 90%-99% white up country counties are still going to likely be able to out muscle them.

This is why you often see a race to the bottom on who is more segregationist as it was often the first and last resort to maintain power against the Populists or later the more Progressive (economically) minded Democrats.

I wonder how different things would have been without the disenfranchisement?  Or with less of it?  Say Colorado is able to organize a PV in time and it goes to Tilden so he wins the 1876 election and Compromise of 1877 never happens.  White supremacist activity would of course continue in the South, but Republicans would presumably run against it in 1878/80, keeping the prospect of federal remedies alive.

Alternatively, suppose Benjamin Harrison's proto-VRA Force Bill of 1890 gets through the Senate.  By this time there were a bunch of unfortunate SCOTUS precedents upholding Jim Crow laws in general, but there were also several Deep South states that were still plurality black.  With serious federal enforcement of voting rights (probably have to assume Harrison gets reelected for this), freedmen and early civil rights activists would likely be able to wrest back control of LA/MS/GA/SC within a few years (and perhaps TN with enough cooperation from Republican mountain people) and repeal the racist laws.  Assuming this doesn't set off a second civil war, it seems likely that the wealthier part of Deep South white population would move out en masse to the other Southern states they can still control.  If they can survive the next Democratic administration, you would quickly end up with 4 states that are basically VRA districts in the modern sense.

[Skill and Chance]

The problem is that the post-Reconstruction Republican Party never had any incentive to dump serious political capital into voting rights in the South, because the GOP could write off the region and dominate federal politics by sweeping the North and West. Politics revolved around winning Northern moderates, and they were apathetic at best about the voting rights of Southern blacks. It was only after a few decades of the Great Migration, when black voters established themselves as a key swing demographic in EV-heavy Northern states that civil rights forced its way up the political agenda.

An outright Tilden win would complicate this, though, and early enough to plausibly change the longer term planning.