Politico: How Dems can catpure Dixie (again)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Democrats did it once before and didn't even need the demographic changes to do it back then, nor segregationism. I am speaking of course about the Democrat resurgence in the region in the 1970's. The problem is that they have since hitched themselves to elitists where anything not chiq in the UES is either a product of stupidity or corruption.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Democrats did it once before and didn't even need the demographic changes to do it back then, nor segregationism. I am speaking of course about the Democrat resurgence in the region in the 1970's. The problem is that they have since hitched themselves to elitists where anything not chiq in the UES is either a product of stupidity or corruption.

Somebody got excluded from the cool kids table...

Somebody missed the point.

The problem for the Democrats is not the specific issues, but the cultural narrative and rather than resist and seek to be a party of working people of all backgrounds, they have developed a degree of exclusivity that is hampering progressive causes. Of the previous coalitions of Progressive Democrats, did any exclude the rural south? No, or at the very least not entirely. Instead the party is becoming more and more interwined with its own breed of business interests. 

In elite circles there is a view that certain segments of the country are undesirable and that has precluded even attempts to reallign these voters to a more Progressive footing. Look at this thread, they are being written off. You could destroy the Republican Party and move the country to the left once again, but instead the answer is to wait for the Suburbs to diversify more. Even if it does, it won't produce the type of result a coaltion of urban and rural working people could in terms of economic issues.

The Democrats did it once before and didn't even need the demographic changes to do it back then, nor segregationism. I am speaking of course about the Democrat resurgence in the region in the 1970's. The problem is that they have since hitched themselves to elitists where anything not chiq in the UES is either a product of stupidity or corruption.

Well Carter did well in the South in the 1976 Presidential Election sure because he was a Southerner!

Which proves my point. It took neither demography or racism for the Dems to recover after the Civil Rights battles. All it took was making a statement of inclusion that included poor whites in the South. Think of how moderates and Democrats in New Jersey voted for Christie even has he rejected their policies on gays, minimum wage and the like. Does anyone consider the possibility that the same can happen in reverse? You don't have to even go as far as the example smolthchanov mentioned, but at least he is seeing the overal point?

Contrary to what some think; running Blue Dogs in the south is not the answer to winning elections there.

Correct. We need to focus on running moderate to liberal progressives in places like the Charlotte suburbs, Atlanta suburbs and other, more urbanized parts of the coastal south.

Correct, "Liberal", a suburban party based Democratic Party will always be liberal, neoliberal. People need to differentiate between "liberal" and "progressive" and until such is the case, most will be dissappointed with the Democratic Party.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Which proves my point. It took neither demography or racism for the Dems to recover after the Civil Rights battles. All it took was making a statement of inclusion that included poor whites in the South.

I'd make the point that this happened 40 years ago when many Southerners still voted for local Democratic candidates. The threshold for voting Democratic in presidential elections was far lower back then, particulalry with one of their own on the ticket (and let's not forget the scandal that preceded the election) but so much has changed since. I really doubt that if Jimmy Carter ran today he'd get very far in the South either.

That is because the atrophy has gone unchecked for so long. It has to be rebuilt obviously.

Some in this thread seem to think it is a choice? Who would be lost or what would be lost from trying to get these people to vote on the economy? Some preconcieved notions? The minorities are going to vote Dem as are all these new and younger voters as well that are improving the Party's standing as it is. Grab just 10% or 15% of the white vote, and even MS begins to get interesting.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

To put it another way, it would be an inverse of the 1970's, but the mix or result would be the same so to the speak. Back then you were in a period when these people were Democrats, considered themselves such and voted as such at nearly all levels, but were slowly eroding even then. Over the next three decades, The Democrats ran Southerners nationally, whilst advocating neither social nor economic issues that they shared in order to obtain their votes through intangible connections, charisma and background. Does anyone wonder why they left? It is not just the gays, but that they are getting gays and Wall Street (Post Clinton) with the Democrats and at least with the GOP they get something of what they want or at least thing they do.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

There are several mistakes in the article, that frankly underlie the present motivations not to play in the South. One is that the Democratic decline was guarranteed after 1965. It was not and much of that was self-imposed, particularly in the last twenty years as the article does state.

Also it states that Republicans began to make gains because of race in the South and not before. It is true that 1948 had an unlocking effect of sorts in that many were now freed to consider alternatives since the Democrats were no longer perfect on the issue as they had been, but the GOP was hardly any better and if so only from lack of effort on the part of Dewey (who had a strong record on civil rights) and Ike. To put it another way, voters who would have always been Republicans if not for the civil rights wedge and Civil War legacy, finally became so once the Democrats stopped being a Segregationist Party nationally. Drop the wedge, and the vote patterns normalize. The gains began in 1952 and continued, building up in the metropolitan areas, taking advantage of northern transplants and commercially oriented types who though previously Democratic. were more at home as Republicans. This trend included the Southwest as well and it is why you had the islands of GOP strength in areas like Charlotte, Tampa Bay-Pinnelas and Phoenix and so forth that didn't extend beyond the suburbs at least until the 1960's and then only on limited and sometimes temporary basis.

That is not so say that many rural voters and even urban ones were not motivated by race or did not switch because of it because there certainly are examples like the Jessecrats here in NC that could be attributed to such. Millions more remained Democrats, or returned to the fold and stayed there for two decades until they began to whither away in the 1990's and 2000s. Hence the problem with the narrative established.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Contrary to what some think; running Blue Dogs in the south is not the answer to winning elections there.

Correct. We need to focus on running moderate to liberal progressives in places like the Charlotte suburbs, Atlanta suburbs and other, more urbanized parts of the coastal south.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I have no desire for another hollow Democratic majority in the House (and in state legislatures throughout the region) when it comes to progressive legislation.  Best in the long term to continue the cleansing process by letting the GOP capture the remaining rural districts (completing the decades-old realignment of the rural South), and then base our comeback on the growing metropolitan areas already mentioned, as well as minorities and immigrants.  

We should present ourselves as the party of the future, the New South if you will, while casting the GOP as the party of the past, the dying remnant of the Old South.  

I highly doubt southern suburbs will produce the kind of tangibly progressive types you seek. Of course you have to consider what the priorties for Progressives are as well. The minorities might change that eventually to be true but msot of the surburban vote will be disaffected Republicans and thus likely not very Progressive Democrats. Not to mention the demographic of suburbia does not lend itself to Progressivism very well by design.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Smoltchanov you are going up against a brick wall here.


If the Democrats could get the poor whites or even just 15% to 25% of them in the South who presently vote Republican to vote Progressive on economic issues, the map of the South would look much different. Nobody thinks bold anymore like that though.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Smoltchanov you are going up against a brick wall here.


If the Democrats could get the poor whites or even just 15% to 25% of them in the South who presently vote Republican to vote Progressive on economic issues, the map of the South would look much different. Nobody thinks bold anymore like that though.

I disagree politiely. Not every southern white is economic conservative. Social - yes, almost everyone. So suggest my personal experience with the Southern people.

Aren't we essentially saying the say thing though? I am saying there is a band of Republican voting whites that are economically to the left or at the very least willing to listen to a pro-union, pro-minimum wage, pro-single payer message and if you can get them to prioritize that over the social issues, yo ucan win those votes, secure GA, NC, and FL as well as make MS a swing state, maybe even Alabama once again.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I don't get articles like these at all. If Democrats want to win the South they'll have to do so by abandoning their base in the rest of the nation. We now have 2 ideologically cohesive parties precisely because white Southerners have switched their partisan allegiance over the past few decades (and the general sorting trend of course). How on earth does the author think that the Dems will be able to sell racially and socially conservative small government candidates to their socially liberal young and economically liberal minority voters in the non-South? Of course the GOP Solid South is fraying at the edges (VA and NC) but I don't see that many potential inroads in the Deep South and some other parts, particularly in congressional races.

Easily. How on earth it's important, say, for a man in 7th disitrict of Washington (Seattle) whom Democrats run in 3rd district of Alabama? Or - Mississippi? Or - Louisiana? It's a foolishness to run exactly similar candidates in all places. Alabama's democratic party was ALWAYS substantially more conservative then National one (or Democratic party of Washington state). The same - for other Deep South states. The same, BTW, for Republicans, where, say, Republican party of Vermont or Massachusetts was almost always to the left of national one. The only axiom i have in politics - the party must run candidates, which are suitable for their districts. You adapt candidates (and party) to district and it's people, not vice versa.

Do you know what makes a Democrat a Democrat?  What do you think the Democratic Party stands for? You elect Democrats to sell a vision, to pass certain legislation that defines the party.  If we do what we did in 2006 and 2008 and recruit candidates (particularly in rural, predominately white districts) who must vote like moderate Republicans while perpetually looking over their shoulders lest the real more conservative version comes along to take that district away from them, what's the point of having a majority in Congress if you can't pass legislation, or have to water it down so much that it looks like something the GOP (when it wasn't insane) would have authored?  I learned my lesson from the 111th Congress, and never again will I back the likes of Gene Taylor, Travis Childers, Parker Griffith, etc.  I'm done with Blue Dogs.    

What makes a Democrat a Democrat is that he suppose to uplift those who are disconnected from society. For decades they were exclusionary, falling pray to the biases of its base at the time. Beginning with the New Deal on economics and the Great Societ in general terms, the Democratic Party had been finally one that sought to help all such people regardless of color. 

The problem is that you are rejecting the Blue Dogs, but in the process embracing the Clinton New Democratic Party. Which is just as much in bed with Wall Street as the Republicans, especailly now that you have tea party types alienating them as well. It would take a substantial shift in suburban demographics to bring them to a Progressive footing and whilst minorites will esnure Democratic majorities, those are gonna look far more like Bill Clinton and Obama then FDR and LBJ when you go for the surburban-upscale liberal dominated party.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yankee, are you suggesting that the problem for Democrats is that they're too fiscally conservative?

I approach the question from the perspective of what I would want as a Democrat and if so, yes definately. A Democratic Party that is bed with a nexus of Wall Street and DC is the definition of oxymoronic.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yankee, are you suggesting that the problem for Democrats is that they're too fiscally conservative?

I approach the question from the perspective of what I would want as a Democrat and if so, yes definately. A Democratic Party that is bed with a nexus of Wall Street and DC is the definition of oxymoronic.

I still think a Bloomberg type (if he were running as a dem) would do better in the south since he/she would be pro-law/order.

I don't cannotate the notion of such well connected elites as opitomizing the notion of a "Democratic" Party. You got notions of majority, of people, and most people are poor and working people, especially amongst the very minorities the party is depending on to remake the electorate in its favor.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Republicans have been running on social conservative issues like abortion and gay marriage for so long, that low-income white Christian voters in the Deep South (despite the lack of progress any Republicans have actually made on such issues) have begun to assume Republicans are correct on everything.  As we saw in the recent Tennessee Volkswagen plant, legions of poor white Southerners are super anti-union, oppose minimum wage increases, support tax cuts for the rich, etc., and a whole host of policies that are flagrantly against their own interest simply because they have been fooled into thinking the anti-abortion party must be right on everything.

This is the truth. After all, if the Republicans are Godly and Holy in their opposition to abortion and gay marriage, why wouldn't they be infallibly correct about unions and tax cuts for the rich too? Running populists won't help convert them, they've been indoctrinated into the GOP economic agenda through their religious beliefs.

Correct. I consider myself a Christian and where I go to church it amazes me how many people think Republicans are always right and Democrats are always wrong. If I was talking to someone at church and took an anti-abortion or anti-homosexuality stance I don't think anyone would disagree with me. However if I mentioned some of my other political views that has nothing to do with morals I would easily get into a debate with nearly everyone I was talking to. Just a few of my other views are Obamacare is a good start to fixing a messed up healthcare system, minimum wage needs an increase (really for this one since I make less than the $10.10 proposed, but that is a different story), there should be limits on clip sizes and universal background checks (and I am a gun owner too),  and there is climate change.

I don't think the clip size limits are worth much for they can be modified rather easily. I do agree on background checks though. My high is for a $9 minimum wage since that has a minimal impact on jobs (100,000 as opposed to 500,000) and if tied with a tax cut for job creation and a bump up in the EITC you can accomplish the same objective as $10.10 with gains in jobs, not loses.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

When it comes time to vote I look at each candidate, their stances on all the issues, their past history and try to determine what is best. 2012 I wound up voting for all three Democrats when it came to national races, two of them were due to a poor performance by incumbents, and one was because I thought Obama to be the better of the two candidates. 2014 on the otherhand will be different. Democrats will likely get my Representative vote, but if the Tea Party does not oust Alexander I will vote for him again and also I will likely vote for Haslam for governor simply because both are doing a good job.

I liked Haslaam too, and I used to like Alexander, but that was before he voted for the Immigration bill. I am all for immigration, possibly at higher levels, but the comprehensive model is a proven failure as is a generalized path to legalization.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

North Carolina Yankee, I have a question for you. Why Immigration is a big issue for you? I really don't understand. You still speak about the Gang of Eight's plan whereas everybody has forgotten. The Gang of Eight's plan won't probably an issue in 2014 you know. I don't think that the GOP will attack the democrats with that.

Illegal Immigration has been a factor for me since 2005. The economy, corruption and illegal immigration have almost invariably been my top three issues. It motivated me to jump from McCain to Romney in 2006 for instance.

I just see it as an issue where past attempts to fix it have all failed and we seem unable to take any different course because of political necessity and or political gain being a factor. It is a critical issue both in terms of defense related issues as well as economic ones. Mass population shifts can be devastating, an argument even those who support a pathway use as a justificatio nfor doing so I would add. In my view though you must have a system that works, but a system nonethelss to assert some kind of control and/or limit and if we are constantly undermining those limits as a matter of policy we are thus encouraging future such violations. The status quo continues thus, even after it has been "reformed".

I think there are ways to legalize some of those that are here. I was hoping a way could be found for all of tem without creating this mal-incentive but such didn't materialize in the debate and we ended up with a bill that is little different then previous such reforms and thus the result will likely be similar.