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Presidential Elections - Analysis and Discussion => Presidential Election Trends => Topic started by: Frodo on November 10, 2008, 11:18:28 PM



Title: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Frodo on November 10, 2008, 11:18:28 PM
For the South, a Waning Hold on National Politics (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/us/politics/11south.html?hp=&pagewanted=all)

By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: November 10, 2008


VERNON, Ala. — Fear of the politician with the unusual name and look did not end with last Tuesday’s vote in this rural red swatch where buck heads and rifles hang on the wall. This corner of the Deep South still resonates with negative feelings about the race of President-elect Barack Obama.

What may have ended on Election Day, though, is the centrality of the South to national politics. By voting so emphatically for Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama — supporting him in some areas in even greater numbers than they did President Bush — voters from Texas to South Carolina and Kentucky may have marginalized their region for some time to come, political experts say.

The region’s absence from Mr. Obama’s winning formula means it “is becoming distinctly less important,” said Wayne Parent, a political scientist at Louisiana State University. “The South has moved from being the center of the political universe to being an outside player in presidential politics.”

One reason for that is that the South is no longer a solid voting bloc. Along the Atlantic Coast, parts of the “suburban South,” notably Virginia and North Carolina, made history last week in breaking from their Confederate past and supporting Mr. Obama. Those states have experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in recent years, pointing them in a different political direction than states farther west, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

The increased turnout in the South’s so-called Black Belt, or old plantation-country counties, was visible in the results, but it generally could not make up for the solid white support for Mr. McCain. Alabama, for example, experienced a heavy black turnout and voted slightly more Democratic than in 2004, but the state over all gave 60 percent of its vote to Mr. McCain. (Arkansas, however, doubled the margin of victory it gave to the Republican over 2004.)

Less than a third of Southern whites voted for Mr. Obama, compared with 43 percent of whites nationally. By leaving the mainstream so decisively, the Deep South and Appalachia will no longer be able to dictate that winning Democrats have Southern accents or adhere to conservative policies on issues like welfare and tax policy, experts say.

That could spell the end of the so-called Southern strategy, the doctrine that took shape under President Richard M. Nixon in which national elections were won by co-opting Southern whites on racial issues. And the Southernization of American politics — which reached its apogee in the 1990s when many Congressional leaders and President Bill Clinton were from the South — appears to have ended.

“I think that’s absolutely over,” said Thomas Schaller, a political scientist who argued prophetically that the Democrats could win national elections without the South.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have “become a Southernized party,” said Mr. Schaller, who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “They have completely marginalized themselves to a mostly regional party,” he said, pointing out that nearly half of the current Republican House delegation is now Southern.

Merle Black, an expert on the region’s politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said the Republican Party went too far in appealing to the South, alienating voters elsewhere.

“They’ve maxed out on the South,” he said, which has “limited their appeal in the rest of the country.”

Even the Democrats made use of the Southern strategy, as the party’s two presidents in the last 40 years, Jimmy Carter and Mr. Clinton, were Southerners whose presence on the ticket served to assuage regional anxieties. Mr. Obama has now proved it is no longer necessary to include a Southerner on the national ticket — to quiet racial fears, for example — in order to win, in the view of analysts.

Several Southern states, including Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee, have voted for the winner in presidential elections for decades. No more. And Mr. Obama’s race appears to have been the critical deciding factor in pushing ever greater numbers of white Southerners away from the Democrats.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Smid on November 11, 2008, 09:18:52 AM
The national mood was strongly anti-Republican. Yes, it's possible to win an election without the South, but it's certainly easier to win an election with it than without it. This is even moreso the case for the Democrats.

Obama got about 6.5% more than McCain. If we gave the Republicans a similar swing in 2004, the map would look like:

(
)

(based on a -3.5% swing against Kerry and a 3.5% swing to Bush - although I'm too lazy to tamper with margins in states Bush actually did win).

This article's comments about the Democrats not needing the south are about as accurate as looking at that map and saying that Ohio is no longer relevant on the race because the Republicans could have lost it and still won.

The combination of states AL, AR, GA, KY, LA, MS, SC and WV = 77 ECVs.
A democrat winning CA and NY has easily compensates by gaining 86 ECVs right there. Even CA with the lesser IL still yields just one short of that combination of states - 76.

I'm rambling because I'm tired, but what I'm trying to say is that while it is technically true that Democrats (and theoretically Republicans, although it's harder for them) can win without the South, it certainly makes it a lot easier. Obama didn't win despite losing the south, he won because he picked up CO, OH, NM, NV and FL - the real swing states, plus NH, MI, PA - the somewhat swing states, and then went further to win NC, VA and IN - states that the democrats haven't won in quite a while. If he hadn't gained those states, it would have been quite difficult for him to win without the states. Yes, there are winning combinations for the Democrats that don't include southern states, but they're fewer than the winning combinations that include them.

Oh, and once again, sorry if I was rambling a bit too much and didn't make a lot of sense. I can try redoing this tomorrow if it helps :)


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Kaine for Senate '18 on November 11, 2008, 03:02:59 PM
The South may not be critical, but Democrats shouldn't abandon it.  Plenty of Democrats can do well in the South - Warner, Clinton, Bayh, and others can still do well in Dixie.  That Obama could win without the South doesn't mean we don't need it; Southern states are growing rapidly, while states like NY, MI, IL, etc. are shrinking.  Eventually, Democrats will need the South, and they don't want to be at any more of a disadvantage when they do than they are now.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Fmr. Pres. Duke on November 11, 2008, 04:56:58 PM
The author of this article reeks on anti-southern sentiment. I hate it when fools like him write about how the south is full of dumb racists who refuse to embrace "change." I'm sure no one talked about the south breaking the shackles of the confederacy when they voted Republican for the first time in 1972 after being solidly Democrat since the Civil War.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: ?????????? on November 11, 2008, 06:01:58 PM
The author of this article reeks on anti-southern sentiment. I hate it when fools like him write about how the south is full of dumb racists who refuse to embrace "change." I'm sure no one talked about the south breaking the shackles of the confederacy when they voted Republican for the first time in 1972 after being solidly Democrat since the Civil War.

Cultural suicide is awesome! Lets be more like New England!


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: MR maverick on November 12, 2008, 04:01:28 AM
The author of this article reeks on anti-southern sentiment. I hate it when fools like him write about how the south is full of dumb racists who refuse to embrace "change." I'm sure no one talked about the south breaking the shackles of the confederacy when they voted Republican for the first time in 1972 after being solidly Democrat since the Civil War.


Because most of the folks here are low information voters.   

In my Op 9/11 did alot to regress the voters here for some odd reason,or  u could say that the proof of neoconsertivsim working would be here. 


The only reason people in the south voted republican, is because the dems ran away from the ways of Dixie.  People in the south didn't hop on the GOP wagon because they wanted change.

The Op is right.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Person Man on November 12, 2008, 11:34:17 AM
This is actually pretty funny and true. The Democrats need to simply do what Obama did in 2008 in the future. They need to divide the south into "reconciliable" and "irreconciliable" parts by working hard in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida while ignoring the rest of the south. NC, VA and FL are growing while TN, KY, LA, AL, AR and MS are getting smaller. Eventually, we will need to make inroads into GA, because it is growing quickly and will soon attract a winning coalition for that state. Dividing the conservative south from the dynamic south will be important. 


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Aizen on November 12, 2008, 04:08:24 PM
lol @ the south


It would be best to ignore that region.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: ChrisFromNJ on November 12, 2008, 06:20:34 PM
Southern states are growing rapidly, while states like NY, MI, IL, etc. are shrinking. 

Deep South states are not growingly rapidly - and large states like NY, MI and IL are certainly not shrinking as large as states in the Deep South are growing.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Person Man on November 13, 2008, 01:47:21 AM
The deep south isn't growing that fast. The states that Obama won, or almost won, are the fast-growers.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Workers' Friend on November 17, 2008, 04:21:18 PM
lol @ the south


It would be best to ignore that region.


Do you have to be such an asshole because not everyone is a drone for your party?


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on November 17, 2008, 09:26:01 PM
The South contains the following The second and fourth(TX and FL) largest states in the nation and possibly 2nd and 3rd in a another 5 years. The largest swing state(FL). Five of the fastest growing states in the nation(TX, FL, NC, GA, and VA). Yet still has states with serious growth potential like MS and LA(set back by Katrina) and SC.  Really unimportant. Name a region with all those characteristics and I will concede the point.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Filuwaúrdjan on November 17, 2008, 09:55:42 PM
Must we put up with piss-poor articles that fail to analyse Southern politics and the wider influence after every single election [qm].


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: jokerman on November 17, 2008, 10:43:18 PM
Yes, the Democrats should give up on an entire region of the country....

That kind of arrogance worked very well for the GOP, oh yes.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: RIP Robert H Bork on December 02, 2008, 06:33:15 PM
The author of this article reeks on anti-southern sentiment. I hate it when fools like him write about how the south is full of dumb racists who refuse to embrace "change." I'm sure no one talked about the south breaking the shackles of the confederacy when they voted Republican for the first time in 1972 after being solidly Democrat since the Civil War.

I agree, such people are annoying.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Kaine for Senate '18 on December 02, 2008, 06:59:04 PM
(
)

In 2012, the South will have 181 electoral votes, while New England will have only 98.  Three Southern states gained electoral votes, while two in New England lost them.  The Democrats cannot afford to give up on the South.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Verily on December 03, 2008, 09:39:16 AM
Yes, the Democrats should give up on an entire region of the country....

That kind of arrogance worked very well for the GOP, oh yes.

Well, it kind of did. There's a reason the GOP did just fine without paying attention to the South for decades. If the Republicans want to appeal overwhelmingly to Southerners, the Democrats should try to appeal to everyone else rather than fighting the Republicans on their strongest turf for no particular reason. (Similar, of course, could be said in reverse during the late 19th century into the early 20th century.)

It is not wise for the Democrats to compete in the South when they can compete more effectively elsewhere. The Republicans dominate or are competitive a number of other states in which it is far easier for the Democrats to make inroads. Moreover, "Southern culture" is generally speaking not appealing in such states. So, by ignoring the South while the Republicans cater towards it, the Democrats improve their chances in these areas.

Realistically, the Democrats should only make an effort in the South where things appear to be moving in their favor--North Carolina and Virginia, obviously, and in the long run Georgia and possibly South Carolina. Incidentally, these are also the Southern states which are growing. The growth in the South is not so beneficial to the South as a political bloc as it might at first appear. The growth is fragmenting the traditional voting patterns, and it has already allowed Virginia and North Carolina to vote for a black man for President. The growing states are certainly therefore somewhat more worthy of the Democrats' notice--but the key to the Democrats gaining ground in the growing states is increasingly, not appealing to traditional folksy Southern politics, but offering the same appeal they offer in the Northeast, Mountain West or Pacific, since the new voters are generally speaking more "Northern" in political culture than Southern.

Texas is an interesting case, and in the very long run is probably also worth Democratic attention. But demographic patterns that far in the future are difficult to predict, to say the least. If the United States' economy never returns to its previous dominance, Mexican immigration will probably decline substantially.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: jokerman on December 04, 2008, 12:37:58 AM
Well, yes, as you at least conceded in the latter part of your post the South is a lot more complex and pluralistic than some would make it out to be.  Of course the Democrats should continue to form winning coalitions out of the "new majority" of racial minorities and educated whites as in 2008, if profitable.

However, the idea that we should concede even the upper-south and appallachia to the GOP is absurd.  We have issues that appeal to these people.  I understand that Obama didn't have the time to carry out the long process of building trust that would have been necessary for him to make inroads there in 2008, but after 4 years of a (hopefully successful) Presidency, perhaps some of these sharply McCain-swinging areas will swing back to the Democrats.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Matt Damon™ on December 04, 2008, 09:52:25 AM
The east coast from Virginia to florida is trending democratic with the party as is so we can well afford to write off the southern interior. and appalachia Also, Texas is becoming more and more democratic(latin immigration plus higher latin birthrates).


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Fmr. Pres. Duke on December 04, 2008, 11:24:06 AM
In 2012, the South will have 181 electoral votes, while New England will have only 98.  Three Southern states gained electoral votes, while two in New England lost them.  The Democrats cannot afford to give up on the South.

Uh...New England has 33 electoral votes on that map.

The south is not important.  Democrats are competitive naturally in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, and Missouri already and are making huge gains out west.  They can, have, and will win without the south.  Obviously neither party should abandon entire regions like the GOP, but it's certainly not a priority.  Democrats will retain a presence there for years to come.  But please, by all means take it back.

I think when he says New England, he's including the Mid Atlantic states as well.

But you're right. The GOP doesn't need to abandon the northeast anymore than the Democrats should abandon the south. You saw how writing off the south helped Kerry in 2004, and how McCain writing off the northeast (well, Palin) as the fake America helped in 2008.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Kaine for Senate '18 on December 04, 2008, 04:14:47 PM
In 2012, the South will have 181 electoral votes, while New England will have only 98.  Three Southern states gained electoral votes, while two in New England lost them.  The Democrats cannot afford to give up on the South.

Uh...New England has 33 electoral votes on that map.

The south is not important.  Democrats are competitive naturally in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, and Missouri already and are making huge gains out west.  They can, have, and will win without the south.  Obviously neither party should abandon entire regions like the GOP, but it's certainly not a priority.  Democrats will retain a presence there for years to come.  But please, by all means take it back.

I think when he says New England, he's including the Mid Atlantic states as well.

Yeah, I was.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Matt Damon™ on December 04, 2008, 04:19:01 PM
IMO 2008 was a sign of demographic shifts starting to affect politics in large parts the south not the marginalization of the south itself.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Verily on December 05, 2008, 02:56:17 PM
Well, yes, as you at least conceded in the latter part of your post the South is a lot more complex and pluralistic than some would make it out to be.  Of course the Democrats should continue to form winning coalitions out of the "new majority" of racial minorities and educated whites as in 2008, if profitable.

Part of my point is that, while the latter may live in the southern region of the United States, they are not Southern, with a capital letter. The South is irrelevant; the non-Southern residents of Virginia and Florida, and increasingly North Carolina and Georgia, are not. But the Democrats don't benefit among those voters by running Baptist ministers with strong Southern accents, either.

Quote
However, the idea that we should concede even the upper-south and appallachia to the GOP is absurd.  We have issues that appeal to these people.  I understand that Obama didn't have the time to carry out the long process of building trust that would have been necessary for him to make inroads there in 2008, but after 4 years of a (hopefully successful) Presidency, perhaps some of these sharply McCain-swinging areas will swing back to the Democrats.

Perhaps, but probably not. And is it worth the Democrats' effort? No; they already have a winning coalition with a substantial majority. Stretch too far and they risk the Republicans breaking into previous constituencies which the Democrats could have been spending time appeasing instead of pandering to an area that is increasingly resistant to the party. Certainly the Democrats have not run the best Presidential candidates for the South of late, but it isn't as if the local or Congressional races have looked much better for the Democrats in those areas of the South which are Southern, relative to the nation as a whole.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Marokai Backbeat on December 05, 2008, 04:07:30 PM
Anyone who knows me knows I am not a big fan of the South, but the Democrats shouldn't abandon it. There are several states we are competitive in and can (and did) win.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Psychic Octopus on December 05, 2008, 04:28:17 PM
Ahh the South... Not a good place for new England liberal people in a normal election (2004)
So I've heard...


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Matt Damon™ on December 05, 2008, 05:16:47 PM
The dems should give up on interior dixie/appalachia and instead chase yankee transplants and the latin vote in texas/the coast from virginia to florida.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: ?????????? on December 05, 2008, 06:43:57 PM
The dems should give up on interior dixie/appalachia and instead chase yankee transplants and the latin vote in texas/the coast from virginia to florida.

The Yankee transplants are largely conservative, especially people my age. They didn't all leave because the weather was sh*tty up there you know.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Matt Damon™ on December 05, 2008, 07:29:58 PM
The dems should give up on interior dixie/appalachia and instead chase yankee transplants and the latin vote in texas/the coast from virginia to florida.

The Yankee transplants are largely conservative, especially people my age. They didn't all leave because the weather was sh*tty up there you know.

Conservative by NY or Massachusetts standards is moderate or liberal by most of the south's standards, States. :P


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: ?????????? on December 05, 2008, 08:35:03 PM
The dems should give up on interior dixie/appalachia and instead chase yankee transplants and the latin vote in texas/the coast from virginia to florida.

The Yankee transplants are largely conservative, especially people my age. They didn't all leave because the weather was sh*tty up there you know.

Conservative by NY or Massachusetts standards is moderate or liberal by most of the south's standards, States. :P

Socially perhaps.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Kaine for Senate '18 on December 07, 2008, 04:00:51 PM
Ahh the South... Not a good place for new England liberal people in a normal election (2004)
So I've heard...

Then we should stop nominating New England liberals.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: pbrower2a on April 25, 2009, 09:44:51 AM
The author of this article reeks on anti-southern sentiment. I hate it when fools like him write about how the south is full of dumb racists who refuse to embrace "change." I'm sure no one talked about the south breaking the shackles of the confederacy when they voted Republican for the first time in 1972 after being solidly Democrat since the Civil War.

I'm not so sure that the opinion writer is so anti-Southern (VA, NC, and NC went for Obama, and GA was one of the few close-misses) as you think. It seems that this time the GOP won the poor whites who went not so long ago for either Clinton ('96, '92) or Carter ('76). Are poor whites that different from poor blacks and Hispanics who went for Obama?

Obama, I believe, wrote off the South early as places of likely victory. Virginia is no longer particularly Southern; Florida has long been so full of non-Southerners (the American North,  Latin America) that it can't be considered truly Southern; North Carolina has been getting an influx of Northerners that its Southern heritage. North Carolina was something of a surprise, and Obama wrote off Georgia only when McCain started to show a chance of winning a couple of states (MI, PA) that Obama absolutely had to win.

It is possible that the South is more supportive of the military than are other regions, so it was more likely to vote heavily for a war hero who had made huge sacrifices for his country. It is also possible that much of the South is more xenophobic than the rest of America. Obama is definitely not a Southerner, and even if he is a black man, he is not the sort of black man with whom Southerners have much familiarity. Give Tennessee some credit for having come close to voting for Harold Ford, a black man who at the least has an unambiguously  Southern heritage, in a political climate similar to that of 2008 (2006).

Kerry may have lost the South when exposures came out that his father had been born in Austria with the name Kohn. Joseph Lieberman was obviously no political asset in any Southern state. The South firmly rejected Mike Dukakis. I question whether a candidate with the surname like Kowalski, Hansen, Antonelli, or Takahashi  from Michigan, Minnesota,  Pennsylvania, or California could have done much better than Obama did in the core and upper South this time. McCain is the sort of Scots-Irish surname that one might expect to find in a telephone book in Greenwood, Mississippi -- in part because John McCain's grandfather was from there.

Unlike much of the rest of the country, the South attracted few European immigrants in the sixty or so years after the Civil War. The South had no obvious attractions for people who saw freehold farming, industrial labor, small-business formation, or education as paths to family success. Abysmal education, starvation pay, a feudal social structure, land under control of planters who were unwilling to sell, hidebound tradition, and no good markets for start-up merchants all signified what European immigrants were trying to avoid because they knew much the same in those parts of Europe that they were from. The South has since changed, but not quite not enough to become indistinguishable from New England or Pennsylvania. 

Harold Ford demonstrates that the issue isn't race. Obama's campaign was tailor-made for the realities of an urban America (and Suburbia has become far more urban than rural) even in the logistics of campaigning. The South is still far more rural than any region in America except for the Upper Plains, and Obama found campaigning in Richmond VA, Charlotte NC, or Orlando FL far easier and more productive than campaigning in Enterprise AL, Brookhaven MS, or Malvern AR. He would have won Georgia if it were more urban, and his 2008 electoral campaign is still premature for Texas (even if Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and El Paso are ready for him). 

Obama could campaign effectively in small-town America -- as shown in Iowa -- when he was campaigning exclusively in Iowa during the Iowa primary. But once the campaign went national, where did one expect Obama to campaign -- where he could get large crowds and meet lots of voters in a State considered a "swing" state (like Dayton OH) or in some place where the rewards for his efforts were slight at best (Dayton TN)? Obama won an election as much on time management as he did on issues. Harold Ford could campaign in rural Tennessee; Obama couldn't.

Obama has not yet written off the South in 2012. It is possible that he will run the government in a way that serves poor people -- including poor whites in the South. Obama would love to improve the lot of poor southern blacks who voted for him in huge proportions, but he can't do so without also helping poor whites whom the Hard Right has done practically no discernible good. Should Obama reach poor Southern whites as did Carter (in 1976) and Clinton, he wins a  landslide re-election.   

I don't see Obama as a vindictive person toward people who "voted wrong". He just might need the votes of Southern whites to win re-election in 2012 if a bunch of things go wrong between now and 2012.            


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: pbrower2a on April 25, 2009, 10:07:07 AM
The South contains the following The second and fourth(TX and FL) largest states in the nation and possibly 2nd and 3rd in a another 5 years. The largest swing state(FL). Five of the fastest growing states in the nation(TX, FL, NC, GA, and VA). Yet still has states with serious growth potential like MS and LA(set back by Katrina) and SC.  Really unimportant. Name a region with all those characteristics and I will concede the point.


The West of course has California and fast-growing Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho. I can't be sure that New Mexico and Nevada are true swing states -- but Colorado apparently is.

I could make the case that Texas is as much Western as it is Southern. Texas will be a legitimate swing state, as it isn't more Republican than is Pennsylvania. I think that had Obama been in the same position in October 2008 as was John McCain, then Obama would have made a late-season attempt to win Texas votes. 


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: Antonio the Sixth on April 25, 2009, 11:44:48 AM
Democats don't more need the South. Obama could have lost the election by 1,7 point and still get more EV than McCain, without any southern one.


Title: Re: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
Post by: HAnnA MArin County on April 29, 2009, 09:18:32 PM
The author of this article reeks on anti-southern sentiment. I hate it when fools like him write about how the south is full of dumb racists who refuse to embrace "change." I'm sure no one talked about the south breaking the shackles of the confederacy when they voted Republican for the first time in 1972 after being solidly Democrat since the Civil War.

Isn't this after the realignment of the Solid South in 1964 when the national Democratic Party, led by Lyndon Johnson, embraced civil rights for African Americans, advocated desegregation and integration of public schools, and became the "liberal" party? Let us not forget the conservative Republican Barry Goldwater. The South is still the Confederacy in terms of ideology; the ideologies of the national parties just flipped because of the issue of civil rights. This is still pretty evident in the South where, unfortunately, the Republican Party is the white people's party and the Democratic Party is the black people's party. Which leads me into the topic of this thread...

Democrats cannot and must not give up on the South. The 50-State Strategy has worked very well for the Democrats. Because of it, we have gone to places where Democrats were thought to never win (Idaho-Walt Minnick, Wyoming-Dave Freudenthal, Utah-Jim Matheson) and have succeeded. I think over time we'll see the South crack; it has started already with Virginia slowly but surely become a slightly blue state and North Carolina is quickly turning into a battleground state. Georgia was also really close due to the large black turnout in 2008, and given the demographic changes in the state I would argue that it could turn into a battleground state if Atlanta continues increasing. Florida will always be a true swing state regardless that it's located in the South; it's not as Dixieish as southern Georgia and Alabama. I argue that Democrats can reclaim the South. Take Mississippi for example: Kentucky voted more for McCain in 2008 than it did (but, not that surprising given that Mississippi has the largest black population of any state in the country). We know from Bill Clinton that Democrats CAN win the Appalachian states of Kentucky and Tennessee and West Virginia, as well as the Deep South states like Arkansas and Louisiana. That leaves Alabama, which may be quite a stretch for Democrats to win, but I think it can be accomplished. Oh, and South Carolina with its large African American population can also easily go Democratic.

On a side note, I do think the South would be easier to win than say for that swath of Great Plains states from North Dakota all the way down to Texas. I, personally, consider this region of the country more Republican than the South.

I think what 2008 taught us was that the West has gone from a Republican stronghold to a true battleground where Democrats are becoming increasingly more successful. Save for the GOP bastions of Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, at the federal level I would argue that Democrats can and will win all the Western states of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Montana in a presidential election (possibly even 2012).