^I think the long-term consequences at the presidential level would be far more disastrous for the GOP, with states like TX, MS and GA becoming battlegrounds. If the Democrats play their cards right, they'll be able to lock the GOP out of the White House for maybe another 20 years.
Nah, I doubt it. When Trump loses, the unanimous backlash against him will be a sight to behold. The GOP will recover quickly because their voters are idiots with short memories. You talk about 1964; look what happened four years later.
That's not that good a comparison to make, considering there was a fairly strong third party challenge (Wallace) and Nixon won with only 42% nationally.
Wallace wasn't a third-party candidate in the truest sense of the word. He never really left the Democratic Party, and he was the Democratic nominee for President in Alabama. He did not field a slate of Congressional candidates, and many Democratic politicians in the South openly supported Wallace in 1968.
1968 was a year where Democratic voters in the South left the national Democratic party, but a minority of those went to the GOP, even at the Presidential level. Indeed, the Southern Democrats were a hardy breed; it is only since 2010 that they have truly died, not to be resurrected. They had been weakened progressively over time, but still managed to come back until 2010; now, there's no immediate pathway back for most of them.
The late Howell Heflin of Alabama comes to mind as one of the last old school southern Democrats in the Senate. Guys like that were conservative on a lot of social issues and on the military. But they often sided with the liberal Dems on a few issues like farm subsidies and various New Deal programs. Of course many like Strom Thurmond were so angry over social issues that they joined the Republicans.
