At what point did the Southern Strategy begin?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The basis for the Solid Democratic South was simple; it was the promise that the Democratic Party would support Democratic Presidential candidates in exchange for non-interference in the internal affairs of the Southern States.  It was the assurance that segregation would not be interfered with by the Federal Government.  The only exceptions in this period was 1920, when Warren Harding (to everyone's shock) carried Tennessee, and 1928, when VA, NC, TN, FL, and TX carried for Republican Quaker Herbert Hoover over Democratic Catholic Al Smith.  Hoover and Harding has no "Southern Strategy", however; the anti-Catholic sentiment and support for Prohibition simply allowed Hoover to carry the Border South (save Arkansas, whose Senior Senator, Joseph Robinson, was Smith's running mate).  (This manifested in situations such as Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS), was probably the most vile racist in the history of the 20th century US Senate, having a record of down-the-line support for the New Deal.)  The only sign of unrest in all of this was when conservative Democrats in Texas nominated a slate of Democratic electors called the "Texas Regulars"; they were an independent slate of electors opposing FDR in 1944.  They received about 100,000 votes, nowhere enough to win.

Broadly, this seems right to me. However, I think the unrest in the southern Democratic Party with the New Deal is somewhat more prominent/important than you're suggesting here.

Although FDR was more than capable of whipping the votes of Southern Democrats, I think segments of the southern Democratic Party were much more uncomfortable with the New Deal than is oft suggested (albeit, acknowledging there were plenty of economically progressive southern Democrats, too, both before and during the New Deal era). While it didn't behove those skeptical southern Democrats to buck the New Deal because they were paid handsomely for their support through programs that directed a lot of New Deal money towards the South, there were some seeds of their discontent that can be seen as early as 1935.

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).

I think this carve-out strongly suggests that Southern Democrats were more broadly skeptical of the New Deal – even if they supported it throughout FDR's presidency. But even if you're not willing to go that far, there's an underlying logic to this important carve-out which points to  the kind of discomfort (the seeds of discontent) a Southern Democrat would have with the New Deal's transformative effects on the American economy. And I think too shows why the South became more comfortable with the Republican Party throughout the 20th century. Yes, civil rights was the issue that led to the party swap in the South, but the post-New Deal Democratic Party's economic policies did not suit the southern ruling classes's interests.

Ultimately, I think what I'm arguing is that it's more than just integration of the Army and Truman's support of some Civil Rights measures that led to the Dixiecrat revolt. I think the discontent had been brewing for some time and was related to economic issues that would become increasingly important to white southerners (particularly wealthy white southerners) in the latter part of the 20th century accounting, in part, for the success of the Southern Strategy as opposed to some Southern third-party.

The more pro-business wing of the Southern Democrats would have certainly found themselves at odds with the New Deal direction.

Consider also that what had separated them in the past from their wealthy white counterparts in the North, was that the Northern business elite was very economically nationalist, while the Southern one was far more economically classically liberal. By the mid 20th century, this division between nationalism and liberalism is gone and in its place you have New Liberalism/New Dealism versus all of its various detractors. It was thus much easier for the Southern elite to find common cause with the Northern elite in the era of the Boll Weevil coalition and later during the Southern strategy, than at any time previously. This was just impossible in the 1920s and even 1928, the plantation vote largely held firm, it was the upcountry bible thumpers that produced much of the GOP's gains.

The Civil War veterans and most of their children were dead and along with it the political muscle of the GAR. The North had moved towards a much more reconciliationist view of the South, meanwhile the Lost Cause was being spread by culture, media and academia across the country. There was no previous environment where the cards aligned quite so well as here for the Southern and Northern elites to join forces behind the same party since the 1840s, and this time without the sectional divisions that would destroy the Whigs.

The New Deal was the catalyst for this "class reunion" to occur.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.  

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

Not really, because Tilden would have won by carrying states like New York and Indiana. Those two states alone were worth more EVs than the entire Deep South put together. Where to build the Republican coalition was a no brainer.

It is easy to forget just how much of a backwater the South was in both the economy of the nation and its politics after the Civil War. Its population was already very small in comparison and then the disenfranchisement made this even worse. Just tacking on a couple of more points in the Industrial states, could easily counteract SC going 95% Democrat, Mississippi 92% Dem, GA 75% Dem and so on.

This also was not just because of the Civil War and its destruction, but because of first the slave system and then segregation, discouraged outside investment and kept the economy stagnated. Agrarian societies, especially those based on slavery, discourages innovation, education, entrepreneurship and immigration. All things necessary to have a successful and dynamic economy that is conducive to population growth.