Blue Dogs in the South Are Purged -but Democrats are Rebuilding in Obama's Image

[tschandler]

So how long until [Democrats] can start talking about taking back the [U.S.] House?

It will happen on the watch of next Republican U.S. president with two elected terms.

It's certainly not impossible (and obviously eventually Democrats are going to win back the House), but there are enough wealthy, exurban districts that are never going to elect a Democrat because they want a politician who is going to keep their taxes low, and now Democrats seem to have burned all of the bridges that they had left in socially conservative districts that were open (at least for a period) to their economic messages.  It's a tough path (just as the GOP has a tough path in the EC right now).

I actually think waiting for enough suburbs to flip is the best strategy.  The former Blue Dog districts generally gave Romney >60%, so they aren't coming back even if the next Dem president improved 10% with rural whites.  They are currently in the same position as the GOP in 1960 when it comes to the South, having broken through in the cities and inner suburbs and fought to a draw in VA and FL but still getting crushed everywhere else.  There's cause for hope, but the revolution's still 15-30 years away downballot.  The big question now is whether they get an early assist from a reverse LBJ character.  Don't discount the possibility of white collar suburbs completely freaking out after a Trump/Cruz nomination or worse, general election win.  The Denver/NOVA effect will reach into some surprising places in a Trump/Cruz midterm, even in the cultural South.  

Actually the opposite is probably true.  As someone actually from the "cultural South" (whatever that is).  Trump is playing the best with the wedges of voters you could imagine Democrats winning again.   But as Obama drove them to Trump, Obama democrats aren't going to win them back.  Trump's base in the south is likely not even going to vote in the GOP primary's.  It is also the groups that would be most open to Democrats.  But you got it completely wrong about Obama democrats attracting them.  In fact they are driving them more toward the GOP.  Trump's base is cultural regressives that don't know or care much about economics.   They aren't for the most part Southern Republicans in the party sense ie they aren't Economic conservatives/neoliberals.  

There is this myth around here that the entire South is going to follow the Virginia model.  The Virginia model is unique.  Virginia's growth in the last decade has been the consequence of the growth of government in DC effecting the NOVA suburbs.  Of course those whose livelyhoods are dependent on big government aren't going to be voting for those advocating that we shrink government.  

Another problem is liberals pretending push and pull factors exist.  People leave the Northern Blue states for the Sun Belt mainly because of better economies/lower taxes.  Obama Democrats or worse Sanders Democrats campaigning for massively higher taxes won't play.  

Blue Dogs died out because people got tired of their dog and pony show.  As the Democrats drifted left culturally, the Blue Dogs held on to power by running one way in their districts and voting another way in DC.   People got tired of that. 

[NerdyBohemian]

Yep let's keep building on that shakey cosmopolitan coalition and act really condescending towards certain segments of the population.

This seems to be the issue for Dems.  While the South is urbanizing, there are still plenty of rural/small town/exurban, no-college degree whites which find the current Democratic Party agenda and image to be anathema to them.  Many suburbanites are conservative as well in the South, and the Dems in those areas changing its image won't necessarily pick that many of them up.  It seems like in the end, for the Outer South, it's pretty much a wash no matter what the Dems do.

I think John Bel Edwards campaign is a good model to look at. Granted, he won under very special circumstances, but if we had nominated someone in the mold of an Obama Democrat we would have lost.

I'm obviously not from the south, nor have I even visited the south, but from reading about the region both in modern times and historical times, it appears southerners agree with Democrats on a lot of bread and butter economic issues. We can see this sometimes, like Arkansas voting to raise the minimum wage. It is very important to play up this aspect and make it the cornerstone of the campaign. I think this was much easier historically when the Republican base of power was centered in places like New York and Massachusetts IE "Look at these Yankee fat cat Republicans who only care about money! What about us? What does a New Yorker know about being a Mississippi farmer?"

I think there are definitely ways to frame some liberal issues in a way that is both palatable and not elitist towards rural southerners. Take environmentalism for example. Instead of acting like a bunch of latte-liberal "save mother Earth!" types, if we were to market it as conservation of our land I think rural southerners would be much more susceptible. You could say something like "I love our land. It's beautiful. But these large companies are destroying it with their pollution. I like to hunt and I like to fish and I hope my grand-kids can one day enjoy that too. But if we keep letting people pollute our land..."

The south has also historically been anti-union so it is difficult to build a labor base in the region.

[Virginiá]

There is this myth around here that the entire South is going to follow the Virginia model.  The Virginia model is unique.  Virginia's growth in the last decade has been the consequence of the growth of government in DC effecting the NOVA suburbs.  Of course those whose livelyhoods are dependent on big government aren't going to be voting for those advocating that we shrink government.  

I think that is oversimplifying it, though. A lot of the people moving to Virginia are from liberal areas. I'm not saying the federal government has nothing to do with it, of course people would be less receptive to 'big government' rhetoric if they had jobs/careers with said government, but conservative folks could also just as easily move to an area and take jobs with the federal govt and still vote Republican.

Also at play is the shrinkage of rural western/southern Virginia, fast growing minority populations (particularly Hispanics/Asians, AA growth in relatively stagnant), a fair amount of students and the continued decline of working class white voters (which happens to be a nationwide trend).

My point is, this can happen any place where more liberal voters are moving to. North Carolina and Georgia have similar situations, albeit not all the same factors and different paces of growth. I don't really see this set of trends in any appreciable manner in many other Southern places, though. Maybe SC?

Blue Dogs died out because people got tired of their dog and pony show.  As the Democrats drifted left culturally, the Blue Dogs held on to power by running one way in their districts and voting another way in DC.   People got tired of that.

I'm curious what happens to the Republicans these voters switched to when Trump is gone and the issues he has stirred up persists. After all, much of their anger lies in these Republicans promising things and never delivering. If people switched to Republicans for this reason only to face it again, what then? And if they just get involved more in primaries to push for candidates that will fight for them, why didn't they do that with Democrats?

[tschandler]

For the most part they are going to be GOP voters anyway or non-voters.   They didn't turn out for Romney at all.  For those that are just anti-establishment certainly Paul and Cruz probably benefit.  They are Bush voters.  Trumps' campaign for all the bellyaching is culturally regressive but it is the most economically liberal of the GOP plans. 

[RINO Tom]

So how long until [Democrats] can start talking about taking back the [U.S.] House?

It will happen on the watch of next Republican U.S. president with two elected terms.

It's certainly not impossible (and obviously eventually Democrats are going to win back the House), but there are enough wealthy, exurban districts that are never going to elect a Democrat because they want a politician who is going to keep their taxes low, and now Democrats seem to have burned all of the bridges that they had left in socially conservative districts that were open (at least for a period) to their economic messages.  It's a tough path (just as the GOP has a tough path in the EC right now).

I actually think waiting for enough suburbs to flip is the best strategy.  The former Blue Dog districts generally gave Romney >60%, so they aren't coming back even if the next Dem president improved 10% with rural whites.  They are currently in the same position as the GOP in 1960 when it comes to the South, having broken through in the cities and inner suburbs and fought to a draw in VA and FL but still getting crushed everywhere else.  There's cause for hope, but the revolution's still 15-30 years away downballot.  The big question now is whether they get an early assist from a reverse LBJ character.  Don't discount the possibility of white collar suburbs completely freaking out after a Trump/Cruz nomination or worse, general election win.  The Denver/NOVA effect will reach into some surprising places in a Trump/Cruz midterm, even in the cultural South. 

Obama has made inroads with suburbanites that even Clinton didn't (I'm referring to suburbanites as more your "stereotypical" suburbanites, not people who happen to live in townships that are considered suburbs ... the suburbs surrounding Chicago are just not the same demographic they were 40 years ago), but that's not going to continue indefinitely.  As long as the GOP is pushing for lower taxes and pro-business policies, not even to speak of opposing things like affirmative action, they're going to have an extremely high floor in the suburbs.  I honestly view it like MN.  The GOP has made a ton of gains there, but where do they go from here (which is kind of relevant because Minneapolis' suburbs are by far the GOP's best areas in the state)?

[Rockefeller GOP]

So how long until [Democrats] can start talking about taking back the [U.S.] House?

It will happen on the watch of next Republican U.S. president with two elected terms.

It's certainly not impossible (and obviously eventually Democrats are going to win back the House), but there are enough wealthy, exurban districts that are never going to elect a Democrat because they want a politician who is going to keep their taxes low, and now Democrats seem to have burned all of the bridges that they had left in socially conservative districts that were open (at least for a period) to their economic messages.  It's a tough path (just as the GOP has a tough path in the EC right now).

I actually think waiting for enough suburbs to flip is the best strategy.  The former Blue Dog districts generally gave Romney >60%, so they aren't coming back even if the next Dem president improved 10% with rural whites.  They are currently in the same position as the GOP in 1960 when it comes to the South, having broken through in the cities and inner suburbs and fought to a draw in VA and FL but still getting crushed everywhere else.  There's cause for hope, but the revolution's still 15-30 years away downballot.  The big question now is whether they get an early assist from a reverse LBJ character.  Don't discount the possibility of white collar suburbs completely freaking out after a Trump/Cruz nomination or worse, general election win.  The Denver/NOVA effect will reach into some surprising places in a Trump/Cruz midterm, even in the cultural South. 

Obama has made inroads with suburbanites that even Clinton didn't (I'm referring to suburbanites as more your "stereotypical" suburbanites, not people who happen to live in townships that are considered suburbs ... the suburbs surrounding Chicago are just not the same demographic they were 40 years ago), but that's not going to continue indefinitely.  As long as the GOP is pushing for lower taxes and pro-business policies, not even to speak of opposing things like affirmative action, they're going to have an extremely high floor in the suburbs.  I honestly view it like MN.  The GOP has made a ton of gains there, but where do they go from here (which is kind of relevant because Minneapolis' suburbs are by far the GOP's best areas in the state)?

Dems will be pulled in a soft libertarian direction and the GOP in a rural populist direction. This is only the beginning of the next realignment IMO.

Disagree completely.  The GOP will never fully embrace "taxin' those big bad millionaires" or regulating big business.  And Democrats will never abandon things like increased education funding, raising the minimum wage, making "millionaires" pay their "fair share," etc. ... Too many of their voters are in the party for those reasons alone.

[DS0816]

I don't think one strategy fits everywhere. For example, in Georgia it's probably a better strategy to run on Obama's legacy, seeing as to how the Hispanic population is on the rise and general Black turnout is higher. Both of those demographics could help flip Georgia without much of a shift in candidates. However, in Arkansas or Louisiana, Democrats should look to cultural conservatives or moderates who are progressive on economics. They cannot be flaky on economic issues. Minimum wage increases are popular in places like West Virginia and Arkansas.

Democrats should actually be looking more at the Rust Belt states, including my home state Michigan. In midterm election years which are a wave for the White House's opposition party, and results in a pickup of the U.S. House, the trend on Election Night is immediately considered with the Rust Belt states. In 2006, it was obvious with Indiana (which closes its polls at 07:00 p.m. ET). In Michigan, 9 of the 14 U.S. House seats ended up in the Republican column as President Obama won that state with re-election by close to 450,000 raw votes and 9.5 percentage points. (The state is typically close to 6 percentage points more Democratic than the nation.)

The Democratic Party needs to perform routinely stronger in Core Democratic states on the eastern half of the electoral map. And the party needs to be doing that, at the U.S. Senate level, throughout all of New England (much more so now with Maine than the swingiest of those six states, New Hampshire). If the Democrats, going forward, fail to shore up these weaknesses, I would question whether they are actually bothered by losing in midterms. After all, since 1914 the White House opposition party gained congressional seats in 23 of the 26 elections with include as the most recent 2014. It's like asking the question, "Okay—no party wins everything. Or wins everything for long. So which would you prefer—President and maybe the U.S. Senate or fail to win President but win U.S. House and U.S. Senate?" The Democrats, during the Republican presidential realigning period of 1968 to 2004, won Congress the majority of that period while the Republicans won the presidency. From 2008 going forward, we may be looking at the opposite. (Between the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, choosing just one of them to be in the column of the party of the president, it's typically the Senate which will fall in the column of the party of the president…while it is the House which goes first for the opposition. Refer to the midterm elections of 2006 and 2010 as examples of that.)

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Dems will be pulled in a soft libertarian direction and the GOP in a rural populist direction. This is only the beginning of the next realignment IMO.

The answer for the Democrats is to adopt strong elements of both of these directions.

[RFayette]

So how long until [Democrats] can start talking about taking back the [U.S.] House?

It will happen on the watch of next Republican U.S. president with two elected terms.

It's certainly not impossible (and obviously eventually Democrats are going to win back the House), but there are enough wealthy, exurban districts that are never going to elect a Democrat because they want a politician who is going to keep their taxes low, and now Democrats seem to have burned all of the bridges that they had left in socially conservative districts that were open (at least for a period) to their economic messages.  It's a tough path (just as the GOP has a tough path in the EC right now).

I actually think waiting for enough suburbs to flip is the best strategy.  The former Blue Dog districts generally gave Romney >60%, so they aren't coming back even if the next Dem president improved 10% with rural whites.  They are currently in the same position as the GOP in 1960 when it comes to the South, having broken through in the cities and inner suburbs and fought to a draw in VA and FL but still getting crushed everywhere else.  There's cause for hope, but the revolution's still 15-30 years away downballot.  The big question now is whether they get an early assist from a reverse LBJ character.  Don't discount the possibility of white collar suburbs completely freaking out after a Trump/Cruz nomination or worse, general election win.  The Denver/NOVA effect will reach into some surprising places in a Trump/Cruz midterm, even in the cultural South. 

Obama has made inroads with suburbanites that even Clinton didn't (I'm referring to suburbanites as more your "stereotypical" suburbanites, not people who happen to live in townships that are considered suburbs ... the suburbs surrounding Chicago are just not the same demographic they were 40 years ago), but that's not going to continue indefinitely.  As long as the GOP is pushing for lower taxes and pro-business policies, not even to speak of opposing things like affirmative action, they're going to have an extremely high floor in the suburbs.  I honestly view it like MN.  The GOP has made a ton of gains there, but where do they go from here (which is kind of relevant because Minneapolis' suburbs are by far the GOP's best areas in the state)?

Dems will be pulled in a soft libertarian direction and the GOP in a rural populist direction. This is only the beginning of the next realignment IMO.

Unless this "rural populist" strategy also involves the GOP running up the score with urban (especially improving here)/suburban/exurban working-class whites, then it's a sure loser and can't be a long-term alignment because it would just cause the GOP to lose more and more each time. 

[Virginiá]

The Democrats, during the Republican presidential realigning period of 1968 to 2004, won Congress the majority of that period while the Republicans won the presidency. From 2008 going forward, we may be looking at the opposite. (Between the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, choosing just one of them to be in the column of the party of the president, it's typically the Senate which will fall in the column of the party of the president…while it is the House which goes first for the opposition. Refer to the midterm elections of 2006 and 2010 as examples of that.)

This is a relatively good point, and I think there may be some truth to it. However, it seems more like that their Congressional dominance began in 1994. Republicans, at this point, already had enough voter support to take over Congress, they just hadn't found a way to get people to vote at the state/Congressional level the way they were voting at the presidential level, which was pretty strongly Republican, and obviously the Republican Revolution was their breakthrough.

Not every dominant stretch is going to be the same and is subject to unique circumstances of the time. Bush was, by most measures, a bad president and his 8 years of rule brought a lot of misfortune to the party. Scandals, the neverending wars, him simply being president when the economy tanked, which got his party blame, and so on. With that in consideration, its reasonable to see how Democrats could pick up so many seats and then lose them. They benefited from a backlash and not a genuine change in older people's voting habits.

The Democratic realignment I think we have having now is not a FDR-like realignment where people of all ages change allegiances, but rather a combination of overwhelmingly minority support, of whose population is growing very rapidly, and generational replacement - Millennials have been overwhelmingly Democratic for a long time now and they will continue to grow older and vote more and more often, squeezing out the Republican-leaning older voters.

All said, I think Republicans best performance will be in the House, and only for 15 or so more years at most. The Senate will probably be relatively flip-floppy as Democrats do have impressive numbers in presidential elections, but those voters fall out in midterms. So while theoretically they have the support in a lot of crucial states, they need to figure out how to get them to vote in midterms or simply wait until Millennials get old enough to vote more frequently.