My point is that all these areas are influenced by the same demography. Florida has a lot of Southern influence in its most Northern regions and the South of Ohio is almost a continuation of Kentucky.

MB, we’ll hope a little shut eye will take some of the condescension from your mood.

~

Marc, I’m going to read this again in the morning, and if you make more sense then than you do now, I’ll respond.

If you are talking about the South including only Alabama, Georgia, Texas and one or other states you have few electoral votes. But obviously that people thinks in a much broader picture when they about the South.

The problem is not winning the South. The problem is that something difficult to win Ohio if you lose by large margins in Alabama and Mississippi. And I don´t see Democrats concentrating efforts in the South.

And can I ask if you have ever read/not read Mein Kampf? If you did/didn’t I’m sure its not because you identified with the ideas but because someone told you that you should/shouldn’t be informed about the book.

It’s intelligent dialogue which spurs a widening of our knowledge and I must say the people here’s unwilling to take part is frustrating. You’d rather gripe about whether I’d read the book. Convince me it’s a book worth reading. If this blog is not the kind of place to discuss ideas then tell me and I’ll be sure not to come back.

VJB,
My criticism was never at you or your review (though I will point to the fact that thee isn’t much to qualify it as a negative review, so you’ll excuse me if I considered you as supporting the ideas) but at the premise of the book. Your review is well written.

I wait with baited breath for part II in hopes of understanding why it is that this book merits some devotion. If it does convince me I will admit the errors of my ways; however, until this point it seems to me to represent an old guard Democratic political mindset which has put one president into office in the last 38 years.

As someone who is pretty comfortable in claiming his own familiarity with the South (while somehow not feeling the defensiveness that Schaller seems to inspire in so many self-identified Southerners), I think Schaller makes an excellent case.

Now, before you go off all half-cocked again, perhaps you’d do well to either do some looking at his argument on your own, or quiet down and see what’s coming next here (note the “Part I” bit).

And if I sound(ed) a bit condescending, well . . . yeah, I am. When you have someone telling you that you need to correct their mistakes because they don’t feel like doing the work in the first place, I can’t say that it inspires a whole lot of respect.

Thanks for the patronization but I believe we’re discussing two things here; the future of the democratic parties strategy (which this book gives commentary too) and then the thesis of the book itself.

I’m more than qualified to discuss the book itself, however you won’t find me disputing what is or is not within the pages of the book, just the premise of the book as laid out so far in this post.

If you believe in this strategy but don’t want to share details with me or others, them you can be content to be a grumbling little cooperative of inclusionists if you so please. However if our aim is to implement change, its not going to do you much good to clam up about the details when you’re met with a debate is it?

As with any movement, message, philosophy, dogma or even a minor political strategy a you’ve got to be willing to convince people with the short argument before you show them the big picture.

Also, I never though we were venturing into areas you knew nothing about so much as I thought your strategy was inadequate according to the current political landscape. Like I said, if you’d like to give it more breadth and width I’m more than welcome to read more.

But, you know, good luck with that approach.

vjp,
As I don’t have a copy of the book on and judging by the excerpts you have provided so far, have little desire to read it maybe you could provide me with more excerpts so as to clarify the argument and if the genera direction isn’t as bad as I see it to be, I may consider giving it a look in the future.

However, I’m not going to purchase it tonight and read it tomorrow for the purposes of this discussion. If you all are acolytes of this train of though, you’ll have the tools to convince me otherwise.

after all, they all mass converted into Reaganites nearly overnight

It wasn’t overnight by any means.

“Why spend so much time (and decency) chasing after the votes of people you’re just not going to change?”

The breakdown of an entire huge group of people in such simple terms is insulting and frankly its just plain wrong.

The South is just as affected, and even more so by Obama’s 3 major policy platforms of the Economy, Alternative Energies and Iraq. In the south you have the highest level of poverty, the highest percentage GDP going towards fuel prices, and more veterans and military bases than anywhere in the country.

It has nothing to do with an unwillingness to change as after all, they all mass converted into Reaganites nearly overnight. What is missing is the Democrats willingness to play Southern politics.

Simply put, the Democrats aren’t trusted and its precisely because of the spineless poll reading politics you are all advocating. The propensity towards political calculation scares people. The decide to “shift resources” (which will be read by the average voter as an abandonment) because the party doesn’t expect people to vote for them hardly gives anyone incentive to vote for them. Why a number of loudmouth blowhard Republicans are re-elected is simply because they do blow about any stupid cause they believe in no matter how dumbed or stupid. While its ineffectual politics it reassures the voters that they aren’t going to have resources shifted from them for poliical expediency. Meanwhile, the Republicans fight for votes at the heart of Dmocratic territory; Mitt Romney in Massachusets for crying out loud. A mormon at the head of the Puritan state?

If you want to win votes you have to let people know you are voting for them and I could be no happier to know than Obama and Dean are pursuing a 50 state strategy. Not fighting for votes in every possible area means that in the end, you’re not living yp to your responsibility to represent the people. These are national parties after all, not the parties of Northeast/Upper Midwest/West Coast and South/Plains and Mountain States.

You can all keep your cynical politics because in the end its not serving the people, or the country, but just the party and the politicians.

Brian - Schaller believes that the Republicans will lose out in other places and may very well end up only with the South.

The way they’re going, they could just about lose the whole country.

You’re attacking an argument you (admittedly) don’t understand. Poke around a bit and come back to it.

Not that there aren’t some thing I don’t agree with, especially that the South actually flipped during Reagan’s presidency.

The truth is the Democrats are less likely to flip some of the western mountain states than they are to flip the south, especially states like Utah and Idaho which enjoy nearly an 80% republican ID in many places.

Also, as you mentioned, half of African-Americans do live in the South, and whether or not they can effect presidential politics it is unmoral and unconscionable to just abandon them. It may be the politically expedient thing to do but to just drop the needs of a minority group just because “it’s not worth it” is cynical and outrageous. What should they do? Have more babies to garner greater political attention?

Neither are two near-misses a sound argument for continuing the same political strategy. With the 11 states of the confederacy the Republicans already garner half of the electoral college votes required to win an election.

I’m sorry but if I am misrepresenting the book’s thesis, then correct me with more quotations, otherwise, i have to say that it is precisely this kind of cynical politics-of-electoral-convenience which has gotten the Democrats into their current position and I’m surprised that I’d have to remind you that it was the change to a broader strategy that allowed for the election of the Blue-Dog Democrats and gave the Dems control of both parts of Congress.

Take for example Obama. Without winning any state in the South his only chances are if he wins all states that Kerry carried and Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico. Or maybe winning Ohio, that´s difficult for someone that loses by 20% in most Southern States.

Like I said - you write as if you haven’t read the book.

Brian - Schaller believes that the Republicans will lose out in other places and may very well end up only with the South.

First, it takes nothing into account as far as the Sunbelt swing, or the movement large amount of yankees to warmer climes, such as is effecting the electoral politics of virginia, georgia and less measurably of the Carolinas.

Second, he overstates the effect of the parents generation on the next’s political identity. Young voters now identify almost 2 to 1 with the Democratic party meaning someone is bucking their parents. Also, it was the Democratic abandonment of presidential and senatorial electoral politics which eviscerated the local democratic parties, as the lack of a down ballot effect slowed voting and therefore, slowly, local parties.

Third, Regional based electoral strategies may work for presidential elections, but they are piss poor ways to pass legislation. When everyone carves up their bit of the map and how they are going to get their 270 odd electoral votes, it leaves us with a 50/50 split in Congress. Also, it actually is just a piss poor way to win an election. The best defense is a good offense, and had the democrats better contest the south and especially red sections of the midwest, Kerry’s and Gore’s near-wins would have been irrelevant to their real wins.

Listen, the evangelicals will have to pick a party, or make their own, and they sure won’t be going for the liberal democrats, so they are pretty much stuck with the Republicans. Therfore, their influence, and thence alienation to an extent of moderates, will be a given whether the Democrats contest the South or not. Why not try to win Southern moderates over too and expand our congressional propects for the next election?

It is precisely this kind of short sightedness which allowed the Democrats to be so bullied from 2000 to 2006 and which causes otherwise left-leaning sympathizers like myself to register as independent every year. The Democrats repeatedly believe that being right on the issues will get them elected without a strong electoral policy while the Rovian Republicans can put forth George W. Bush and a sad sack set of policies and still win an election.