Simply put, the South is no longer the “swing” region in American politics. It has swung to the Republicans.”
In making this statement, author Thomas F. Schaller takes on the likes of Steve Jarding and Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, who believe that Democrats must win in the South in order for us to become a majority party again. The opening chapter of the book, entitled “Partisan Graveyard,” argues that a new coalition – made up of Democrats in the Northeast, Midwest and Pacific Coast states – is what will bring the Democrats back to power.
Schaller says that the South – consisting of the eleven states of the Confederacy – has always been a political outlier. “[S]ocial and cultural issues tend to trump economic considerations for many voters in the South, where race and religion are woven through almost every aspect of the region’s political culture,” writes Schaller. Half of all African Americans – the Democratic Party’s base – live in the South, but due to “racial antagonisms,” a white backlash has been created, with few whites voting for Democrats. Simply put: while the Democratic base is there, African Americans lack the power to move the states into the Democratic column. Add to that the presence in the South of the largest share of of the country’s evangelical voters ~ and evangelicals tend to not vote for Democrats, either.
Schaller points out that there is an increasing number of Southerners who have come of age with no connection to the Democratic Party or the South’s prior history of being a Democratic stronghold. As this number increases, Schaller says, it will be harder and harder to attract voters who have never cast a vote for a Democrat in their lives. Trying to capture this vote is to reach for the “high-hanging fruit. Schaller says the ripe-for-the-picking votes are in the pan-western states, where, unlike the South, there are swing voters and independents.
But for a few thousand votes in New Hampshire, Al Gore would have pulled it off [won the election] while winning the popular vote; more astounding, but for the switch of about 60,000 vote in Ohio, Kerry nearly did so despite losing the popular vote.
There are votes to be had out there, but they happen to not be in the South.
Chapter 2, “The Southern Transformation,” focuses on the history of the South from 1964 through about 2006, the date the book was published. This chapter is a must-read for anyone wanting to to understand the depth and breadth of the Republican takeover of the South.
Most point to the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the starting point for the South’s turning away from the Democratic Party. But Schaller says that was not the case. Schaller says it happened 16 years later, when Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan gave his first major speech after receiving the nomination in Neshoba, Mississippi. The county had demonstrated “a severe case of electoral schizophrenia: 95% of their votes went for Barry Goldwater in 1964, 82% for George Wallace in 1968, 88% for Richard Nixon in 1972 and then, by 32 votes, Jimmy Carter carried the county in 1976. Schaller says that Neshoba was a bellwether for the South on matters of race. In his speech, Reagan gave his support of “states’ rights,” which Schaller calls the “friendly term” for opposition to civil rights. Schaller credits Reagan for “perfecting the southern strategy of luring away white southern Democrats,” although it was Goldwater who first used it.
The Republican takeover of the South has three aspects: elections won and governing majorities achieved, how it has changed national policy and politics, and the significance of the South’s takeover of the Republican Party itself. Schaller takes the reader through the last 40 years, looking at the presidency, Congress and governors as well as state legislatures. Then starting with Barry Goldwater, Schaller looks at each major figure in the Republican Party – Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush – and how each man strengthened the party’s grip on the South.
At the end, though, it is the Republican Party which has been taken over by the South, not the other way around.
Stripped bare of the platitudes and catchphrases, the southern-based Republican majority stands naked as a ruling cohort no longer interested in limited government, in states’ rights, in judicial review, in consensus-building filibusters, or any of the other measures of restraint that once informed the political philosophies of movement conservatives.
Southerners have captured the GOP and with it, they bring the evangelical movement and their desire for a “rapturous accounting.” In doing so, though, they are alienating the moderates in the party who live outside the South. And these are the people who the Democrats can win over.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I have to say, this analysis of electoral politics is ripe with inadequacies:
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.
I think that Schaller is largely correct about the South right now. Long term political forecasts are dicey propositions, however. If Republicans keep screwing around, they could at least lose pockets of the South in coming cycles.
Marc – you write as if you haven’t read the book. I’m not finished yet but he points out, for example, that the population of the South is stagnating, so your first claim appears to be erroneous. Your second point – Schaller has not said anything about the parents effect on the next generation. He simply points out that many in the South – he specifically points to those under 50 – have never experienced their states’ electoral votes going for a Democrat. Finally, the regional strategy has worked at every level. Schaller points to the number of state legislatures now controlled by the Republicans.
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.
The problem is that the South is not restricted to the Eleven states of the Confederacy. States like Ohio and Missouri are heavily influenced by the Southern Vote and if you take the South as defined by the Census(Without Delaware and Maryland) you have 173 votes. Put there Ohio and Missouri and you have 203 votes.
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.
André, I think you’re expanding the South that Schaller is talking about (esp. if – and I think you are – you’re including Florida in your definition).
You’re right, I haven’t read it, I was merely responding to the facts you’ve presented. I’m currently trying to make my way through the biography of John Wesley Powell and it will be a while before thats finished.
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.
Schaller’s not advocating an abandonment. More, say, a reordering of resources. Why spend so much time (and decency) chasing after the votes of people you’re just not going to change? Go West – where yes, there are still challenges, but challenges that are surmountable. Look at the numbers in Colorado, South Dakota, etc., right now. Schaller’s not saying that the Dems should leave Dixie so they can win Idaho.
You’re attacking an argument you (admittedly) don’t understand. Poke around a bit and come back to it.
VJP:
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.
I admit, I’m ignorant about the book. I do, however know a bit about the South and here’s the kind of statements that tick me off.
“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.
Marc, you really should read the book. If you had, you wouldn’t be saying such things as
It wasn’t overnight by any means.
I’ll concede that as far as electoral politics go, I was being dramatic, however the change in affiliations at the local political level was quite dramatic during the 80’s.
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.
I think you’re a little confused about the burdens here, Marc. In polite society, we don’t start opining on things we know nothing about, and then tell those that challenge us that it’s their fault for not properly educating us.
But, you know, good luck with that approach.
Well MB,
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.
The other thing is where does anyone say that we believe this? It’s a book review, Marc. You act as if you are not familiar with the term.
edit, sorry, i intended to say i’m more than qualified o discuss the democratic strategy. You guys are the book experts.