Is It Worth It For The Democrats To Try Winning The Deep South?

Proud Southerner

Over the weekend, Molly Ball, writing in The Atlantic made the case for Democrats winning back the Deep South. When I was just becoming aware of politics as a kid, everything that made me hate the Democratic Party stemmed from the fact that it owned the Deep South-- and was owned by the Deep South. I remember how all the reactionary committee chairs in both Houses were Southern racists. Now Southern racism, bigotry, and overall backwardness has taken over the Republican Party and made it anathema to normal Americans. Let them keep it; let them continue to choke on it. "In 2012," writes Ball, "Republicans took over the Arkansas state legislature, and Democrats now do not control a single legislative chamber in the old Confederacy."

Many Southern Democrats-- and a lot of national Democratic strategy for winning in the South-- think the way to do it is to mimic Republicans, if not always with the reactionary social policies, certainly always with the reactionary economic and fiscal policies. Screw that. The Democratic Party would be much better off without reactionary politicians always tugging it to the right, the way, for example, John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA) does. If the Democrats want to make the case that a progressive, family-friendly agenda is better for Southern voters, let's go for it. If the Democrats want to make the case they they're almost as conservative and backward as the Republicans... it's a waste of time and effort. Here's Ball's case:

The demographics of the South are changing fast. Quite simply, all of the states of the old Confederacy are getting less white, said Chris Kromm, director of the Durham, N.C.-based Institute for Southern Studies, a research center founded by civil-rights-movement veterans. "I don't think there's any question there is a lot of potential [for Democrats] there given how rapidly the landscape of the South is changing," he said, calling it a "highly volatile moment in Southern politics."

The Southern states have America's fastest-growing Latino populations. Of 11 states whose Hispanic populations doubled between 2000 and 2011, nine-- Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas-- were in the South. Black populations are also growing, thanks in part to a new migration of African-Americans back to the South. At current rates of growth, Georgia and Mississippi could be majority-minority states within a decade. South Carolina's Republican governor, Nikki Haley, won in 2010 by 60,000 votes; demographers estimate there are as many as 100,000 eligible but unregistered African-American voters in the state.

Other forces are changing the region's culture. Though the South remains more rural than the rest of the country, its cities and suburbs-- from the North Carolina Research Triangle to the Atlanta exurbs-- are booming thanks to an influx of white-collar professionals. "The urban centers in the South are becoming centers of political power, and that's what's going to change politics," Kromm said.

...Since the days of Arizonan Barry Goldwater, the Southwest had been solidly Republican. But that changed in the last decade. Western Democrats like Brian Schweitzer and Harry Reid won by emphasizing quality-of-life issues like education and the environment, neutralizing the culture war (often by professing love for the Second Amendment), and mobilizing the growing Hispanic vote. Far-right Republicans like former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo helped Western Democrats make the case to moderate suburbanites that the GOP had gone off the ideological deep end. Now, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado have voted Democratic in two straight presidential elections, and the party has even managed to win statewide elections in Montana and Arizona.

"We moved into the Southwest on the theory that the demographics were changing and Republicans had gone too far to the right," [Jill] Hanauer told me. Two years ago, she detected the same thing starting to happen in the South. She changed her firm's name to Project New America and quietly began to research a new region.

In the coming weeks, Hanauer and Loranne Ausley, a former member of the Florida House of Representatives, plan to launch something they're calling the Southern Project, which will conduct research and formulate messages that can help Democrats win over Southern voters. A pilot study conducted in North Carolina in February, for example, concluded that under the state's Republican governor, Pat McCrory, "there is a clear sense that hardworking taxpayers are getting the short end of the stick at the expense of big corporations and the wealthiest." The set of talking points advises progressives to make arguments "focused around fairness and accountability," whether the issue is tax reform or charter schools. The Southern Project will equip Southern Democrats with similar examples of messages that have been poll-tested to resonate with voters.

Obama lost North Carolina by just 2 percentage points in 2012, but Republicans took the governor's mansion and a supermajority in the state legislature, helped by a multimillionaire named Art Pope who poured money into the party and its candidates. After the election, McCrory put Pope in his administration's budget department and began pushing a highly ideological agenda through the state legislature, sparking a backlash that has resulted in weeks of protests at the statehouse in Raleigh .

Ausley, who ran unsuccessfully for statewide office in Florida in 2010, said Republicans across the South risk alienating voters with their hard rightward turn. Every Republican-led Southern state has rejected the federally funded expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, she noted; in Florida, Governor Rick Scott tried to accept the funds, but his own Republican-dominated legislature blocked the move. Southern Republicans have recently decried women's entry into the workforce and advocated teaching schoolchildren about proper gender roles.

"Republicans are doing the same thing over and over again to appeal to their base, and at some point it has to come back to bite them," Ausley said. Southern voters are generally conservative, but they're not extremists, as Mississippi showed in 2011 when it overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have declared a fertilized egg to be a "person" with rights. Genteel Southern moderates like Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia find themselves increasingly endangered by Tea Party primary challenges; Chambliss has chosen not to run for reelection next year, setting up a race that will test Democrats' ability to win in that state.

Lately I've been criticizing the DCCC for only focusing on the current cycle and never thinking about building a long-term plan to beat vulnerable Republicans in purple districts. If the DCCC had worked against powerful committee chairmen Paul Ryan, Mike Rogers, Darrell Issa, Fred Upton, Buck McKeon, Dave Camp in 2010 and 2012, at least 5 of them would be dead ducks going into 2014. McKeon, in fact, sees the writing on the wall already-- after being beaten by Lee Rogers with ZERO help from Steve Israel's DCCC and Wasserman Schultz's DNC-- and is on the verge of retiring. He's already told top GOP officials in the district he won't run again in 2014 if Rogers runs against him. (And Rogers is about to make a big announcement; I doubt it will be that he's not going to run.) I was interested that some of the Southern Democrats are, unlike the DCCC, taking a long-term approach. Former Mississippi Governor Ronnie Musgrove told Ball that his goal is "to lay the groundwork long-term for the South once again to be a Democratic stronghold," by "building a strong bench of up-and-coming Democratic leaders."

South Carolina-based Republican consultant Chip Felkel makes a good point, though. "It's still a place that, to borrow a phrase, clings to its guns and religion, and I think it will continue to do so. As long as the Democratic Party still seems to be the party that's opposed to religion and guns, a large segment of the Southern population is going to have trouble with that, especially at the federal level." The Democratic response has all too often been to present this kind of garbage in response:



It's the wrong road for Democrats to go down. Barrow himself is likely to be defeated in 2014, unless Republicans nominate a crackpot extremist. Same goes for another reactionary white Democrat in North Carolina, Blue Dog Mike McIntyre. They come from an old school of thought that says that Democrats can only win in the South by acting like Republicans. Barrow and McIntyre routinely vote with the Republicans in the House on almost every crucial roll call. This year, for example, both voted with the GOP against raising the minimum wage and both voted with the Republicans for CISPA. Both voted for a GOP Farm Bill that would have gutted the food stamps program for the Democratic base in their own districts. Just minutes before that vote, both voted against Ron Kind's amendment that would have cut farm subsidies to wealthy farmers. And the day before, both voted against Jim McGovern's amendment to keep the SNAP (food stamp program) funded. 175 Democrats opposed the GOP plan to remove President Obama from the Keystone XL process and only 19 Democrats crossed the aisle and voted with the GOP. Of course Barrow and McIntyre were among them as were fellow mostly right-wing Southern Democrats Patrick Murphy (FL), Jim Cooper (TN), Henry Cuellar (TX), Sanford Bishop (GA), Al Green (TX), Gene Green (TX), Ruben Hinojosa (TX), Terri Sewell (AL), and Filemon Vela (TX). Who needs them if they're going to vote like Republicans, oppose LGBT equality, oppose women's Choice, and work to water down reforms? Monday morning, the National Journal outlined once again how backward elements inside the GOP (read: unreconstructed Confederates) are destroying the party from within. Who wants them in the Democratic Party, which is a party that stands for something-- or at least still has a segment that stands for something.

Alan Grayson also represents a formerly Republican district in central Florida and he doesn't ever adopt Republican positions in some kind of idiotic electoral calculus. That's why his constituents-- and progressives statewide and nationally-- admire him. If we're going to win back the South with Alan Graysons, I say let's go for it. If winning back the South means more John Barrows and Mike McIntyres, let the Republicans keep it... while they alienate the rest of America.

Fetal masturbation. Rape doesn’t usually result in pregnancy. Grade-schoolers should be taught traditional gender roles.

A handful of House Republican lawmakers seem unable to stop making headlines on abortion and gay marriage. And Republicans on and off the Hill know who’s to blame:

House Speaker John Boehner.

GOP lawmakers, strategists, and insiders say Boehner and House leadership are enabling foot-in-mouth disease by allowing divisive social issues to reemerge at a time when Republicans were finally winning the daily messaging war against a controversy-plagued White House.

Republicans say they want leadership to start calling out the fringers, distancing the party from the lawmakers’ remarks. And they want leaders to stop bowing to interest-group pressure to put risky social issues on the House floor.

Good luck with that, boys. This is your base now: