Democratic "Southern Strategy"

I pretty much ignored Thomas Schaller's article, "Do Democrats need the South" when it came out on Salon two weeks ago, for the same reasons I've ignored his book, "Whistling Past Dixie." The premise behind both is bullshit. Schaller used the Salon piece to try to bitch-slap James Carville around. While I don't agree with Carville's assessment of this year's mid-term elections, he's right on the basic notion that Dems shouldn't ignore the south.

Even though the Democratic Leadership Conference has all but been excommunicated from the party this year, Ed Kilgore's response to Schaller today is good. When I first read saw the Schaller headline, I was non-plussed. Dismissing the south means kissing off a huge portion of the black vote in this country, a part of the Dem base that is essential. Kilgore is a lot more eloquent in making the point:

This last observation leads me to a fundamental reason Democrats would be foolish to write off the South entirely, much less spurn its voters as contemptible yahoos. The demographic composition of the South, with rapidly rising Hispanic populations in some states supplementing a sizable and loyal African-American base, means that there is a floor to Democratic losses in the region. It also explains residual Democratic strength at the state level, and creates potential opportunities for future gains. Schaller is right that racial polarization characterizes the politics of states like Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, but that has been true for decades, and it's not at all evident the phenomenon is becoming universal.

I'd go one step further along this line, though. There is still a LOT of voter disenfranchisement that goes on along racial lines in the south, like the cops hanging outside majority-black polling places on election day. Voter intimidation and deception are still very powerful tools, even in this day of debating the merits of computerized voting machines. If progressives surrender the south, we give up on trying to help black voters who are still being screwed by white folks 40 years after the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts.

That's not just bad politics, it's immoral.

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