Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jason Carter speaks during a campaign stop in Columbus, Ga. Many Democrats say the way to recover lost ground in the conservative South is to reclaim the partyís lost identity as a champion of the middle class. (David Goldman/AP)
In the wake of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s defeat in a runoff with her Republican opponent, many are remarking upon the extinction of that long endangered species of politico: the Southern Democrat. Like the Moa bird, Dodo and the Liberal Republican, the white, statewide-office-holding Southern Democrat is now more or less gone from our world — and good riddance, critics say. The general consensus put forth by those commenting on Landrieu’s demise and that of her political stripe is that it’s long overdue and generally a good thing.
Purity versus Power
The gist of this line of thinking is basically a mirror-image justification of the far-right jihad against moderate Republicans, known as RINOs for “Republicans In Name Only.” If the Democratic Party can be purged of its less progressive elements, the argument goes, then the party as a whole can take more left-wing positions that true believers think will be more popular with voters on Election Day. While this remains to be seen, the logic is that the ideological cost of including Southern Democrats in the party is simply too high and prevents Democrats from acting consistently and effectively as their opponents across the aisle do.
In this they are probably correct: Ideological consistency, for better or worse, does make the GOP more effective and thus dangerous, so a more ideologically-consistent, progressive Democratic Party that is a true mirror of the GOP would likely make the party more disciplined. This could be useful. For example, if the White House is lost in 2016 to the Republicans our new conservative president would not be greeted as a liberator by Vichy Democrats, but would face instead a determined, implacable resistance that would do all they could to sabotage and destroy Republican efforts to run the country. They would hopefully act just as today’s congressional Republicans do and bring Congress, if not the government itself, to a stop in order to thwart conservative legislation.
Although such an outcome might be seen as a good one for progressives and those who bewail the Democrats’ ability to do much of anything substantive, it is probably not a good thing to have our growing political polarization mirrored by regional polarization. After all, the country found itself similarly divided 150 years ago, and that did not end up turning out very well.
While no one is saying that such similar “unpleasantness” would necessarily happen again, the prospect of having American culture and politics more and more divided by region should not be something to relish. National unity would suffer greatly and if the conflict between red and blue went on long enough, so, too, would national identity.
Thus, when looking at the future Democrats and progressives have to start thinking about what they value more: an ideologically-consistent party that can be effective in stopping GOP initiatives but little else, or a less cohesive party that, while offering admittedly watered-down initiatives that tend to be an echo, not a choice, of what is being offered on the right, nonetheless has some chance of being enacted and maintains a thin thread of national unity to boot. Given what has occurred during Barack Obama’s presidency, progressives can perhaps be forgiven for wanting to adopt the same bare-knuckle tactics and purity-control techniques that have proven so effective for Republicans. But if they do, they should understand just what they are getting into.
Is there something to salvage?
Of course, this leaves open the question of just whether the Democrats can compete in the South anyway. Maybe the division is just too great to bridge, leaving the only real strategy available the one of ideological consistency and no-holds-barred resistance as outlined above.
This could very well be the case, but there are some strong arguments against that line of thinking and it could be that the Democrats’ losses in the South are just a temporary bump in the road as opposed to the irrevocable loss many are making it out to be. What advantages, though, do Democrats have in the South? And how can they better capitalize on them?
The first argument as to why the South should not be abandoned so soon is that the situation is not, at first blush, so bad as it might seem. Sure, there are no more Southern Democrat senators anymore, but there are a plenty of congressmen and women who represent a large number of districts in the region. True, they are largely the product of gerrymandered districts and mostly reflect the deep racial polarization of voting patterns in the South, but these representatives and the constituencies they represent exist and are the foundation of Democratic support in the South.
Indeed, Landrieu’s defeat is a case in point. The defeated Louisiana senator tended to do well among blacks, women, and so on, but it was among whites – in particular, white men – where she failed completely. Six years ago Landrieu garnered 33 percent of the white vote, while this year she got just 18 percent. Although this is no doubt a depressing take on contemporary race relations, the reality is that all Landrieu — and by implication, other Southern Democrats — had to do was win just enough whites to her cause to win. Given her lackluster campaign and how the party rolled over to conservative talking points throughout the election, it is little wonder she and other Southern Dems lost. You can’t beat something with nothing, and nothing is made worse when you run away with your tail tucked between your legs without even having fired a shot.
Second, in the South’s larger states the demographic transition long noted in this space is continuing apace. Coupled with increasing efforts to get out the vote in places like Georgia, which saw a serious challenge to GOP control of the governor’s mansion this year, and it is not out of the realm of possibility that a few good flu seasons could winnow out the ranks of older, white, conservative voters to give Democrats a chance to be real contenders there in coming years. Demography is destiny. While conservatives manning the Fort Apaches of right-wing white supremacy fought off the latest attempt to dislodge them, the war continues — and their numbers dwindle further and further every year. Those walls will eventually be so undermanned that it won’t take a Herculean effort to broach them.
The kids are all right
This leads to the third factor that could revive Democratic fortunes in the South: working-class populism, especially among whites. Ever since the 1960s such populism has generally been to the benefit of Southern conservatives, Democrat and Republican alike, who used broad, Southern white rejection of the civil rights movement to cement their hold on power. Coupled with the return of religion as a major force in American politics after the 1980s and America’s ongoing struggle against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the other factor serving as a base of conservative power in the South has been what might best be termed as culture-war nationalism. Race is important, true, but arguably more important in recent years has been God and the Flag.
Yet the demographic change that is turning the South browner and blacker over time is also impacting white Southerners, too, and it is a very big mistake to assume that young white people in the South are or will turn out to be as conservative as their parents and grandparents.
Except in the rural backwaters of the small-town South, young white people in the South are better educated and they see white supremacy for what it is: a continuing embarrassment. In many ways the South’s young whites today are like the children in Germany that were born to the generation that was born after the Second World War. The animosities that drove their grandparents simply aren’t theirs and, unlike their parents, they can take a far more active role in rebuking what their grandparents spent so much time defending. Comedian Chris Rock articulated exactly this recently, when he said that the generation of white people around today is the best America has ever produced — and that’s especially true in what used to be the heart of American apartheid.
Not being as beholden to the poisonous heritage of white supremacy as their thoroughly racist and thankfully dying grandparents and cowardly, weak-kneed parents, what will this up-and-coming generation of young white Southerners look for in a political party? They exist in a country that is ever more diverse and connected, and in a world where America has suffered a string of self-inflicted disasters abroad and is no longer the number one economic power. They are living less well than their parents in a country where rising inequality has choked off social mobility. They will see more and more the consequences of climate change. Being more educated, they will naturally tend to be more secular.
Given this, will they fall for the tired clichés that brought their parents around to conservative lines of thinking? Or will they find a more progressive Democratic Party more in line with their own thinking?
Time will tell, of course, but the presumption that Democrats are now permanently dead in the South is big bet to make. The South today is not what it was, and the South of tomorrow will not be what it is today. Parties and politicians banking on a place forever staying the same, even one so attached to its own history as the South, are likely making a terrible mistake.