Should the Democrats Forget Dixie?
It was 2006, and the first-ever YearlyKos was just getting underway. The annual circus of liberal wonk was punctuated by a steady round of panels, and at one of them, David “Mudcat” Saunders was asked to speak about the role the Democratic Party will play way down south in Dixie.
He’s a longtime political consultant, credited with Mark Warner’s successful rise to power as the Democratic Governor of Virginia in 2001, and he’s working on the Edwards campaign this cycle. It’s the world of punditry, and Saunders is old hat. “You can kiss my rebel ass,” he told the audience when asked whether he thought the Democrats should ignore the South and focus their resources elsewhere. He panders for what he calls the “Bubba vote” - plaid shirt, NASCAR fan, likes trucks with names that end in -50. That is, selling to the likes of Seth Collins.
But Collins, 21, of Calera, Ala., wasn’t in attendance. He’s never heard of the YearlyKos, or the DailyKos, either. Collins wears flannel shirts all winter, and he loves to watch “the racecars.” He drives a red F-250 that he parks on his side lawn every night, and he’s even tuned the car horn to honk along to “I Wish I Was in Dixie.”
Collins is a registered Democrat.
The Democrats have no idea what to do with him.
Historically, this is Democratic turf, but since Reagan and the cultural shift towards conservative values in the 80s and 90s, Democrats have been losing the South. In the last presidential election, Bush won every southern state. And while his popularity is plummeting across the rest of the country, in Dixie, he’s still going strong.
“One of the amazing things about Bush’s support nationally is that he’s had 33 to 34 percent [support], but he’s had somewhere between 50 and 60 percent support among white Southerners” said Tom Schaller, professor of political science at the University of Maryland at Baltimore and author of “Whistling Past Dixie.” “That means he’s got 27 or 28 percent in the rest of the country. They literally support him at twice the rates the rest of the country does.” And in politically polarizing elections, regional trends like these are hard to ignore, so Schaller has an idea.
Democrats should forget about recapturing the south for the ’08 Election. Having lost their former base to the GOP, the Democratic party has no politically wise chose but to acknowledge their failure in the today’s bifurcated South. There, race and religion determine Tuesday at the polls as much as Sunday at service, and in both regards, the GOP has won by a landslide. But the shift to the right might not be so concrete. With taxes, the War in Iraq, and morally charged issues like abortion back in the debate -- and no clear candidate to light the way to Washington -- that GOP stronghold may be loosening below the Mason-Dixon line.
The GOP has had a good run in the South. They’ve enjoyed the singular devotion of the white south – particularly the white male south – in almost every realm of government. In the last few presidential elections, southern whites voted between 60 and 80 percent Republican, Schaller says. Once they switched parties, they stayed on the right. “Southern voters – particularly southern white voters –make firm decisions and they tend to stick to them.” With the votes to back it up, the unflagging party loyalty of the South is a force large enough to sculpt a political platform of its own.
Emory professor and prolific author on southern politics, Merle Black argues that the southern republicans have transformed the GOP on their ascent. “They changed the party,” he said. “When the Republican shifted from the Northeast and the Midwest to the South and mountain plains, the conservatives in the new regions are far more conservative on a wider range of issues than the conservatives that created the national Republican party. In the South and in mountain plains, very large numbers of white Protestants set the agenda for the Republican party.”
Their issues were social – pro-life, the protection of traditional marriage – and economic – taxation has been an important concern – and, over the last 20 years, as the Southern conservatives have dominated the GOP vote, they have all but eradicated a place for Southern democrats to hold in the political community.
But the South has always played an important role in the Democratic party, and letting go of that has not been easy. “The Southern democrats used to be the entirety of the party,” Schaller noted. “And then they were the majority of the party. And then they were consequential, if not pivotal, with the decision. And then they were the blocking power, and then, increasingly, they had none of it.” Currently, there are 46 Democratic senators – out of 51 – from outside of the South. Schaller argues that when that number climbs to 50, it’s time to admit a sound defeat. “Now you’re at just about 50 non-Southern senators, so for Southern Democrats who want to be relevant in the South? You don’t have to be Euclid with your socks and shoes off to figure out the math on this.”
Back in Calera, Collins feels the drain in party significance first hand. “I’m the only one I know, outside of my own family, who votes liberal,” he says. “Everyone else says it’s wrong.” Collins says not everyone he knows is Republican – there are a few libertarians and some dying few who claim they are still “dixiecrats,” but there are few cars on his block that aren’t decorated with a “W The President” black-box sticker. Already a political loner in his own community, he’s becoming an outcast in his own party.
At the University of Georgia, Democratic student leaders guffaw at the suggestion that DNC might be better off ignoring the South. Louis Elrod is the Campaigns Committee Chair of the Georgia Young Democrats, and he stiffens at proposals like Schaller’s. “The strategy is insulting to Southern Democratic activists,” he said by email. “It undermines the work we do every day, and suggests that the Democratic Party is more concerned about winning in the Electoral College than winning both the electoral and the popular vote (which most Democrats should believe is the true indicator of victory, especially after 2000). The DNC should be telling us to fight for every vote no matter where we are. Otherwise, we in the South might as well not even get up in the morning.”
Barack Obama takes this to heart, and he’s making sure his campaign people in Dixie get up every day – and early. At the end of the summer, his campaign announced a new focus on South Carolina, and with Mudcat at the rural helm of the Edwards campaign, Bubba won’t be ignored entirely. Black thinks that the Democrats have hope there, too. “The best strategy for the Democrats across the South is to concentrate on two or three southern states,” he suggested. “Put a lot of resources there. It’s exactly what Clinton did, picked two or three where a lot of resources can be used. If you can win a Florida or a Virginia, then you just reduce the share of the electoral votes that a Democrat would need to win the rest of the country.”
This possibility is looking up, particularly in light of the recent Christian Conservative push to nominate a candidate other than Giuliani. When Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family gathered his troops from the conservative Council for National Policy last month in Salt Lake City, he made clear that he would rather support a third-party candidate than the former mayor. Issues that have traditionally rallied Southern evangelicals around the Republican National Committee aren’t the talking points of any single Republican candidate, and threats by Christian Conservatives to abandon the party should not be underestimated.
If that happens, the South could be split over politics once again. And as Dixie’s evangelical republicans scramble to choose sides, a door might open for the Democrats. They might once again whistle through Dixie, not past it this time.
Bush, Edwards, james dobson, schaller, merle black, david saunders, mudcat, focus on the family, council for national policy
