dixie-flag.thumbnail.JPGTom Schaller is a name that should be familiar to FDL readers. He recently hosted a Book Salon on Bob Moser’s book Blue Dixie, and his writings have been among the chief weapons in the arsenals of those who fight against the Blue Dog, Republican-appeasing "centrist" mentality that has gripped the Democrats for so many years.

Schaller’s main thesis, which he reiterates again in this article for Salon, is simply this: The South is lost to Democrats for the foreseeable future, if not forever, because racial polarization is just too deeply embedded to be easily overcome:

In the years following that fateful 2000 presidential election, economic populism has come into vogue on the left. In fact, some liberals have elevated it to the status of panacea for the Democratic Party, and it has been cited as the key thread that weaves together the elections of politicians ranging from Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer to Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown to Virginia Sen. Jim Webb.

However, leaving aside a few Southerners like Webb (more on the rookie senator in a moment), economic populism tends to be more useful politically in the post-globalization Rust Belt, or the new growth economies of the Far West, than in the South. Though the South is the nation’s poorest region and millions of Southerners of all races are hurting financially, the conclusion reached by many demographic analysts, myself included, is that the deep-seated social conservatism and widespread resistance to race-blind redistribution in the South serve as powerful bulwarks against the curative effects of economic populism.

Moser’s argument is that it’s possible for Democrats to win back the South without resorting to Blue Dogism. Schaller, on the other hand, argues that winning back the entire region is currently impossible; those Democrats who have won in recent years have done so in areas that are bluer and more prosperous than the rest of the South, often as a result of extremely lucky breaks, and are usually more conservative than Democrats elsewhere — and even with all that, they’re not exactly winning by landslides.

As Schaller states, Webb’s race was, even with his being a former Republican in a trending-blue state with a highly unpopular Republican president in the White House dragging down the GOP, a nail-biter that he would have likely lost without his opponent’s making the "macaca" gaffe. Other Southern Democrats haven’t fared much better. John Edwards was born in South Carolina, but he had to move to the somewhat bluer North Carolina to have any hope of a political career — and, despite running as a centrist-conservative Democrat, only managed to beat Lauch Faircloth by four points in 1998. Mark Warner also ran and runs as a moderate to conservative Democrat in Virginia, as does Tim Kaine. Their victories have not exactly been resounding: Warner won the 2001 governor’s race by five points, while Kaine won his 2005 gubernatorial election by five points, and his 2001 lieutenant governorship by two.

There’s a reason that the Republican Party’s deliberate and planned repudiation of civil rights and the legacy of Lincoln, combined with an appeal to segregationist Dixiecrat politicians opposed to the Democrats’ civil rights push to switch parties, is called "the Southern Strategy". The alliance of segregationist ex-Democrats like Strom Thurmond with the GOP’s corporate wing managed, in the space of less than a generation, to flip the South from solid Democratic to the GOP’s strongest region. And as Schaller points out, populism in the South usually only succeeds electorally when combined with racist pandering, or at the very least a reluctance to interfere with established social structures; the reason the New Deal was accepted in the South was because FDR didn’t dare push too hard for programs that might actually benefit blacks more than whites.

Merely getting more Southern blacks to vote won’t solve this problem; as Schaller mentioned in the New York Times last month, Southern blacks are already close to maxed out in terms of voting — the problem is that white Southern voters not only outnumber them, but vote overwhelmingly Republican:

Mississippi, the state with the nation’s highest percentage of African-Americans in its population, illustrates how difficult Mr. Obama’s task will be in the South. Four years ago, President Bush beat John Kerry there by 20 points. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Mr. Obama could increase black turnout in Mississippi to 39 percent of the statewide electorate, up from 34 percent in 2004, according to exit polls. And let’s assume that Mr. Obama will win 95 percent of those voters, up from the 90 percent who voted for Mr. Kerry four years ago.

If that happened, the black vote would yield Mr. Obama 37 percent of Mississippi’s statewide votes. To get the last 13 percent he needs for a majority, Mr. Obama would need to persuade a mere 21 percent of white voters in Mississippi to support him. Sounds easy, right?

But only 14 percent of white voters in the state supported Mr. Kerry. Mr. Obama would need to increase that number by 7 percentage points — a 50 percent increase. Mr. Obama struggled to attract white Democrats in states like Ohio and South Dakota. It strains credulity to believe that he will attract three white voters in Mississippi for every two that Mr. Kerry did.

Keep in mind that this analysis (and the speculation that Mr. Obama will generate unprecedented black turnout in the South) does not consider the possibility that white voter turnout will rise, too. Passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act led to an upsurge in black voting in the South, but it also caused many white Southerners to register and vote as well — for the Republicans.

One thing that an Obama victory will demonstrate this fall: That a Democratic presidential candidate can win without the South. Indeed, as current polling shows at FiveThirtyEight.com, Virginia is the most likely of the Confederate states to be taken by Obama, and that’s right now a 50-50 shot at best.

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