The Hill talked to southern Democrats to get their ideas about why the party isn’t doing well in the South. But it doesn’t seem to me like they really hit on any solutions (unless you consider running as an independent to be a solution).
Southern voters “see the Democratic Party as a liberal institution that wants to spend their money recklessly, that doesn’t honor their social values and that has a very different view of the world,” said Alabama Rep. Artur Davis (D).
I don’t know that Southerners are really upset by ‘reckless spending.’ The Blue Dogs are convinced that this is the case, but the most popular Republicans in the South are known for their ability to bring home the bacon, not slash government spending. On the other hand, maybe saturation exposure to Fox News and hate radio is turning the South into a place that not only hates the federal government but their money, too.
I do think it’s true that people in the South are convinced that the coastal elites don’t respect their social values and culture. And, the more coastal the Democratic Party becomes the stronger the sense of estrangement can become. It can even infect the Upper Midwest and the northern suburbs.
I am more interested in how southern Democrats can win by genuinely differing from the national party. And I don’t mean on social issues, because they are doing that already and it either isn’t working or it is insufficient. I think it would be nice if a Alabaman Democrat could say, “Hey, I’m nothing like Nancy Pelosi. Did she recommend liquidating Goldman Sachs and giving every voter a check? Did she call for balancing the budget by imposing day-trading fees?”
Or, you know, whatever scary over the top anti-Wall Street populism you can come up with.
Or we can keep on doing what we’ve been doing, hoping for a different result.
Jesus. I have 138 mutual facebook friends with DangerStein.
the South is full of White people who have spent generations voting against their economic interests because they thought it would ‘ keep the Niggers down’.
harsh, but true.
and it makes me shrug my shoulders about folks like Jim Webb, who want to apologize for these people and their racism which has gotten in the way of their own advancement.
you know I feel.
don’t coddle those people.
I’ve said it before…if not for the Black populace that lives in the South and that they need help. if not for them, I would be one cold mofo towards that region.
And don’t pander to them. It’s time to resume adult talk in dealing with these folks.
Southern voters “see the Democratic Party as a liberal institution that wants to spend their money recklessly, that doesn’t honor their social values and that has a very different view of the world,” said Alabama Rep. Artur Davis (D).
Am I the only one that laughs because they asked a loser like Davis his opinion? They ask a clown that voted against his district(see HCR/HIR) because he thought he could take his constituents for granted. And what social values are those, Mr. Davis? To honor the Confederacy?
“
I think it would be nice if my driveway plowed itself.
Mudsill democracy. The unchanging dynamic of Southern politics.
This isn’t about politics. This is all about media.
The left continues to underestimate the influence of Fox News.
Until the left has something equivalent, with reach and repetition, we’ll never be able to compete, period.
Intelligence is not winning out. Mass mind control is.
I have seen almost no effort by Obama and the Dems to support democratic policies. The last election was so bad due in very large part to the clear message from the Blue Dogs: We are Democrats, but we don’t support Democratic policies. For the vast majority of Americans, this message reads clearly: Democratic policies are so bad that not even Democrats support them.
Until message discipline is restored to the Democratic Party, we will continue to see erosion of support for Democratic policies.
Now that the felon Rick Scott is governor of Florida, he is going to ramp up the lunatic conservacrap stuff. For instance, he has talked about fully privatizing education. I am sure that he and the now entirely repukeliscum Florida legislature will increase the assault on teachers. Will anyone notice? Is this crap acceptable? Will Repukeliscum get voted out or will these anti-person pro-corporate tactics get rewarded at the polls?
Florida legislature will increase the assault on
teachersoverpaid pension-seeking unaccountable civil service drones.Fixed.
Will anyone notice?
Yes, they will notice. And applaud.
Is this crap acceptable?
Yes. Crab-bucket syndrome (if I don’t have a job, then you don’t get to have one either) is
Ressentisment light — all the rage, without all the baggage.
GOP R&D may have finally developed the new product they needed, now that the GOP patent on fighting nearly pointless wars in nearly unreachable places has expired.
Reporting from Texas here…
The problem with white Southerners, in my opinion, lies with the high value white Southern culture places on conformity. You go to church because people are supposed to go to church. You send your kids to private school even though you can’t afford it because your neighbors do. You vote Republican because you don’t know any Democrats except for the blacks, the Mexicans, or the outcast nonconformist whites. You’re not one of any of them, you’re part of PROPER society, so you vote Republican like proper people do.
Fifty years ago, the same condition existed, of course, even if the party was different.
In Texas, we’re counting on the demographic shift from Mexican immigration to overcome this built-in cultural resistance, but I don’t think for a minute it’s going to be as simple as waiting for the numbers to flip. There’s going to be violence on a wider scale than we’ve seen since the 60s before the good old boy network relinquishes power at the state level.
There is going to be violence one way or the other anyway, given the attitudes in Texas and the Deep South. The only question is whether it will go unpunished like the Wilmington white-person riot of 1898. (The traditional term “race riot” obscure the culpability.) Or will it be like Mississippi during Freedom Summer. And will the local authorities look the other way this time in any event? And what will the Obama DOJ or its successor do?
Would somebody please name for me the last populist progressive Democrat who ran in the South? All the last ones I remember were elected during the New Deal and had the obligation to be defenders of segregation in order to be re-elected.
“Good business climate’ Democrats can no longer compete with corporate Republicans who have unlimited sources of campaign cash. And the Blue Dogs who did make it through 2010 did it by essentially becoming Republicans.
One of the things that holds this in being is a base network of politicized churches and pastors organized by Ralph Reed and the Religious Right and gradually expanded by friends and neighbors putting pressure on members of other congregations to move in the same direction. This has created a cultural climate in which Republicanized Christianity is “normal” and Democrats are marginalized. In some cases shunned and run out of church congregations they have been members of for forty years. Purging wrong thinking is an old habit from anti-abolition and Jim Crow days. For some folks, this is what “traditional values” refers to–but not for all.
But the puzzling part of the picture has to do with the transplants from other states. As more folks migrated or were transferred to new jobs in Southern cities, the cities became more conservative, not less conservative. Liberal Democrats from one part of the country over a few years became conservative Republicans. And the voting results tend to show that it was not an act. And consider: Most of the population gains in the South and the West have been the result of migration from outside those regions. In NC, there has been a lot of migration from WV, OH, and MI.
It is interesting that The Hill quotes Artur Davis. He is the least likely at this point to understand how to win in the South; he tried to run for statewide office in Alabama as a pseudo-Republican. So he lost some of the folks to his left and gained none to his right. Plus, to put it in the simplest terms possible, there wasn’t even a Bradley effect. But the guy who beat him in the primary didn’t do much better because of the media blitz sweeping in Republicans in Congress.
I would like to see some test cases of honest-to-goodness populist progressives building a base from which to run in a rural area of some state in the South. Folks are going to have to know who that candidate is and what he/she thinks so well that media blitzes can’t shake them. And they will have to run without mincing words. And govern for the people. Tom Perriello came closest to doing this and winning in the last cycle. But he still was not well known enough in the rural parts of his district to overcome the media blitz.
Brad Miller and David Price have strong university-town demographics in their base; they are somewhat of an anomaly as far as strategy goes.
Back in the 1930s, there was a coalition of the farmers movement (against the banks) and the workers movement (against the corporate owners) that gained some traction in the South. A similar movement would be homeowners afraid of fraudulent foreclosures and labor (united all identity politics groups). And one could throw in a little rural access to high-speed broadband internet and offshore wind generation in addition to (not instead of current technology extraction). Over-the-horizon and near-horizon projects would deal with the aesthetic issues and at least in NC would take advantage of some strategically placed shoals. Another ingredient to the mix would be the fact that business have so many tax breaks for “bringing jobs” that individuals are paying a higher and higher percentage of the taxes and jobs still go away with corporations (such as Dell laughing at the contract they got from the state government). This might be marketed as a “Where are the jobs?” campaign.
It’s a matter of association – the facts don’t too much matter: if you take the side of “those people” then you are “those people.” Ask Judge George Greer. The problem here is that you’re proposing that Southern Democrats bring a knife to a gun fight – you want them to win the argument when the voters vote based upon their tribal perceptions.
Think of it this way: Dale Earnhardt Jr. hasn’t won a NASCAR race (cup level) since the middle of 2008, however his merchandise outsells Jimmy Johnson’s merchandise by a good 3-to-1 margin at any track in the circuit. Jimmy Johnson is only the 5-time defending NASCAR Nextel Cup champion, but he’s from El Cajon, California while Junior has the right name and accent, the son of Dale Earnhardt who has the most NASCAR Cup championships (for now…), hailing from Kannapolis, North Carolina.
What’s the difference between Dale Jr. and Kyle Petty?
About 15 years.
It’s really going to be interesting when Junior comes out of the closet – Junior fans always accuse Johnson (married with children) and fellow Californian Jeff Gordon (first married Ms. Winston 1992, then married Ingrid Vandebosch), yet the single and quite fay Junior is the good ol’ boy fan favorite.
Full disclosure – my driver is Smoke.
Point being, facts are an inconvenient and, in this instance, irrelevant thing. There is no argument that could convince the denizens of Philadelphia that they should support the New England Patriots; it is equally futile to attempt to get many Southern Whites to support the Democrats, because voting for a Democrat is supporting the Democrats…
What’s the difference between Dale Jr. and Kyle Petty?
About 15 years.
Seriously? Jr. has won 18 races in 10 years. Kyle Petty won 8 in 30 years. Also, Jr. has won 2 Busch Series(now called Nationwide) titles. He’s won 23 races in that series as well. Kyle Petty has never won a race in the Busch/Nationwide Series. In fact, one could say Jr. had really good success when Tony Eury, Sr. was his crew chief. Once the younger Eury took over, everything has gone down hill since.
OK, Junior is better than Kyle (Petty), but neither one of them could hold their daddy’s beer…
You are right about that!!
Both of you have touched on an important, but usually overlooked point.
Consider the popularity of NASCAR with wingers and the fact that driver selection is heavily influenced by nepotism. Unlike most other sports the selection of NASCAR drivers isn’t determined by merit but by a host of factors that a) severely reduce the pool of candidates based on their access to the cars and facilities needed to practice the art and b) the selection biases of the small number of wealthy race team sponsors.
Thus, children of successful drivers have a HUGE advantage over other un-connected drivers. There are a relatively small number of drivers in NASCAR, but an incredibly large percentage of them are from racing families. Compare that to baseball or football, where a few children of successful players (i.e. Barry Bonds, Clay Matthews) excel at the same sport. But more common are stories like the sons of Walter Payton or Pete Rose — pretty good, but not major league material.
The reason I connect this to wingers is that I suspect for most people — including liberals and the non-connected — it’s just not interesting following a sport in which the participants are determined more by nobility/nepotism than on merit. But for wingers, who are by nature authoritarian followers, NASCAR seems the natural order of things.
Note that this is not inherent in auto racing — consider Formula 1 as a counter-example. Also note that the degree of in-breeding in the selection of NASCAR drivers creates an even more extreme limitation of the pool of participants than in most other sports throughout history. Even Tennis in the pre-open era was more competitive because the players, once selected, still had to succeed on their own merits rather than being able to use superior equipment and support staff to mask their own weaknesses. NASCAR, although truly competitive, is also a clique that can choose to reward or punish its members — such as when Jr surprisingly won on the anniversary of Sr’s death, or when a driver who broke with the pack and praised then-presidential candidate Kerry was run out of next race early by a combined effort of several other drivers.
I would assert that NASCAR is authoritarian in nature and that this is part of the appeal to wingers.
NASCAR functions as a combination of nepotism and patronage. Aside from the patronage involved in team sponsorship.
In this it is no different than the rest of the job market. A reality that most Republicans, even working class Republicans understand very well. Cheering on someone’s Junior as a driver is no different than schmoozing with the boss’s son who is being set up to take over the corporation. Or in large corporations, some other corporation.
George W. Bush’s popularity had to do with this; it also had to do with his supporters seeing themselves in W’s failures. He lived their dream for them. So do NASCAR drivers for folks whose only experience is illegal drag races on deserted roads in the middle of the night.
If the route to real wealth and power in an “egalitarian society” is blocked by nepotism and patronage, the vicarious experience of wealth and power becomes a team sport. There are even teams where you would least expect it: Team Gates vs. Team Jobs vs. Team Torvalds.
Team Donkey vs. Team Elephant reflect the aspirations of the supporters of each. The poorest parts of the country aspire to wealth; the parts of the country with the most leased public land aspire to freedom from the federal government. The parts of the country under the microscope because of their past racial discrimination want the Department of Justice to stop staring at them. Aspirations.
or when a driver who broke with the pack and praised then-presidential candidate Kerry was run out of next race early by a combined effort of several other drivers.
What driver was that?
Junior took his crew to see Fahrenheit 911, but I don’t remember anyone explicitly coming out for Kerry and I definitely don’t remember anyone being put into the wall for it. Bob Graham sponsored a Bush car to no avail in 2003 but it never ended up in the wall iirc.
I don’t know that Southerners are really upset by ‘reckless spending.’
Yes they are. But it’s because they watch Fox and listen to Rush and are told that the “reckless spending” is on the n*ggers and sp*cs.
No, this is not an overstatement. Talk to some of these people, but don’t first identify yourself as a progressive/liberal. Make it seem like you agree with them. Get them comfortable. Then they’ll tell you what they really think.
You see, they imagine that a minority of Americans are paying taxes (I’ve heard wingers claim figures as low as 20% — not kidding), and that most of their tax dollars go to welfare for the rest of the country. You may recall that last year one of the far-right think tanks came out with a study claiming only 50% of people pay income tax. Of course, that study was a bogus as the one claiming the Hummer was more environmental than a Prius, but both quickly became gospel on the far right.
So, when a GOP politician talks about “runaway spending” this is really just repeating the Reagan statements about “strapping young bucks” on welfare and welfare moms driving Cadillacs.
Now, you may wonder why so many low income, low education GOPers fall for this stuff when they themselves — and many of their friends — collect unemployment and welfare and child assistance and free school lunches and medicaid. It’s because they fall for two very classic perception fallacies. First, they think that they are the exception — among the few deserving recipients of such aid. (Similar to all the stories of the protesting pro-lifers who sneak in the back door of the abortion clinic, but explain that they “aren’t like all those sluts who get most abortions”.) Second, they often don’t even connect the fact they are getting such aid to the welfare programs that they are upset about. (Remember the infamous poster: “Keep your government hands off of my medicare”?)
Interestingly, this situation becomes less true if the taxes and benefits occur more locally. Here is Colorado three measures to cut taxes drastically were killed by a large margin last month despite the right wing surge. Initially they polled well … I guess the state wingers imagined that there is some sort of $20 Billion slush fund being distributed to Cadillac-driving welfare crack addicts in parts of Denver they never go to or something. But once all the school districts, fire and police departments, and local chambers of commerce sounded the alarm even the wingers (well, about half of them) mentally connected the state taxes to their local services and opted to keep the local services.
The problem is that on a national level it’s easy to imagine that most of your tax dollars are going to a huge black hole that doesn’t benefit you. And of course that actually is true … but what the wingers don’t get is that the black hole is called the “Department of Defense”, not “Welfare”.
What does “winning the South” mean? From a lot of the comments it seems that a lot of folks thinks that it means “winning with only white voters”. But for Democrats it really is both easier to get to the majority in a Southern state and more difficult to make that last 10%. Look at the voting in 2010 or in 2008. The margin between Democrats and Republicans was really narrow. Even a 2-1 loss means a swing of 17% could change the outcome to a narrow win.
So the demographics of the Southern states in question make a difference. And so does the differential turnout of those demographics. Folks like Perriello lost because not the same number of the demographics that turned out in 2008 turned out again in 2010. And the Republican turnout, although lower than 2008 was enough to win.
So you are probably only talking about convincing only 15% more of the white voters than are currently voting (that means some registration drives in the right areas) and turning out the other demographics in higher percentages. And in a lot of places, low income whites and white college students are demographics that are gettable. Low income whites tend to poll for Democrats but do not show up at the polls. College students are a more complex demographic in motivation in the South.
Reporting from SC, here. The SCDP is in shambles and has been a shell for at least 25 years. Re-inventing it is the only way. And, that means empowering Black South Carolinians. In all probability as low as it’s gone, it’s going lower to unfathomable depths until African-American pols are mature enough to shed the attitudes of a slavery/Jim Crow past. Then, allied with progressive and pragmatic whites, the SCDP will resurrect.
I’m 55-years-old. I’ll be lucky to live to see it.
Please say more. This can be read in multiple ways, depending on which specific SC politicians you are talking about.
I am a South Carolina native and am appalled that the Fowler family still runs the SCDP. Don was good 30 years ago, but the SCDP has atrohied. No family is that knowledgeable about SC politics; no wonder being blindsided is the story of the past decade.
In order to rebuild the SCDP, there needs to be a 46-county, every-precinct organizing from scratch effort. The only model I know for this kind of effort is the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. But to do this sort of organizing in the current context, the organization of an active caucus will require some critical coalition-building skills to not split the party between white progressives and African-American Democrats. And you have to be ready for local reactions from certain groups of Republicans as you begin to build strength.
I’m almost 65. I looking toward the day that I can’t point to South Carolina as a state that has finally dealt with its past and been transformed. There have been too many false springs so far.
“In order to rebuild the SCDP, there needs to be a 46-county, every-precinct organizing from scratch effort. The only model I know for this kind of effort is the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. But to do this sort of organizing in the current context, the organization of an active caucus will require some critical coalition-building skills to not split the party between white progressives and African-American Democrats.”
Agreed. 100%
I don’t consider myself an insider. Take my observations for what they’re worth. LBJ knew that integration would destroy the the Dixiecrat Party (southern Dems hardwired into the ruling oligarchy based on class and race divisions). The Republican Southern Strategy, first initiated by Nixon and Strom Thurmond, essentially coopted the Dixiecrats. The party was left a shell with a vacuum in the middle.
Rather than transform the SCDP into a radical populist organization with widespread appeal to working class whites and blacks, the Democratic structure essentially bought off the leaders of the black community. [The SCGOP pretends that the SCDP is a real political force. The real politics of SC gets transacted in intramural GOP battles.] Meanwhile, the SCDP is essentially divided into three factions: (1) the moderate, dying white power structure; (2) the black leadership which has feathered their individual nests while carefully not rocking the social/political/economic boat; and (3) a tiny progressive group of both races. Several years ago a former SCDP Chair balked at the cost of buying the black leadership for an election, saying “I only want to rent the black vote for a day, not buy it.”
For years I puzzled at the lack of black activism. Then, I concluded that the black base is totally disillusioned with both its own leaders AND white Democrats. Add a deep distrust of the system and a barely submerged fear of reprisal if blacks really appeared to be threatening white, GOP domination and you have a recipe for a mass of people who have effectively decided to wait until a charismatic leader offers a real chance of change.
The discussion of the tribalism above is spot-on. The few Democratic success stories can be divided as either black Dems in majority black districts carved as a token sop to the DOJ and white Dems who run away from the national party and convince deeply doubtful white South Carolinians that they’re really Republican-lites who wouldn’t dream of REALLY shaking up the third world economic system by empowering the poor and the people of color.
The newly energized Teapublicans and old-line GOP will most likely move to gerrymander as many majority black districts out of existence as possible. Losing the governorship to Haley will almost assuredly mean Jim Clyburn will lose in a newly-drawn district in ’12. I suspect that Obama will find a cushy position for him. I doubt that he’ll return to SC and try to resurrect the SCDP.
I could go on but, short of a Second Great Depression, I don’t forsee the SCDP becoming a viable political force in SC within decades.
That really depends on whether progressives start getting together and get out of duck-and-cover mode and stand as proud liberals and progressives.
I was in high school in the days in which the Republican Party lost its stigma. Key to that transformation was a guy named Bill Workman, who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate several times; but each time he built the Republican base. That was in the 1960s, and it was not until the 1990s that Republicans got a lock on the state. The last liberal (for SC) governor was Richard Riley. The first was Robert McNair who had Jim Clyburn as his protoge. During the 1970s (the last time I lived in SC), the Republicans had to submerge their racism in order to get elected; that’s when the “big government” dogwhistle started. And Strom Thurmond hired black staffers to reach out to black communities across the state. Needless to say, most folks remembered Dixiecrat Strom from 1948.
There will be a minority-majority district unless the Supreme Court invalidates it. I suspect that is the strategic thinking that went into the candidate selection and promotion for SC-01. But I would not count Jim Clyburn out, even in a gerrymandered district, in 2012 if Barack Obama is running for re-election. It’s damn hard to gerrymander Clyburn out of a minority-majority district in that part of the state.
The SCDP has to have some new blood (as in folks who are not 70 years old and were part of the civil rights movement and progressive — as in good education, roads, and public services – politics of that era). There is more opportunity for candidates as progressives in the Democratic Party than there are for conservatives in the Republican Party. Some more ambitious types might eventually realize that.
First, I’d like to retract my suggestion that even a progressive alternative to a Second Great Depression could convince South Carolina to go blue. South Carolinians have developed misreading history and current events into a high religion.
Second, a Supreme Court that empowers foreign corporations with the rights of citizens and the power to buy American elections will not hesitate to overturn Federal oversight of voting rights in SC.
Third, “ambitious types” wouldn’t be interested in riding a broke donkey with little legislative power when they could tap well-springs of GOP monies and legislative clout.