It would be an understatement to say that the?2014 Midterm Elections did not turn out?well for the Democratic Party.?The shellacking was nationwide, but no where was the?electoral beating more thorough than in the South. Incumbent Senators Mark Pryor (AR) and Mary Landrieu (LA) were crushed by double digits. North Carolina’s Kay Hagan at least kept her race close, but she too was defeated. In the House, resilient five-term Congressman John Barrow (GA-12), also fell victim to the GOP wave, as he?was handily defeated.
Mary Landrieu’s humiliating, but predictable, defeat on Saturday, put the final exclamation point on the dismal 2014 election cycle. Her campaign was already a political?corpse at that point anyway. The DSCC had long since?pulled the plug on her electoral life support. Saturday, the campaign was finally put out of its misery and the 2014 Congressional election cycle came to an anti-climactic end (aside from one uncalled House race in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District).
Two days later, Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast,?called on Democrats to “Dump Dixie”?. On social media, other liberals and progressives?chimed in to support Tomasky’s idea of giving up on the South. The comments section on a Liberal America piece, written by Bryan Trim (a Southern liberal who took issue with Tomasky) was?fairly representative of the “liberal voices” urging the party?to write off the?South. The idea of dismissing the South is not new in left-leaning circles. In 2006, Tom Schaller wrote a book titled Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South.?
Technically, Schaller was right. In the South,?Barack Obama did carry North Carolina in 2008, as well as winning?Virginia and Florida in both 2008 and 2012. However, those states were superfluous. He would have still won the White House?without them, albeit not by much (without carrying any Southern States, Obama would have ended up with 310 Electoral Votes in 2008 and 290 Electoral votes in 2012. 27o is the minimum number needed?for victory).
However, the strategy of “writing off the South” is short-sighted, defeatist, and it leaves little margin for error. Instead of conceding the South, and giving up on nearly one third of the country’s population, the Democrats should fight vigorously to regain turf in the South. Howard Dean’s fifty-state strategy had the right idea. But how can?Democrat regain a foothold in the South?
First of all, Democrats?need to understand that competing in the South does not mean the party needs to tailor its message to reactionary White?religious fundamentalists and social conservatives. Appealing to?”Old South” Democrats who voted for the likes of Lester Maddox or even?Zell Miller, is a losing strategy. Most of those folks are either dead or voting Republican by now, and if the?cost of winning them back is “dog whistle” politics, anti-immigration xenophobia, and “hippy punching”, the Democrats will alienate their base and be poorly positioned to represent the emerging “New South” coalition.
That emerging coalition of blacks, Latinos, and?educated?white professionals needs to be expanded to bring in more socially moderate working class whites and white millennials, but it can be built. To expand their coalition, Democrats need to emphasize populist themes and run on broadly popular issues like raising the minimum wage and making student loans more affordable.
We must?understand?that while stereotyping the South as uniquely racist is a mistake, it is nevertheless true, that the White vote in the South has all but abandoned the Democrats. 2014 exit polls showed that Travis Childers in Mississippi only got 16 percent of the white vote. Landrieu in Louisiana garnered just 18 percent, and even Michelle Nunn in Georgia only mustered 23 percent.??Those numbers make it easy to see why some on the left have thrown up their hands and said “forget the South”.
Yet, what the “abandon the South” crowd fails to recognize is that in some respects liberalism is making inroads in the South, and now is not a good time to throw in the towel. The?adage that Southern voters are stuck on conservative positions regarding God, guns, and gays, is no longer completely accurate. A 2014 poll conducted by The?Washington Post found that now 50 percent of Southerners support legalizing?same-sex marriages, to 42 percent who oppose permitting gay marriages. Also, public opinion polls have shown that while Southerners are strong supporters of the 2nd Amendment, a vast majority of them also want stricter background checks for gun purchases.
Democratic politicians in the South are slow to realize the shift in public opinion. A center-left coalition could be built in many states and districts if Democrats would not be so fearful of taking “controversial”, but popular, stands on divisive issues. Voters want politicians who will lead, not those who pander. Unfortunately, Democratic candidates are far too often?slow to answer the call to lead.
The South already has some strong liberal?voices in Congress. Alan Grayson (FL-09), Steve Cohen (TN-09), and John Lewis (GA-05) are some of the most progressive members of the US House. Of course their districts are more democratic-friendly than most Southern House districts, but they do illustrate that progressives can win in some pockets of the South. Reclaiming lost ground however will require making inroads in more conservative areas. That task is difficult but not impossible.
For all the handwringing and distress over?the?future of the South, liberal pundits are overlooking where progress has been made already. At the presidential level, ?Barack Obama carried Virginia for the Democrats for the?first time since 1964. And he did it not once, but twice. Many liberals are aware of that, but few seem to be aware that along the entire South Atlantic, from Virginia, through the Carolinas and Georgia, to Florida, Barack Obama had higher percentages of the vote in 2008 and 2012 than Al Gore (a White Southerner) received in 2000. Furthermore, Barack Obama performed better than Gore even in Mississippi, the?quintessential “Deep South” state.
No, winning in the South will not be easy. However, Democrats can win in the South if they adopt a bold fight to win strategy there, and they can do so without pandering to the narrow prejudices of those on the right. ?There are enough liberal and moderate voters living in the South. Democrats just need to mobilize them and present them with candidates worth voting for.
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Keith Brekhus is a longtime political activist who currently resides in Red Lodge, Montana. He has a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He was a Green Party candidate for Congress in 2002. His most recent political job was working as a Field Organizer in Arizona’s White Mountains, in support of Democratic Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick’s successful 2014 re-election campaign.
