Why 'SOUTHERN POLITICS' is OBSOLETE (featuring "facts" and "data"!!!) [View All]

[Dob Bole]

So I'm an amateur political scientist and strategist. I've also held public office in the rural South (ok, so I was Mayoral Youth Advisory Chairman when I was 17.) Every time the South is mentioned on DU, it is usually preceded by "Fuck the," is expanded to encompass nearly every part of the country so that it can be blamed for something, and an assumption is made that the majority of Southerners are Bull Connor. But most importantly, I'm about to prove that "the South" no longer exists in any of the ways that you think of it. Spectacular! On with the laser show!*


MYTH NUMBER A: RACE IS A DECIDING FACTOR

One time in 1948, Strom Thurmond ran for President as an independent Dixiecrat to oppose desegration. He only won three states.

One time in 1964, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Segregationists were pissed. Johnson carried Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, the Virginias, Florida, and the whole rest of the country, except Arizona. He won.

One time when Jimmy Carter was first elected governor of Georgia, he declared that segregation had no future and placed a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the statehouse. The result? Segregationists were pissed. Georgia went on to vote for Jimmy Carter again in 1976, and again over Ronald Reagan in 1980.

In 2006, Harold Ford, Jr. got the same percentage of the vote in a Tennessee senate race, that the last white guy who ran as a Democrat for Senate in Tennessee got. (48/51) Meanwhile, in neighboring-ish Virginia, Sen. George Allen lost re-election exactly because he made a racist remark.

The point: race is not a deciding factor in Southern politics. It was in 1920. Using math, we can determine that 1920 was approximately 87 years ago.
There are still racists in the South, to be sure, (and especially lots of ethnocentrists) but they are a minority embedded within the Republican party.


MYTH NUMBER B: DEMOCRATS DO NOT GET SOUTHERN CULTURE, AND/OR SOUTHERN CULTURE IS INHERENTLY UN-DEMOCRATIC

I, too, have fallen prey to this myth in the past. I have suggested that Democrats should be stuffing grits in their mouths, and washing them down with sweet tea. I have suggested that they fry their fish, before going to a tent revival, and using the John Edwards accent. And for the love of God, they should be populists like Huey Long.

While these could help, the truth is that the South, and its culture, have actually shrunk quite a bit. "The South," as understood in ethnic-groupish terms, is now concentrated in a handful of states, half of which Bill Clinton won.

MYTH NUMBER C: PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS AND THE SOLID SOUTH

Between the 1880s and 1920 (when racists DID dominate southern politics) Southern states never voted for a Republican candidate. Honestly, they were really pissed about losing the Civil War. Afterwards, though, there was NEVER a "Solid South" again! The South is gone, it's not a voting bloc!

Since World War II, only two Presidential candidates have won the area formerly known as Solid South (except in national landslides.) They were Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. How did they win in the South? It's NOT THE SOUTH STUPID, YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT!


THE POINT: IT'S NOT THE SOUTH, STUPID! IT'S THE BIBLE BELT!!!

The South, as defined in Old South, racial terms, fails to exist even when pundits and political strategists want it to. What they should be paying attention to instead is the Bible Belt, pictured here:




The area in red is where evangelicals, of at least two primary skin colors, make up a majority of the electorate. (I can't wait to hear the ignorant things you post about evangelicals.) Does it now make sense that the last two Democratic presidents were Southern Baptists, and that the last five losers were not? That the winner of the Presidential election is always the person who carries Missouri? That Democratic control of the Senate depended on races in Missouri, Virginia, and Florida in 2006? It's the Bible, stupid!

Discuss.







*The laser show takes place at Stone Mountain, Georgia. It is in the South.