Are the Dems Extinct in the South?

     I have to admit that my gut reaction to this question is yes. I tend to agree with Michael Tomasky. As he points out, with the loss of Mary Landrieu, the Dems have lost their last Senator in the Deep South and they should write it off as they don't need it.

     http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/08/dems-it-s-time-to-dump-dixie.html

     Harry Enten over at FiveThirtyEight argues otherwise. He makes some good and interesting points. For one thing the President 

      "1. What do you mean by the South? Democrats are arguably doing their best in at least 20 years in three of the five most populous southern states. President Obama won Florida two consecutive times. In 2008, Obama was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win in North Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Even as Obama lost the Tar Heel State in 2012, Democratic House candidates there won a majority of the vote. Not only was Obama the first Democrat to win Virginia since 1964, but the state has two Democratic senators for the first time since 1973, and Terry McAuliffe was the first gubernatorial candidate of either party to win the governorship when his party held the presidency since 1973."

      "So maybe people really mean Democrats are hopeless in the Deep South? That’s a bit harder to rebut. Then again, you’re also talking about just a handful of states."

      http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/democrats-shouldnt-give-up-on-the-south/

      For the record, Tomasky who Enten references makes it clear he's talking about the Deep South. Even here Enten argues things are not quite totally hopeless. 

      "2. There are still Democrats in the South — even the Deep South.Democrats hold U.S. congressional seats in every former Confederate state except Arkansas. Even if Democrats cannot win statewide in places like Alabama or Mississippi, they still hold a base of power in these states. Yes, most of these congressional seats are from majority-black districts, but those seats are worth every bit as much as those held in majority-white districts."

     Obviously they are worth just as much but the trouble is that they're all located in one big clump where they have the minimum statewide effect in elections. He also argues that Obama didn't do much worse than Kerry and Gore in the South. However, I find point number 4 questionable. 

      "4. Blue Dog Democrats may return. Democratic hopelessness in the South is being driven, in part, by the results in 2014, when several of the party’s well-known incumbent senators lost seats (Sen. Kay Hagan in North Carolina and Sen. Mark Pryor in Arkansas, for example). But that’s more of an anomaly than you might think."

       It seems to me that the death of the Blue Dogs in 2014 can be seen as the endgame of a very long political evolution that goes back as many as 76 years, or certainly at least 66 years -going back to Harry Truman desegregating the armed forces and Strom Thurmond bolting the Democratic party. 

      The Blue Dogs were an 'organic' phenomenon, they came from a time when the Solid South was Solid Democrat. As the South has slowly turned from Solid Democrat to Solid Republican, the Blue Dogs were those stubborn ones from the older tradition like Zell Miller who insisted that with all his criticism of the Democratic party he would stay in the party as 'I was here first.' 

     http://www.amazon.com/2004-RNC-Senator-Zell-Miller/dp/B009GAFPLY/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1418229979&sr=1-3&keywords=zell+miller

     I'm not at all clear that the BDs are coming back-or for that matter if Dems should want them back. However, point number 5 is excellent-he is dead on: every US election these days ends up being 'a wave.' You never know where the next one is going to come from. 

     "5. You never know when the next wave is going to strike. Another thing Dhrumil and I found was that wave elections are a lot more common than they used to be. Every election since 2006, except for 2012, was a wave year. In the waves of 2006 and 2008, Democrats were picking up House seats in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia. They nearly won a Senate seat in Tennessee. The 2014 wave, on the other hand, helped Republicans pick up governorships in solid blue states such as Illinois and Maryland."

     "Most predictions of a “new normal” in politics are fleeting — Karl Rove had plans for a permanent GOP majority in the early 2000s, and before that Republicans had a lock on the White House (untilthey didn’t) and Democrats had a lock on Congress (until they didn’t). Democratic extinction in the South isn’t likely to be any different."

     I think this piece is at least a useful corrective to be read against stuff like what Greg Sargent has written about how much trouble the Democratic party is in. True, there are some sobering problems in dealing with the GOP's alleged lock of the House and how well the GOP has done recently at the state level. 

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2014/12/greg-sargent-wins-debbie-downer-of-year.html

    I like that at least Enten is not such a Debbie Downer as Sargent who doesn't seem to realize that all majorities are permanent till they don't and all locks are permanent until they aren't and that the GOP's 'lock on the House' will go on for as long as it will till it doesn't anymore. 

    Nevertheless, it's important to be clear why I don't necessarily agree with Enten vs. Tomasky. The point about Tomasky is less about 'forgetting about the South' in terms of not trying to win elections there anymore than forget about the 'cultural wars' where Dems have to be careful how liberal they are lest they alienate the South. 

    I think it's a waste of time trying not to alienate the South. I think the point is well taken that at least a decent part of the non Deep South is reachable. As for the Deep South while there are still enclaves of Democratic influence alas they are packed too densely to have any statewide influence. 

   I do agree with Sargent that the Dems need to come up with a plan to turn around things at the state level-a big part of which is fighting back on redistricting.