Outlook: Is the South Worth Winning?
Thomas Schaller
Political Scientist, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Friday, November 14, 2003; 2:00 p.m ET
Here's some advice for Howard Dean and all the rest of the Democratic presidential hopefuls: Forget about the guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. Forget about their neighbors too. Thomas Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, argues
in this Sunday's Outlook section that the Democrats should defy conventional wisdom, give up the South and concentrate their resources and time in other parts of the country. There are other routes to the White House, Schaller asserts in his essay, "The Democrats Need a Non-Southern
Strategy."
Schaller will be online Friday, Nov. 14 at 2 p.m. ET, to discuss his article.
Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.
Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control
over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
Arlington, Va.:
While I agree the Democrats have totally lost the South, I disagree with including Florida in the Southern category. As I understand it, demographics in Florida are shifting to even more transplanted Northerners, senior citizens (those transplanted Northerns), and Hispanics. Since all those groups tend to vote Democratic, do you think Florida could still be in play?
Thomas Schaller: Florida is clearly the most exceptional state, for many reasons but mostly because it is exceptionally-unsouthern in its population, both the immigrants and the transplanted. so, if it had to qualify my argument by removing one state of the 12, of course FL would be it. The problem is Jeb. Does anyone think that machine down there is going to get caught flat again?
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Rochester, N.Y.:
Doesn't the strategy also depend on the candidate? If Clark somehow miraculously takes the nomination, the Democrats have a far more plausible chance than they do with Dean. Also, if the Democrats surrender the South, does that make it that much easier for the GOP to pour resources into MO, MI, OH, PA?
Thomas Schaller: All elections are candidate-dependent, of course. And in the longer version of this piece (it went to 5500 words at one point, as i've been writing it on and off again since June), i talk about the implications of this strategy. obviously, it sort of implies a non-southern nominee. but it doesn't imply a non-southern veep. indeed, precisely because groups common to the south (e.g. the famed "nascar" dads) exist outside the south in places like central missouri, northern new hampshire, western PA or southern IL, having a southerner to swing the non-southern states is, in my view, the perfect combination. I think Edwards is the best candidate this year for veep, as he has great personal messge, policy substance, and is charismatic.
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Snellville, Ga.:
Our democracy is at extreme risk: How tragic it is to think that the Democrats might find it expedient not to address a whole region of our country. Moreover, the South is growing -- and is gaining more electoral power with each new census. Conversely, the electoral powerhouses of the North and East, like NY, OH, PA, MI, and IL although still strong, have lost electoral votes. Based on shifting demographics, this is likely to continue.
The president is to be the chief executive for us all and not addressing Southerners (who are increasingly multi-racial) is helping to Balkanize our beloved union -- based on demographics. Perhaps, what the Democrats need to do is to better define their mission and find the vocabulary and social skills to address old allies (white Southerners and Northern ethnic whites who now vote for GOP candidates) and embrace new voters (immigrants and young people). Also, the Democrats must better address African-Americans needs and not take this important block of voters for granted. For many African-Americans (including myself -- a black female) we vote for Democrats not because we are particularly impressed and happy with them, but we perceive them as the “lesser of two evils”. As the black electorate becomes more sophisticated I see this loyalty abating.
Democrats must shift their paradigm and actively engage in better relationships with all regions and people in the United States. What the Democrats have is an enormous PR problem.
Thomas Schaller: Were MCkinley, TRoosevelt, Harding, Coolidge presidents for all of us? Just ask old southerners....they rose to greet FDR because the northern-western GOP coalition that ruled America for 72 years from civil war to FDR did so with little attention paid to the south. sure, that led to many of the south's intractable problems. but from a political-electoral winning calculus, it worked.
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Farragut West, Washington, D.C.:
Isn't it possible that the Democratic party is in for long-term period of decline? The Republicans are busy consolidating power in all branches of government. Through redistricing, they'll make sure they have a majority in the house for years to come and President Bush might look vulnerable if there weren't so many clowns chasing after his job.
I'm a perfect example of what scares the Democratic party. I voted for Democrats almost exlusively until the last election. Now I see a party so empty of ideas I can't even fathom voting for another Dem.
Thomas Schaller: Oh, I think it's very possible. That's why the Dems need to stop thinking retrospectively. Santayana was right about those who fail to understand history being doomed to repeat it. But those who try to repeat history are doomed to fail! And by trying to cobble together the remnants of a North-South democratic coalition that worked great for 36 years from 1932 to 1968 is so outdated in its thinking it's almost appalling. Prospective thinking wins. Indeed, remember what FDR did: he took the solid Democratic south and figured out how to take those new northern immigrants (jews, italians, east europeans, irish) and convert the NE for the Dems into a coalition that ruled.
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Phoenix, Ariz. :
If the Democrat presidential nominee abandons the South as you claim he should, how do Democrats prevent a loss of four Senate seats (Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina) they currently hold, but stand to lose in 2004? The loss of all of those seats would surely have a profoundly negative effect for Senate Democrats for years to come.
Thomas Schaller: This is a toughie. Obviously, there will always be downballot opportunities, and so my argument is intentionally conscripted (or was in the original, longer version) to say that Dems should fight the winnable or worthy fights down south. For example, those familiar with the Judis-Texiera analysis of progressive-centrist "ideopolis" growth will note that places like the research triangle in NC and Charlottesville, VA, are hopeful places for dems. But they are no foundation upon which to win statewide races or electoral votes.
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Millbrae, Calif.:
By party line, how does the South breakdown by income and race?
Thomas Schaller: I am not a census-data guru, so I cannot really answer this question directly. But what I would suggest is going to the site for the Tax Foundation. The did a recent report where they looked at how each state does in the national redistribution of federal dollars, which of course move from states with higher average incomes to lower ones. So, some poorer states get $1.30 for every federal tax dollar they send to DC; richer states may get back only $.80 for every dollar. And guess what? My memory of the numbers may be off here, but something like 15 of the 17 poorest states went for Bush, and 11 of the 13 richest went for Gore. Yeesh! That means those who are receiving the most federal dole are voting for the candidate who cuts programs and taxes on the rich, and those who pay those taxes are voting for the guy who is not going to cut them. Neither group is voting in their own interst, but at least the wealther citizens are voting more nobly, in my view.
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Bowie, Md.:
It's impossible for me to think of Southern politics without thinking in terms of racial and religious divisiveness. Does 9/11 and the Iraq invasion basically solidify the President as someone "who's showing those people who the boss is?"
Thomas Schaller: The Pew Center jsut released a major poll. I have not read all of it, but I've read summaries and the details reported widely in the news the past few weeks. And what they learned is that the most traditionalist and militaristic states are in the South -- which means, in my view, the hardest to convert back from Bush to Democratic column. Remember, my argument is about efficiency and economy of scarce resources: You have to spend where the expected returns are greatest. And the south isn't the place.
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Gaithersburg, Md.:
We hear often about the "New South." Are you suggesting it's a myth, and that religious and racial divisions are just a fact of life there to which Democrats should simply surrender?
Thomas Schaller: I have lived in the south. Granted, in two college towns: tallahassee, FL and chapel hill, NC. but i lived on the fringes of Frenchtown in Tallahassee, which is as poor and destitute as some of the toughest neighborhoods of SE washington. In Chapel Hill, by contrast, I lived in Chatham, not Orange county, and chatham is a mixed-race but almost uniformly rural, poor county. Not much is changing in these parts, I can assure you. But the New South exists, sure, in places like Atlanta and Charlotte and Orlando. But these new economic centers, once you get outside the african american strongholds and college towns, look like the sorts of places that elect, well, elect people like Newt Gingrich -- from the GA suburbs. The new South votes the same way the old south did, only moreso Republican.
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Alexandria, Va.:
For too long, the national Democratic party has let the South shape its policies in a futile effort for its candidates to win Southern votes. If Democrats were to decide to ditch the South, do you see more liberal national candidates on the horizon?
Thomas Schaller: No, I do not. Another part of the longer version my post editor and I had to leave on the cutting table addressed the issue of whether a non-southern strategy implies a leftward lurch for the Democrats. It doesn't. Too often we get trapped into thinking all politics and issues fall on a single, left-right dimension. they don't. 21st century issues don't fall along 20th century political dimensions. can you tell me what somebody's position on school choice is based on their position on prescription drug benefit for medicare?
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Belle Mead, N.J.:
I never thought that you could win the presidency without winning in the "South." This article opened my eyes. But, shouldn't the Democrats at least put up a semblance of a fight to tie up some of the formidable resources of the GOP
Thomas Schaller: Several people have asked this questions. Start with this fact: any amount subtracted from a ratio yields a wider ratio. If GOP has $240M to spend to Dems $160 (a 3:2 ratio), and Dems gamble $40M in south to "keep the GOP honest" but Rove counters with $40M to play it safe, what's the result? GOP now has $200M to $120M, a wider, 5:3 ratio to spend elsewhere. Unless DEMS are certain that $40M will yield something, spending it is a waste and coutnerproductive. and the more you spend, the wider that ratio becomes. Pitchers never throw a fastball to a fastball hitter who can't hit the curve just to "keep him honest." until he learns to hit the curve, you send him a steady diet of curveballs. the fastball to keep him honest ends up over the fence.
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Stanhope, N.J.:
What about the "big if"? What are Dean's chances in the blue states?
Thomas Schaller: Look, Dean and every other candidates' chances in the "big if" states could be tough. If iraq and the economy break his way (and given Bush's life story, when hasn't something broken his way?) nobody can beat him. If Dems are losing the MDs, MAs, NYs....it's over anyway. I think there are gains in those blue states to be made to solidify narrow wins in 2000 in places like OR, NM, WI, IA.
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Dallas, Tex.:
Everyone keeps saying Democrats are to blame,
but aren't Southern voters shutting themselves off
by continuing to side with only one political party?
Everyone is always talking about the big tent, but if
the Democrats employ a non-Southern strategy,
aren't Southerners risking being caught on the
outside looking in?
Thomas Schaller: Yes, they are. And that's exactly where they were for seven decades following the civil war. Look, the impolite way to put this is that the South is the region behind the rest of the nation; the polite and perfectly legitimate way is to view it as the region that puts the brakes on the rest of the country. it is the most traditionalist region, scholars and pundits and pollster all agree. So i guess your question devolves into this one: Does the country, or the Democratic party, want to be progressive, temporally-speaking, or status-quo oriented? There are legitimate arguments for moving forward quickly; indeed, the Constitution was written to prevent just that. But there and problems to moving too slowly, too. Just ask the 40 percent of american children who live below the poverty line. That's 2 in 5 in the wealthiest country the planet has known. Does that sound like a future-oriented country to you? And the irony is that poverty in the south is still very problematic.
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Atlanta, Ga.:
Your article mentions that Democrats should eye the Southwest at the expense of the South because of the large and growing Hispanic population in the Southwest. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, six southern cities (Raleigh, Atlanta, Greensboro, Charlotte, Nashville, and Greenville) have experienced "hypergrowth" in Hispanic populations. Hypergrowth is defined as a greater than 300 percent growth in Latinos since 1980. Given this, isn't it premature for the Dems. to be writing off the South?
Thomas Schaller: I sort of addressed the issue earlier, with the discussion of "ideopolis" growth in selected areas of the south. Yes, i lived in NC and FL and saw the surprising numbers of Hispanics moving and settling there. Quite remarkable. But remember those percentages tend to be calculated with a low denominator to begin with. If a state's Hisp pop jumps from 1 percent to 4 percent, that's a 300% growth, but if it jumps from 20% to 30%, that's only a 50% growth -- even though the latter state has 10% absolute more hispanics and the former only gain 3% absolutely. I believe in MD our hispanic population grew the last decade by more than 100%, but it's still small comparatively. Ah, as twain said: Lies, damn lies and statistics. Not calling you a liar, please understand. Just saying that number can deceive.
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Rockville, Md.:
In "Making of the President: 1968" Howard Phillips quotes a Republican figure (I forget who) as wanting to emphasize racial issues saying "Divide the country in half, and we get the bigger half."
Is non-competitive in the South the price the Democrats pay for being right about Civil Rights, or are the issues a lot deeper than that?
Thomas Schaller: Short answer: No doubt. Longer answer: This is exactly what Nixon tried to do, and has now succeeded. Remember, he didn't figure this out in 1960, and in fact, people may not realize this but JFK/RFK played the race card in 1960 by handing out pictures of Nixon smiling with black children to WHITE neighborhoods. The GOP was for decades the party of blacks, because of Lincoln's historic role. When Nixon realized he could flip the script and get into the white house, he did. The Dems did the right thing, siding with history and justice, and no good deed goes unpunished now, does it? (P.S.: I think it was one of the southern senators, perhaps GA's russell, who made that quip when LBJ signed the civil rights act of 64 or the voting rights act of 65....but don't hold me to that, plz. I haven't slept much this week.)
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Huntsville, Ala.:
Thomas Schaller is exactly the problem with the Democratic party: Northeast liberals telling them how stupid Southerners are to vote with their hearts and minds. Does Professor Schaller know the results of the census bureaus study of segregation? That the most segregated areas of the country are not in the South, but in New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois?
Thomas Schaller: I have studied racial segregation formally, even calculated racial segregation indices. Without going into too much detail, the point here is that, just because blacks and white are intermingled in both urban and even rural areas of, say, NC (low segregation) and highly concentrated in a few areas of states like PA (almost all in Pittz and Philly) that doesn't mean that geographic segregation is a perfect proxy for voting polarity. indeed, perhaps becuse blacks and whites live so close together they vote in different directions. I lived in Chatham County, NC, a rural black-white poor county OUTSIDE chapel hill when I went to school there. I waited tables (only male, because i was told that's women's work, sir) in a fish fry restaurant where, after church on sunday, the patrons would file in from their respective parishes. but they didn't consort much with each other, and i could either literally hear (or invidiously feel) racism moving in both directions between the tables. And this despite the fact that their stations in life were essentially the same. So long as divide-and-conquer working class voters works, the GOP will prevail. I never said southerners were stupid, and don't think they are.
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Camp Springs:
Our country has been highly mobile for 50 years and isn't getting any less so. Since many people in South used to live in Pennsylvania (and vice versa) why isn't the country becoming more politically homogenious?
Or is it becoming more homogenious, and the current divisiveness just all of use standing between the 50- and two different 40-yard lines? (e.g. the issues are narrower, but the postions on minor differences are more intractible)
Thomas Schaller: I would refer you to two great articles in recent but separate issue of the Atlantic monthly by jon rauch and david brooks. rauch, who i know and is a super thinker and writer, talks about how people are acculturating into american life despite arriving as recently as a few years ago and moving around. brooks talks about how we are on the surface heterogeneous, but really cluster ourselves, such as how Dems in DC area live in Montgomery County, MD, and Republicans live in Northern, VA. people gravitate naturally to similar people. were it only less so, we'd have the sort of melting pot some like myself would like to see. but brooks concludes that it's not melting, merely congealing. i agree.
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Chevy Chase, Md.:
Hi Tom,
Should the Democrats also abandon the Rocky Mountain states which have become equally hostile to Democrats. Along with the South, this is the fastest growing area of the country. To win without any Rocky Mountain or Southern states strikes me as the equivalent of drawing an inside straight -- possible but not very likely. Shouldn't the Democrats really work hard on mobilizing constituencies like Latinos who vote at low rates in order to turn some of these states like AZ, FL and TX more Democratic?
Thomas Schaller: To me, the most puzzlng region in american is the rocky mountain states. These are the states that vote for independents and alternative candidaets. (go check perot's 1992 totals again.) they are also the progressive states that gave women the right to vote in state elections BEFORE passage of the 19th amendment. frankly. i'm not sure why they're so republican. i'd be happy to learn from a reader why. As for the SW and hispanics, i do talk at lenght about that in the piece, and if I thought cubans might swing democratic i'd put FL back in the competitive column.
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Boston, Mass.:
This is a broad question, but briefly, why is the south so different?
Many of us here in New England cannot fathom why anyone would display a Confederate flag. And the outpouring of support for ex-Justice Moore and his 10 commandments is also baffling -- is there any way that a document that starts "I am the Lord your God" could -not- be considered to be an establishment of religion?
Thomas Schaller: VOlumes, quite literally, have been written on this subject. But as a native new yorker, i'd be remiss if i did not remind you (Huntsville, AL, you still with us, I hope?) that some of the WORST race riots in american occurred in cities including rochester and boston. the north may not have the symbolism, but there is still a residual problem in many places there -- but it's more subtle and refined, what political scientists call "the new racism." but that's too long a sidebar for today....
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Alexandria, Va.:
Professor Schaller, I agree completely with your theory. Gore came within 4,000 votes in New Hampshire of winning the presidency without a single Southern state. Thus, it could be done. Given the fundraising disadvantage of the Democrats, they should probably spend little time and money trying to win Southern electoral votes. However, it may still be valuable to have a Southerner on the ticket, either for Pres. or for V.P. To convince undecided non-Southerners to vote Democrat in Nov. 2004, it may help to have a Southerner on the ticket. Many undecided non-Southerners seem convinced that, no matter what a Democratic candidate says, he cannot possibly be moderate enough to lead the nation unless he is from the South. The current conventional wisdom is that there are no more undecided voters and that the nation is completely polarized. Thus, everyone focuses on the "base." Is this really a sure bet? What do you think of the idea of putting a Southerner on the ticket to help win over the fence-sitting voters in the Northern, Great Lakes, and West Coast states?
Thomas Schaller: Base v. independents. Well, there is not majority party in america, at least based on survey responses and registration. for some reason, the "greatest generation" didn't do such a great job of socializing its partisan values into its progeny, i'm sorry to say. since the early 1960s, if not earlier, partisan attachments ahve crumbled. part of that is the failure of elites, vietnam disenchantment, and the tensions taht the civil rights movement created. but it's sad, really, that people don't pick a party, even they don't agree with it fully, and work from within to change and promote it -- rather than throwing their hands up and staying home. but party elites and elected officials, because they have set themselves up in safe districts, have no incentive to party build. i wish it were not true, but consider that of thet 434 house seats each two years, both parties agree that only 30 or 40 are even in play. that's not democracy. that's two-party plutocracy.
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