Democrats' real Southern problem

Part II: Winning back the South by embracing white Southern culture

Glen Browder is Eminent Scholar in American Democracy at Jacksonville State University and a former Democratic congressman from Alabama's 3rd District. The report from which this essay is condensed first appeared on the Web site, SouthNow.org, of the UNC Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life. Browder's e-mail address is browder@jsu.edu

It seems like everybody's got a Southern cure for my struggling Democratic Party these days — from reframing progressive values for a Southern audience, to energizing the region's black voters, to putting a white Southerner atop the national ticket, to simply ignoring the South.

But most of these recommendations seem to be weak, narrow, self-serving fixes. What's missing is practical advice grounded in theoretical analysis that deals with the basic reasons and future prospects for our Democratic distemper.

Here's some very different and pointed advice — intended as the latter sort — for new Chairman Howard Dean and my party, from a long-time public official in Alabama and Washington who also is a longer-time academic analyst of regional and national developments.

More personally, I'm a Southern white Democrat who's not interested in switching parties, launching petty recriminations, or sitting in silent stupor while things deteriorate beyond repair.

The Democratic Party is painfully aware of its so-called "Southern problem" — the fact that most whites in this region used to vote for the donkey and now vote for the elephant. However, our national party leaders still seemingly view their Southern problem as a wardrobe malfunction, a debating fault, a turnout matter amenable to willful adjustment within their skilled capacity for progressive, competitive coalition.

Consequently, their approach to corrective action errs in two very serious respects.

In the first place, I'm doubtful that my party understands the nature, magnitude and potential permanency of its problem. The party leadership insufficiently comprehends the historical dynamics of Southern and national politics — dynamics that for several decades have been entrenching our diminished standing in a new, fully-developed, rational/national two-party political system (arguably the first such system in our nation's history).

Just as important, there appears to be, among many Democratic leaders and activists, a dysfunctional mindset, an elitist cultural conceit that resists the central, necessary correction — dealing aggressively and positively with the South and our transforming partisan environment — for future revival in heartland America.

I believe that the Democratic Party's real problems are 1) its inability or refusal to acknowledge the historic, systemic dynamics of Southern and national politics, and 2) its stubborn reluctance regarding a potentially workable Southern solution to our entrenching national troubles.

The current typology of "blue America vs. red America" is an appropriate framework for my thesis about the Democratic Party's wayward ways and a possible solution.

It seems to me that too many extremely "blue Democrats" (including some good friends of mine) evidence, in addition to their indignant de nial of historical, systemic dynamics, an intense antagonism toward "red America" in general. And, more specifically, they hold particular disdain for the South as the freakish, ignorant, racist embodiment of that redness.

While they realize that we need heartland votes, these extremely blue Democrats (I'll call them BluDems for short) reflexively and awkwardly flinch every time someone suggests that the Democratic Party's future may course through Dixie.

Slate columnist Timothy Noah expressed that disdain very bluntly in proclaiming, prior to the 2004 elections, that "Democrats don't really need those Southern votes."

John Kerry unfortunately articulated a speculative variation of that reasoning shortly thereafter, proclaiming in a Dartmouth College speech that "Everybody always makes the mistake of looking South. Al Gore proved he could have been president of the United States without winning one Southern state, including his own."

Kerry soon reversed course in his campaign rhetoric, but he went on to lose — as did Gore — every Southern state and the Electoral College.

The debilitating fault of our party's prevailing mindset is not liberalism simply and by itself, although contemporary liberalism is unattractively out of step with heartland culture (not only because of Republican propaganda, but also because of Democratic obsession with contentious issue positions).

The most irritating aspect of our party's "blue conceit" is a paralyzing conviction of angry, bewildered, self-serving righteousness that blinds us to historical reality and impedes corrective action for our future. (To

wit: "We cannot believe so many redneck idiots voted for that boob. But we will prevail, because we are America.")

At the end of their grieving, however, allegiant Democrats have to figure out how to reach out to the American heartland.

Maybe it's time to consider trying the Southern road — but with a different and realistic game plan. There are several reasons why this strategy makes sense for our party.

The most compelling argument is the obvious fact that the Old Confederacy possesses over half the Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency. Add border states Oklahoma, Kentucky and West Virginia, and the proportion climbs to about two-thirds of the magic number.

Census data show even more growth in the future; and our party simply cannot afford to forfeit, totally, such an electoral bloc bounty.

The Democratic Party also must devise a new Southern game plan because of ideological and issue ramifications that extend beyond the Old Confederacy.

The historical record suggests that the key to Democratic victory is crafting a message that wins at least three or four Southern states and that consequently appeals to similar cultural and political affinities in important areas elsewhere.

Most important for the long run, however, the Democrats should re-engage the South because any party that aspires to lead America ought to have a national message and constituency.

Allow me to offer my home state of Alabama and the 2004 election as an example of what happens when our national party writes off the South and the partisan struggle runs cynically awry. John Kerry visited us early, raised some money, promised to fight in all 50 states — and we never saw him again.

State and local Democratic candidates were swamped in the Republican tide.

Alabama Democrats have lost too many races in similar situations over the past few years, and it is getting increasingly difficult to recruit candidates and raise money.

Our candidates for Congress, governor, state Legislature, sheriff, county commissioner and other offices — including some outstanding prospective public leaders — have to distance themselves from the national party, run flawless campaigns on limited resources, and hope the Republicans screw up, just to be competitive.

This Democratic policy of hit-and-run politics is not likely to serve the progressive interests of an evolving Alabama. It reinforces the tendency of culturally, religiously and economically conservative white citizens to vote overwhelmingly Republican; and it encourages black citizens to cast their votes, virtually en masse and futilely, for the atrophying opposition.

The good people of this area and America deserve better from my party.

Of course, my contention invites ridicule as trite provincialism. But I really wonder whether powerful BluDem partisans understand Southern history and transformational dynamics, whether they realize that the Democratic Party could struggle again in 2008, and into the foreseeable future, as the minority party in a logically coherent, fundamentally sound, and stable national arrangement.

Comprehending the full ramifications of the systemically altered national environment requires a quick review of Southern history and the region's uneasy relationship within the broader American nation.

The South has always operated as a problematic, contradictory, stubborn subset of America, operating from the beginning as a regional, semi-colonial society warped forever through the original sin of slavery. It confounded the national democratic experiment with a perverse politics of caste and class (overlapping racism and poverty) for most of its history; and it has engaged in tortuous consequent wrangling and soul-searching for the past half century.

Southern politics is, in historical respect, a continuously calculated pattern of manipulation, a series of "Southern strategies" designed to maximize regional culture, independence, and power within the American national system.

Actually, the original "Southern strategy" was the constitutional accommodation of Southern concerns (particularly protecting slavery) as a condition of agreement to the U.S. Constitution and participation in the American federal system until the Civil War.

Then, after re-assuming control of its affairs and until the middle of the 20th century, the South continued functioning as a regional system of white, one-party rule in complicit arrangement with the national Democratic Party, which secured for itself a monopoly on this vast region's votes for Congress and the White House.

When the Democrats began to question and reject this discomforting relationship during the 1950s and 1960s (and began courting newly enfranchised blacks), white Southerners instinctively looked for more responsive national partners. They gradually allied with the Republican Party in a strategic relationship which, like the earlier Democratic version, was based on racial tensions in the Old Confederacy.

Racism continues to be an impor tant force in contemporary Southern life. However, this factor no longer dominates as the perverse explanation of Southern politics or as the singular basis of Southern strategy.

Over time, as the South has accommodated inevitable change, Southern politics has shifted toward broader class considerations — factors that sometimes mirror its historical racial system but just as often reflect contemporary social, religious and economic differences between black and white society.

Consequently, its white majority generally inclines toward the Republicans and its black minority aligns almost totally with the Democrats.

White and black Southerners now are experiencing, essentially, a rational regional alignment with the national parties, a logical normalization of politics similar to that of the rest of the nation.

In that process of rational nationalization, both Southern politics and American democracy are being transformed; and the United States is developing a real two-party system with Republicans pretty much in charge.

As a Southern politician and academician during the past few decades, I've always been amazed that the Democratic Party never seemed to grasp Southern strategic history and the power of cultural considerations in the Southern mentality.

Did they ever question why both whites and blacks in this region voted Democratic for so long during the latter half of the past century? Did they realize that this pattern inevitably would end? Did the Democratic national leadership just assume that everybody down here would forever vote outdated partisan loyalties?

And why didn't somebody notice long ago that Democratic officials were disappearing from the Southern political landscape?

Democratic leaders apparently ignored or accepted these regional trends; and the South has become a Republican bastion.

Democrats now are competitive in certain circumstances and in various locales, but they generally and increasingly are relegated to "holding on" and minority status.

Furthermore, we now find ourselves as the loyal opposition in most forums of public power in a rational/national two-party system.

Some prognosticators insist that President Bush and his backers will over-reach and blunder fatally. Some say that the American people will smarten up eventually.

Others opportunistically hope that a third party candidate will afflict the Republicans (a reverse Ralph Nader), allowing a Democrat to win with a plurality rather than a majority.

But they are like dinosaurs waiting for the weather to change: The weather is not going to change.

Indeed, the very ground is shifting beneath us. And what is called for is nothing less than all of us reconceptualizing our roles.

Next Sunday: What to do?