What if there were still white Southern Democrats?

[Recursion]

I mean, obviously there are some, but I mean what if they were still around at the levels they were at 30 years ago?

What do you think the primary would look like in that situation?

[texasfiddler]

1. More like a Trump rally

Just a hunch!

[Hortensis]

11. :) Well, there was actually a huge schism between Democratic factions.

The one you'd expect between progressive liberals and the knuckle-dragging, frequently rabidly racist, hard-core conservatives who lead the Southern faction.

Mercifully, Southern Democrats were almost always an angry, frustrated minority. Kind of like Sanders' insurgent extremist base today, the RW extremists were always seeking a way to break out of control. But when they threatened the interests of both parties, the Republican Party at that time had liberal and moderate conservative factions who joined with Democrats to protect the mandates of their majorities.

To give them some due, the New Deal could not have been passed if most Southern Democratic leaders had joined up with the huge, hard-core Republican opposition to stop it. They didn't. They stayed and worked for it, even though benefiting and empowering the AA who were consolidating in the Democratic Party to pass it caused real electoral problems for the southern politicians.

[beachbumbob]

2. still plenty of white democratic southern voters around

they still make up the largest portion of the southern democratic voting block

[TwilightZone]

3. Still some around, and they're just as liberal or more so than the average.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-makes-southern-democrats-unique/

[mcar]

4. I'm a white Democrat in the south

There are many of us. But I take your point. When I moved to West Central FL in 1992, it was all Southern Democrats. Then many of them went Jeb! Bush Republican, then Tea Party, now cultists.

[samnsara]

5. Dixiecrats you mean?..I think my grandparents were Dixiecrats...

...they relocated from Oklahoma to Washington State. They were such good caring people but once inna while they would casually use a word, term or something that would make me cringe.

[Hoyt]

9. Yep, glad the Dixiecrats are gone. They really weren't Democrats. I never considered Wallace a Dem.

[SCantiGOP]

6. Wasn't 30 years ago

More like 50 years ago.
The start of the transition was Strom Thurmond defecting to the GOP, and 5 southern states voting for Goldwater in 1964. It was in the 1970s that the first repub Congressmen began to be elected.
By the 1990 census the Deep South had become pretty much GOP territory.

[Midwestern Democrat]

7. Well, 1988 probably gives a pretty good picture of what it would look like:

Jesse Jackson won AL, GA, LA, MS, VA, SC and Gore won AR, KY, NC, OK, TN. Dukakis won FL and TX. The party had already pretty much written off the South as a serious consideration in presidential contests by that point - they liked the fact that Southern conservative Democrats were inflating their congressional/governor/state legislatures ranks, but they had no illusions that white Southern conservative Democrats were actually going to vote for their presidential nominee in November. Clinton did win some Southern states in 1992, but I suspect Perot tipped four of them to him (GA, KY, LA, TN) - the only Southern states I'm 100% certain Clinton would have won in a two man race in 1992 were AR and WV.

[Cicada]

8. My parents from Mississippi loved FDR

They had to go to work at 14. They saw FDR save the country. They were racists but my dad was in the Army which was integrated in the early fifties. That experience caused my parents to overcome their racism. My cousins growing up in Mississippi had children who attended integrated schools and again exposure saved many of them from racism. While growing up schooled in the economic benefits of democratic policies. That’s my family’s story, at least.

[Blue_true]

10. Florida has a shit ton of White southern democrats.

White people that still choose the party believe in our core values.

[Todd79]

12. We are still here

Not as many of us but we are still here. Problem with our representation is that a lot of Reps were gerrymandered. I know of a couple in North Carolina like Heath Shuler who were affected by GOP redistricting.