An excellent interview of Tom Schaller about the Southern Strategy

[Mass]

and how to get past it.

I have not read his bood "Whistling Past Dixie", but this interview speaks to me and I will probably look for it at the library.

I am curious to have your views on what he says, from all of you, but particularly from people from the South and the MidWest.

http://www.liberaloasis.com/2006/10/interview_with_tom_schaller_au.php

The sharp and insightful Tom Schaller, executive editor of The Gadflyer, recently published Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without The South, which was praised by Publishers Weekly as a "much-needed shot of realpolitik in the arm of the modern Democratic Party."

...
1. You articulate a "non-Southern platform" based on the following principles: "strong defense, but a smart offense," "a culture of investment," and "the exercise of inalienable liberties." Don't those ideals appeal to both southerners and non-southerners alike?

TOM SCHALLER: For some voters in every region, sure, those ideals are equally appealing. But overall, there are striking differences in the attitudes of southerners and non-southerners, especially among white voters.

Support for Bush's war in Iraq is weakening across the country, but the pockets where it is still strong are in the South and a few Plains and Mountain West states.

And although it is a myth that native southerners account for a disproportionate share of our fatalities in Iraq (they don't), the South is the temporary home to larger shares of active-duty military and veterans because of the disproportionate location of military bases there. In the literal sense of the term, the most belligerent region of the country is the South.

White southerners talk about the need for limited government, but the fact is that most southern states get back anywhere from $1.10 or $1.35 for every dollar they send to Washington. It is the northeastern states that get back less than what they contribute, and it is liberals who are happy to investment their monies in programs that will pay off in the medium to long term, because they understand that investing in education and early-life health care actually saves the country in the long run.

The culture of investment theme steals the language conservatives love to invoke when it comes to markets and apply it to governmental commitments to infrastructure and human development. If you look at southern states, however, their per-capita state expenditures rank near the bottom.

If they believed in investment, instead of redistribution of monies contributed by others, they'd spend more at home -- especially since they benefit so greatly from the federal redistribution game. But they don't.

As for civil liberties, must I even make the case?

A quick look at American history through the lens of its constitutional amendments, which for 150 years have extended suffrage and safeguarded our most cherished civil rights and liberties, should suffice. And what does that history show?

That at every key struggle in American history -- abolition, women's suffrage, the end of child labor, the integration of the military, to de-segregation of our schools and public facilities -- it was mostly southern states blocking and opposing these amendments. History is what history does.
...

Read answers to questions 2 to 5 at the link.

[wisteria]

1. This is one smart man. I agree with his strategy almost entirely.

I don't qualify as being born and raised in the South, but I have spent five years living first in NC and then in SC. Dean is correct to not ignore the South, but it also isn't wise to spend to much money there now. IMO, it will take at least a generation to move some of the South over to our side. I like to say we should respect them, but not pander to them.
Attracting voters from the West and Mid-west is definitely a better strategy. They are more progressive and open to change. I also like this idea a lot,
"Let's put the other nine Amendments of the Bill of Rights behind the ramparts of the Second Amendment and protect them all with equal vigor. That's smart politics."

This also makes it harder for the Republicans to attack us on individual rights issues.

[ginnyinWI]

2. someone on TV said

--I remember now it was some conservative--that the South used to be socially conservative Dem, then switched to being socially conservative Repub. I see no reason that it couldn't eventually switch back to being socially conservative Dem again, now that we've gone some distance from the Civil Rights era. Enough of them have to wake up to the tactics of the flim-flam GOPers and how they are playing them for fools. And the Dem social values of helping the poor, etc. have to be emphasized.

[Island Blue]

3. I think he makes some interesting points.

I agree with Dean, that the Democrats need a 50 state strategy, while realizing that this is almost impossible to achieve on a presidential candidate level due to the vastness of the country, limited resources (i.e. time & money). Southerners continually prove that they are often willing to vote for Democrats on the state and local level (with exceptions, of course). I think if nothing else, a 50 state strategy would help to encourage people to elect these folks.

As for 2008, I think whether or not the Democratic presidential candidate should spend any significant time campaigning in the South should probably depend on who the Republican candidate is. If it's Romney or Guliani, then I would say that any Democrat would have a good shot at picking up some electoral votes in the South. If the Republican candidate is McCain or Huckabee, probably not.

The theory that Southerners will NEVER vote for a liberal, Catholic, Democrat from the Northeast is something of a myth. In 1960, NC, SC, Georgia, part of Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas went for Kennedy, while California, Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont (among others) went for Nixon.

Furthermore, the rise of Ronald Reagan (and thus the rise of the RR Democrat) can hardly be blamed solely on Southerners. That was a nationwide effort, but it did put the South its current Republican track. (Up until that point, the South had voted "D" far more often than the rest of nation as a whole.)

I think today's Southern vote has more to do with the rise in Protestant Fundamentalism than anything else but that a whole other discussion.

So, for what it's worth, that's my two-cents worth. I am a native Southern who has lived in either North or South Carolina all of my life.