Democrats Should Give up the South
Thomas F. Schaller says that Democratic presidential candidates should give up on the South:
Solid Republican victories in the Kentucky and Mississippi governors’ races, coupled with Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s clumsy overture to Confederate flag-waving Southerners, have raised anew the question of whether the Democrats can compete in the South.
They can’t.And precisely because they can’t, they should stop trying. Moving forward, the Democrats would be better served by simply conceding the South and redirecting their already scarce resources to more promising states where they’re making gains, especially those in the Southwest.
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The first rule of electoral politics is: Don’t Try to Win the Last Election. Why, then, do some Democrats seem bent on reviving a disintegrated New Deal coalition in order to replay, and somehow win, the 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984 and 1988 elections all at once? The bitter truth is that the Florida recount was the Democrats’ last stand in the South for the foreseeable future. Gore capitulated at the vice president’s residence in Washington. Appomattox would have been the more fitting location.
Hear, hear! However, the problem for Democrats is that the South is steadily gaining electoral votes while their base in the North-east is losing electoral votes. President Bush can easily afford to lose one or two states that he won in 2000 and still win the electoral vote in 2004.
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