by David Rieff
Having proudly identified themselves as the heirs to Cold War liberalism, the authors of the Truman Project paper nonetheless wish to claim to be leftists. This is preposterous. The point is not, as they claim, that I am trying to propound “one vision of the left,” as they put it, let alone that I am carrying its mantle. Not that this will be of great interest to the readers of this blog, but in European terms I rather think I would be on the right of center of any mainstream social democratic party. A ‘hardline leftist?’ Not bloody likely.
But the authors’ ad hominem attacks aside, the point here is that only in the fundamentally right-wing context of the United States can Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and F.D.R. be considered figures of the left…unless, that is, the Truman Project paper’s authors have defined down the left so much that it includes people who a) supported all existing economic arrangements, even if they wanted to reform them slightly, b) were avid Cold Warriors, and c) were committed to American hegemony in the world. If that’s left, then what are all those tendencies (no, not just one) to the left of that?
It continues to fascinate me that the authors of the paper are so indifferent to, let me put it charitably, the non-left aspects of their heroes. To FDR, Truman and JFK, they now add Woodrow Wilson to their pantheon. Woodrow Wilson! One of the most virulently anti-black presidents in American history, the man who ordered US forces to invade Mexico, not once but several times. Now there’s a left/progressive role model for you!
Lastly, the authors of the Truman Project paper observe that I “challenge the American greatness narrative.” In that, of course, they are correct. But they go on to say that “we think this is an intellectual dead end. Americans, like all individuals, like to think of themselves as good, and perhaps more than many others, wish to think of their country as great.” This may be true. But that does not make what I said an intellectual dead end, it makes it a political dead end. Even in Washington, surely at least some people remember that is not the same thing. On an intellectual level, the issue is whether the American national greatness narrative is true or false, not whether, as the authors put it, “the left’s fight against [Americans’] desire [for such a narrative] has been its death knell.”
Actually, the reverse is the case. The intellectual dead end is when political activists pander to the public and reject the intellectually licit and the historically accurate in the name of political expediency. That, in my view, is what the authors of the paper are up to. And between the Republican original and this Democratic photocopy, I’m by no means sure the Republicans don’t come out the winners.

David Rieff is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of seven books including, most recently, At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention.

By Robert Griendling
The frozen smiles can sear the brain. They belong to Democratic officials, lobbyists and activists when you tell them you are running against a four-term incumbent Republican state house member who has decimated each of his opponents. His last Democratic opponent had garnered only 36% of the vote. In 2004, the state had gone for George W. Bush by 54-45%, the county by 56%-44%. The 2005 battle for the 32^nd House district seat in the world’s oldest deliberative democratic body, the Virginia General Assembly, was taking place in an emerging suburb that was reliably GOP country.
Behind the smiles were words of encouragement. But not much more. If this race was to be won, it would be based not on the advice of consultants and party leaders, but on the efforts of the people who lived in the 32^nd and campaign planners’ best instincts about what would work. David Poisson decided nine months before the election what his issues would be, how he would work the district and what it would take to win. Polls and pros could not and would not drive this campaign.
An Entrenched Incumbent
Delegate Dick Black was thought to be biding his time before running for at least state Attorney General. He had the credentials: a career military lawyer, solid conservative positions and a GOTV effort that was legendary. Not only was nearby Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, a few miles west of the 32^nd district, a source for committed young conservatives being trained specifically for government activism, but local churches straddled — and some say crossed — the line by advocating Black’s reelection year after year. His own church would help distribute flyers in the church parking lot and priests there had preached for his candidacy from the pulpit.
Black began the campaign in early 2005 with more than $100,000 in campaign funds for a race that was expected to cost just over $300,000. By June, he had $216,000. By Labor Day, he had raised more than $313,000; the Poisson campaign reported $75,000 on hand.
Most of the professionals were still giving the campaign the “Go Get ‘Em” speech with the same smile intact.
But for all his fundraising prowess, the GOTV machine and a record of landslides, it didn’t seem that a man who would go so far as to publicly criticize a high school student for writing a play that called for tolerance of gays, and who once spoke from Thomas Jefferson’s House floor with a plastic fetus in hand to rail against abortion, fairly represented a community where young families were coming in droves to buy a piece of the American dream.
And Black’s strident anti-tax positions meant that the investments a growing community needs would be hard to fund.
The Emerging Suburb
Loudoun County, Virginia had been atop the list of fastest-growing counties in America for years. From 2002 to 2003 alone, it grew 14%. Two areas in the 32^nd district, Dulles and Ashburn, saw growth rates of 66.5% and 47.4%, respectively from 2000 to 2003.
The growth was also evident in the registered voter statistics. For example, in the 10 months from November 2003, an election year for the House of Delegates, the district’s voter rolls increased 6.3%. Registered voter rolls grew 12.6% in one precinct, 13.2% in another, and a whopping 24% in a precinct where homes were being built rapidly during the two years before the ’05 election.
Loudoun was also a young county. A third of its residents were under age 18, compared to 25% nationally. The working population, those age 25-54, was 6% larger than the national average. The county is also affluent. The average household income was $126,102 in the first half of this decade. It didn’t seem that a radical social conservative could really represent this type of constituency.
Meanwhile, a look at Black’s numbers provided hope for those who don’t simply look at “performance” numbers.
Drilling Down the Numbers
In the 2001 election, Mark Warner, who positioned himself as a moderate businessman, polled better in the gubernatorial race than the Democratic candidate for the 32^nd district, a woman who engaged Black on his issues, most notably abortion. Her strategy backfired and energized Black’s base. Warner outpolled her in every precinct in the 32^nd save one, in which he was down by only eight votes. His race also garnered 1,100 votes more than the 32^nd House race, suggesting many voters did not vote for either Black or the Democratic candidate either because they didn’t know them or were turned off by both. In that election, the combination of votes for the Democrat and a moderate Republican who made it a three-way race was within 602 votes of Black’s total. Also in 2003, two Democratic supervisor candidates each won a precinct. Other local Democrats had carried a few of the 32^nd‘s precincts.
In all, the 2003 vote indicated that eight of the district’s 18 precincts were clearly willing to support a more moderate candidate.
Issues That Matter
While the campaign held focus groups with grassroots supporters about what was on their minds, the candidate clearly had some pet issues, chief among them education. David Poisson has a PhD in higher education, along with a law degree. Getting an education was stressed from his early years growing up in a declining mill town in southeastern Massachusetts. It seemed that many constituents in the 32^nd had similar upbringings. And admission to a Virginia college was becoming more difficult. Meanwhile, traffic was choking Northern Virginia, stealing time from families. And the local school board was desperately trying to keep up with demand, building five new schools a year.
With those types of issues on the minds of constituents, it didn’t seem who married whom really mattered. This idea was to be the nexus of the campaign. From Poisson’s announcement of his candidacy:

As a businessman, I’ve always focused on results that affect the important issues. What you and I want is a safe, secure environment for our families, a promising future for our children, and a plan to make eastern Loudoun County an even greater place to live. We can achieve those goals because I believe you share with me two core qualities: confidence in ourselves, and the knowledge that nothing of value is ever achieved without hard work.
Our current representative in the Virginia House of Delegates has ignored our real concerns. More importantly, he’s made it abundantly clear he doesn’t trust you to make the right moral decisions for your family.
I trust you to raise your family and teach your children right from wrong. I trust you to know when we must invest – and when we must tighten the purse strings. And I trust you to know the difference between someone who represents your interests and someone who places his own interests ahead of yours.
I plan to focus on what really matters to your families.
Here in the 32^nd district, we need to fight for the funding necessary to improve our roads so we don’t spend half our lives in traffic. Because that matters to our families.
We need to ensure we have great teachers in our public schools. Because that matters to our families.
We need to create the jobs necessary to keep Loudoun’s economic engine running. Because that matters to our families.
And we need to ensure that when our children are ready for college, we have a state college system that is ready for them. Because that matters to our families.
And because these issues matter so much, and because I believe the people of the 32^nd district deserve someone willing to fight for those issues, I’m here tonight to announce my candidacy for the Virginia House of Delegates.

“Issues that matter” became the overriding communication point of the campaign. It not only drove what was talked about in the campaign but how the campaign addressed Dick Black’s attacks and his previously successful strategy of making the election about his issues. The campaign rejected the standard advice: To beat an incumbent, you must trash him for months. The theory is that unless people feel a need for change, even a perfect challenger has little chance. There may be some truth to this rule, but instead of focusing initially on what was perceived as Black’s weaknesses, the campaign talked about Poisson’s vision: funding local schools, getting kids into Virginia’s colleges, transportation and attracting good jobs to Loudoun County.
With the tremendous growth in Loudoun County, there were many new voters. They never heard of Dick Black, much less David Poisson. As mentioned earlier, one precinct had grown 24% in two years. We walked it, as well as every other new community. Depending where the best opportunities were, we walked those communities, too. Poisson introduced himself, and when given the opportunity, he introduced his opponent as well. But more than anything, we wanted to let these new residents know that we welcomed them and understood the pressures they felt.
Targeting the Middle Class
Even in a relatively affluent area such as Loudoun County, the middle class is feeling pressed. It’s not the candidate’s job to judge whether those who are relatively comfortable may be expecting too much, or that they should consider themselves lucky they are not poor. A nice home with a chance to make it big, being able to send their kids to college, and not just a secure but a comfortable retirement are the dreams of the middle class. The homes in the 32^nd district start at around $350,000. We weren’t going to deny that. This campaign was designed to address the issues these families cared about and position a Democrat as a friend of the middle class.
No doubt the 32^nd was and remains a socially conservative area. Many, if not most, people in the district oppose gay marriage and “abortion on demand.” But even so, there was little evidence that such issues would drive the election, given the other problems we faced. But surely our opponent would demand the press and the public know where the Democrat stood on these issues. The candidate’s stances were made clear but brief: Support for a woman’s right to choose but also support for parental notice. (Strike NARAL from the list of endorsements, let alone donors.) Marriage was the province of the church, but gays had a right to civil unions. And with thousands of children in foster care, gay adoption was a better alternative than the life of an itinerant child. The candidate’s personal story, having a mother who grew up an orphan, was also powerful.
The strategy was not to deny constituents’ firmly held views. Nor was it to criticize those who disagreed. It doesn’t serve to disrespect those who disagree with your views. Once you’ve told voters that they’re bigots or intolerant because they disagree with you, they’ll never listen to your other messages. We simply stated our views and moved on to our issues, whether it was in the debate with Black, or in articles or letters to the editors of the five local newspapers.
Competence
We also made the campaign about competence. From the traditional kick-off at back-to-school nights, we emphasized what Black didn’t do about the issues that really matter. He served on both education and transportation committees in the House, yet never introduced a major education or transportation bill. We focused not on painting him as a right-wing ideologue but as an ineffective advocate for the things that matter most to his constituents.
Many observers felt the turning point came in our only major debate. Our opponent set all the ground rules. For example, although the League of Women Voters hosted the debate, we had to allow a former Republican Party county chairman to serve as moderator. Three local reporters asked the questions, and we were given two minutes for opening and closing remarks. During the debate, Black constantly tried to tie our campaign to the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Tim Kaine, ironically himself a moderate. His well known moral opposition to the death penalty was brought up several times. When asked, Poisson stated his support for the death penalty, which clearly frustrated Black. He several times said he was exactly aligned with the Republican gubernatorial candidate and said Poisson was running away from his. Poisson responded simply, “The great thing about being a Democrat is that we get to think for ourselves.” The crowd roared its approval. We made sure the volume of the roar was loud by turning out our supporters for the debate. We estimated at least 70 percent of the crowd supported our candidacy.
Our opponent made a crucial mistake in his closing remarks by repeatedly mispronouncing Poisson’s last name as “poison.” The crowd heckled him. Reporters were clearly shocked. Poisson’s response was simply, “The last time someone mispronounced my name like that was in the 7th-grade race for class president. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now, Mr. Black.” We then made sure his childish antics were chronicled in the last articles to appear in the press before the election.
Shortly thereafter, the only poll that mattered was taken. Our first poll, in mid-July, was demanded by Virginia Democrats as a prelude to any party funding. It had us 12 points down. We had to conduct a follow-up before Labor Day. It had slightly better results. But only this last poll had real impact. Far behind in fundraising six weeks before the election, we pulled even as voters went to the polls. Why? Because that last poll had us within three points of victory. When you’re viable, you’re also flush.
On Election Day, Poisson won all but two of the 18 precincts and an overall victory of 53-47%. Even more impressive, he not only outperformed Tim Kaine, who garnered 52% of the vote in the district, he received 700 more votes.
Every race is different. Every community has its own needs. But by campaigning on issues that affect the everyday lives of our constituents, acknowledging but minimizing divisive social issues, recognizing that taxes are only a means to an end and having faith in our core principles, we were able to win in the emerging suburbs against a supposedly invincible incumbent.

Robert Griendling is the principal of Griendling Communications, a communications consulting firm founded in 1989. He was the communication strategist for David Poisson’s 2005 successful campaign for the Virginia House of Delegates. He is also editor of the Commonwealth Commonsense blog.

By Thomas Schaller
Before the 2000 recount had even finished, George W. Bush’s pollster Matthew Dowd approached Bush adviser Karl Rove with some surprising news. As recounted in Tom Edsall’s compelling new book, Building Red America, Dowd informed Rove that the center of the electorate had essentially collapsed. Moving forward, Rove concluded, the fight between the two major parties would be a struggle to mobilize and expand their respective bases. Faster than you can say, “I’m a uniter, not a divider,” Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” was shelved in favor of divide-and-conquer politics because, in the polarized America of the early twentieth century, that approach at least offers “conquer” as a possible outcome.
How should Democrats respond to these emergent realities? In kind. As the more progressive of the two major parties, that means starting to rebuild toward a national majority by focusing on the nation’s more liberal and progressive elements, moving toward the moderate voters next, and leaving the most conservative elements in the most conservative states in the nation’s most conservative region–the South–for last. As I argue in my book, Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, there is a Democratic majority to be created by maximizing the Democrats’ control in the existing blue states of the Northeast and Pacific Coast, converting the purple states of the Midwest to blue, and purpling the increasingly competitive red states of the Interior West. Put another way, to regain national majority power on the presidential, congressional and state-level, Democrats should figure out how to win Arizona or even Alaska, before thinking about Alabama.
A common criticism I receive about the feasibility of Democrats winning with a non-southern strategy is that the South is not a homogeneous monolith–that there are many pockets of the South that are quite progressive or at least not ardently conservative in their religious-cultural sensibilities and, additionally, that there are many non-southerners who share those conservative sensibilities.
This is undeniably true, in part because regional distinctions are blurring with each passing day as Americans in our mobile society move into and out of the South and other regions, and as immigrants from various parts of the world populate a wide range of states in every region. The permeability of American culture in the media age; the propensity of Americans to change jobs and careers (and thus geographic location); and a general homogenization of society–all of these trends suggest that the South (or any other region) will be less distinct two generations from now, just as it is less distinct today than it was two generations ago.
All that said, there is both a weak and a strong case to be made for why Democrats are, based on differences in regional demography, far better served by focusing last on the South. The distinction between the weak and strong cases is temporal: The weak case is that, right now, the South is demographically less amenable to Democratic success; the strong case is that, moving forward into the foreseeable future and based on demographic projections, the South will remain least amenable and on some counts become even less so.
The weak case is easy to make, and the strong case is not much harder to defend. Let’s look at some of the differences in regional demography, with the implications for ideological tendencies and partisan behavior. I cannot distill in this post all or even part of the data contained in the book’s fifth chapter, and so the explanations here will lack specifics and details. But the underlying data, along with charts and figures and sources, is available in the book.
Gender: Democrats do better among women than men, a fact that is true among all voters, and even when African Americans are held aside. But in the South, especially among white voters, the “gender gap” is close to nil. There were five states in 2004 where Kerry did not enjoy a gender gap, either because he broke even or did worse among women than men; three of those five were in the South. Kerry won white women nationally by three points, but lost white women by 11 points in the South. The fact is that a gender chasm would have to open up in the South for the Democrats’ advantages among women to make much difference, because women–and specifically white women–vote very similarly to their fathers and brothers, husbands and sons. This is far less true outside the South, which accounts for and produces the gender gap nationally. Women, who are already a majority of college graduates and law school students, continue to further feminize the American electorate with each passing election cycle. This trend generally bodes well for Democrats in the near and medium term, and especially outside the South where the gender gap is real and demonstrable.
Race: Democrats win among every major non-European ethnic minority in America, save Cuban-Americans. The Democrats’ share of support is particularly high among African Americans (about 90%), Native Americans (80-90%), and Latinos (60%, but a growing worry in the Bush era). Even Asian Americans, who favored Bush41 over Clinton by 24 points in 1992, went for Kerry over Bush by 17 points in 2004. Holding aside African Americans for a moment, notice that the most of the geographic concentration for these groups is non-southern—almost exclusively for Native Americans and Asian Americans and, but for Florida and Texas, Latinos as well. Half of African Americans live in the South, but the sad irony is that some of the blackest states vote Republican by overwhelming rates. (Note the statewide officials who represent Mississippi, the blackest state in the Republic.) As for whites, Al Gore carried the white vote outside the South in 2000, and Kerry came close to doing so in 2004. George W. Bush (70%) and Ronald Reagan (71%) got basically the same share of the southern white vote, but Bush won narrowly whereas Reagan won in a landslide. Why? Because there are fewer white voters overall, and Kerry did far better among non-southern whites than Walter Mondale did. Democrats do not have a white voter problem generally; what they specifically have is a southern white voter problem. As Native Americans are mobilized, Latinos achieve citizenship and voting-age eligibility, the strong case for a non-southern majority grows stronger. In the South, however, the African American share of the southern population has been shrinking: Nine of the 11 southern states had higher shares of African Americans in 1950 than they do today–and a tenth, Louisiana, just witnessed a major displacement of its largest African-American community in the wake of Katrina.
Age: Democrats got a real boost in 2004 from young voters, not only because they voted strongly Democratic (as they often do) but because turnout among voters 18-25 (or 18-30) increased dramatically over 2000 rates. Kerry won the youth vote nationally by nine points, despite losing it by one point in the South. On the other end of the life cycle, Democrats have traditionally done well among seniors (Gore won them, but Kerry lost them). What’s more, the next generation of seniors includes the post-Baby Boomers who are more socially liberal than their parents, as authors like Leonard Steinhorn have shown. There are plenty of Snow Belt retirees in the warm southern climates, sure. But get this: Moving forward, the projected growth rate for 65+ populations will be faster in the eight Interior West states than the South between now and 2020. The Midwest will lag behind the South’s aging population growth, however, and so the hope for turning this purple region blue will be hard to actualize on the strength of senior votes.
Religion: The media talks incessantly about the political power of the evangelicals, who constitute roughly 24% of the country. Yet they rarely mention that the share of people who are self-described agnostics/atheists/non-denominational has doubled from eight percent in 1990 to 14% in 2001 and, based on that trend, surely has reached 15% or 16% today. This transformation is the result of the steady replacement of older, more religious voters with younger, more secular voters. Yet the South remains, as ever, the most religious region of America. Perhaps the inter-regional variances in religiosity and church attendance will diminish somewhat over time, but not much. That said, the more libertarian and less religiously conservative West is far less amenable to Republicans’ religious-based appeals, and in fact the growing dominance by evangelicals of western Republican parties is pulling them far too far to the right, providing a huge opportunity for Democrats that is already being exploited in places like Colorado. (But I recommend Ryan Sager’s analyses in Elephant in the Room for more about the self-destruction of western Republican parties.)
Family/marital status: Half of all women and almost half of men in America are unmarried. Because married voters turn out at higher rates, the unmarried are still a minority of voters nationally. Despite the emphasis on the importance of family values, the regional situation here is murkier because the divorce rates and share of unmarried persons are unusually high in the South, a fact that is true even when African Americans are subtracted out. But the key point is that “women on their own” (which means as-yet unmarried, divorced, separated, widowed and lesbian women) cast almost one in four votes nationally, and soon will be above that 25% threshold. And Democrats do well–Kerry won unmarried women by 25 points–among this growing bloc of key voters. As with age, the regional effects on marital status are not particularly pronounced, with one notable exception related to race: the rates of interracial marriage, which I submit indicate a potential for Democrats’ multi-racial coalition calculus. And, not surprisingly, given the shares of statewide non-white populations, the relative rate of interracial marriage rates is lowest in the South. As 2000 Census data make very clear, mixed-race marriages are more prevalent between Asians and whites, and Latinos and whites, than blacks and whites.
Occupation and socioeconomic class: The South has long been, and remains today, the least unionized region of the country. In the past half-century, the southern state with the highest share of union members/families was Alabama, which peaked at twenty-eighth; most southern states have been ranked and continue to rank in the forties, with the two Carolinas battling for a half-century for the inauspicious title of least-unionized state. The reason this matters is that the one exception to the Republican tendencies of non-college white males today is when they are union members or from union families. As the much-cited study by Andrew Gelman and his colleagues at Columbia show, in blue states the rich do not vote as Republican as red-state rich persons do. In the South, however, once African Americans are removed, that relationship between class and partisanship is mitigated—not because richer southern whites vote less Republican, but because poorer whites vote more Republican. Whether voting pocketbooks or prayer books, the result is millions of Republican white votes. This phenomenon is fading and should continue to as “new South” economic changes equalize income and wealth, and as non-native southerners move into the region for those “new South” opportunities. But profound wealth disparities in the South that might otherwise produce more Democratic votes in the nation’s poorest region are muted by cultural conservatism that results in Republican support among poorer whites that approaches the support among richer whites.
Community of residence: Turning to rural-urban-suburban-exurban trends, there is significant suburban growth in certain pockets of the South, the nation’s most rural region. But the key growth in “progressive-centrist” and inner suburban communities, as rigorously chronicled by the Strategist co-editor Ruy Teixeira, is occurring in and around cities west of the Mississippi River. (See Chapter 3 of Teixeira and John Judis’s book, The Emerging Democratic Majority.) There are emerging suburbs in the South that hold great promise for Democrats in the medium and longer term, however. Here is one criterion on which the weak (present) case is more compelling than the strong, long-term case. Still, places like Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, Northern Virginia and Austin remain rare, and the locals do not always take kindly to the changes occurring around them. Native North Carolinians have created their own acronym for Cary, the bedroom community filled with transplants who came to work in the hospitals, universities and research parks in this “progressive-centrist” mecca–Contaminated Area: Relocated Yankees. That tells us a lot about the meaning of progressive-centrist growth in the South and its implications for a Democratic majority.
A final comment about the combined effects of these overlapping criteria: The near- and long-term changes that are both occurring now and should continue to accelerate in the future are happening faster in “Rim South” states like Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Texas. Thus, partisan opportunities in the South will generally arise first in the Rim South before the Deep South. As I’ve written elsewhere, the Mark Warner-Tim Kaine elections in Virginia prove the point. Despite the attempt by self-interested consultants to depict Warner’s win as a testament to a Democratic revival among rural voters, the truth is that both Warner and especially Kaine won because of changes occurring in the urban-suburban corridor that connects the Washington suburbs, Richmond and Norfolk.
Overall, then, in a country that is becoming less white, more feminized, less traditional in its family structures, more secular and more suburbanized, how does it make sense to prioritize the targeting of what are often referred to as the “NASCAR men”: white, non-college-educated, rural, married, Christian men from the South? If a marketing executive explained the prevailing national trends and concluded that the company ought to target the consumers least likely to be interested in the company’s product–and worse, that their size within the market was shrinking with each passing day–he’d be instructed to clean out his desk by day’s end.
Following his candidate’s popular vote defeat in 2000, Karl Rove promptly announced that the GOP would find and cultivate the four million evangelicals who failed to turn out. The politics that has followed–epitomized by the anti-gay-marriage ballot measures and Supreme Court appointments–confirms the effectiveness of the Rovian approach. So how is it that Democrats, upon losing the popular vote in 2004, must turn their opponents’ base by focusing on southern white men and women? This is absurd advice, and strategically myopic.
The truth is that the Pollyannaish predictions of centrist consultants have not served the Party well. In 2004, Democrats gained outside the South while losing ground inside the South, and at every level: relatively in presidential returns, and absolutely in terms of seats won in both chambers of Congress and in the state legislatures. That same pattern is already prevailing in the 2006 midterms, too, where the vast majority of expected gains for Democrats in gubernatorial and congressional races will come from outside the South.
There’s an underlying reason why: The demographic situation is different inside and outside the South. The split is neither perfect nor uniform, of course, but it is what it is, and denying it only risks losing the non-southern majority that awaits a party gutsy enough to build it. As regional demographic differences both present and future show, there’s a non-southern Democratic majority right in front of our noses, if the party will show the guts to see and seize it.

Dr. Thomas F. Schaller is associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and a board member of the Democratic Strategist. A political columnist for the Washington Examiner, Schaller has published commentaries in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Baltimore Sun, Salon.com, and The American Prospect, and has appeared on ABC News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and C-SPAN.