As regular readers of this blog know, there is no political subject that fascinates me more than party politics in my native South–both the historical question of how the region became “red,” and the immediate question of whether and how Democrats can become more competitive.Earlier this week a colleague sent me a book review that provides a good excuse for revisiting that first, historical topic. The New Republic‘s Clay Risen reviewed The End of Southern Exceptionalism for the Boston Globe, and concluded that the book offers fresh evidence that economics, not race, was the central factor in the rise of southern Republicanism.I’ve ordered, but have not yet received, a copy of the book, written by Byron Shafer of the University of Wisconsin and Richard Johnston of the University of British Columbia. But the surprising thing to me about Risen’s review is that the book’s hypothesis seems to be so controversial, “one that few observers of the postwar South will agree with.”This is not to say I believe in a purely economic interpretation of the South’s Republican resurgence, but given the apparent supremacy of a purely racial interpretation, it’s a good corrective.Certainly the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were decisive events in breaking down the ancient alliance between the National Democratic Party and a whites-only regional Democratic Party that had dominated most of the South since the Civil War. But the civil rights revolution did not necessarily, and did not in fact destroy state and local Democratic parties. And if you look at the dynamics of two-party competition in the South, even today, the picture is too complicated to support the claim that race, or any other one factor, has caused the rise of southern Republicanism.My own informed-amateur “wave theory” of party politics in the South places great emphasis on the efforts of each party, and especially my own Democratic Party, to constantly create and recreate new coalitions, depending on the demographics of individual states. But this improvisational coalition-building was a big part of the originial post-World-War-II Republican effort to create a viable two-party system in the South.According to Risen, Shafer and Johnston focus on the rapid urbanization that occured thoughout much of the region from the 1940s through the 1960s, which created a self-conscious urban and suburban white middle-class that voted Republican just like similar places elsewhere (indeed, a heavy in-migration of already-Republican voters from the northeast and midwest, already a large factor in Florida in the 1940s, spread throughout southern suburbs in later decades). But in four states, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia, there was already a sizable Republican voter base among Appalachian whites (until quite recently, the very poorest people in America) who had been voting that way since the Civil War. The pre-Civil Rights strength of Republicans in any given state was largely a function of the size of these two very different elements of the population. Moreover, states with few Appalachian voters and smaller cities and suburbs had weak Republican Parties that did ultimately depend on their occasional success in reaching large numbers of rural white voters through race-based appeals.It should come as no surprise, then, to discover how well Eisenhower did in relatively-urbanized states like Florida (which he carried twice) or Texas (won in 1956), and in states with both growing suburbs and cities and Appalachian pockets (Tennessee and Virginia, which he won twice, and North Carolina, where he narrowly lost twice). In 1960, Richard Nixon, then considered a liberal on racial issues by southern standards, did nearly as well in precisely the same places.This complicated picture was confirmed, not obliterated, by Barry Goldwater’s race-based rural southern breakthrough in 1964. Although he swept the Deep South, he lost all the border states, including those carried by Ike and Nixon, and even within the states he carried, he ran behind the previous GOP candidates in many urban and suburban areas.At both the presidential level and–especially–the state and local level, Republican fortunes have ebbed and flowed according to the same shifting of coalitions in the ensuing decades. And even in the contemporary era, where Republicans have an advantage in most, though not all, statewide elections in most of the region, the components vary from state to state. In places like South Carolina and Mississippi, the party system represents a widespread racial polarization, and you can definitely say the basic partisan dynamics point straight back to the civil rights revolution. But in my own home state of Georgia, while race has been a factor, the explosive growth of the suburban population has clearly tilted the state to the GOP, which also means the Democratic counter-trend that has so often set in as suburbs mature could be a big factor in Georgia’s political future.In other words, there is no universal theory that really explains the past, present or future or southern politics, and that is why I am more optimistic than most in predicting that Republican hegemony in the South is far less than inevitable or permanent.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey
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By Ed Kilgore
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June 20: Democrats Hate Their Leadership, But Still Like Their Leaders
Sometimes you have to look a little deeper than the headlines to understand polls, and I did so at New York this week:
A new Reuters-Ipsos poll provides the unsurprising news that rank-and-file Democrats are displeased with their party’s leadership. The numbers are pretty stark:
“Some 62% of self-identified Democrats in the poll agreed with a statement that ‘the leadership of the Democratic Party should be replaced with new people.’ Only 24% disagreed and the rest said they weren’t sure or didn’t answer.”
Some of the more specific complaints the poll identified are a little strange. “Just 17% of Democrats said allowing transgender people to compete in women and girls’ sports should be a priority, but 28% of Democrats think party leaders see it as such.” This is largely hallucinatory. With the arguable exception of those in Maine, who earlier this year fought with the Trump administration over the power to regulate their own school sports programs, most Democrats in the public eye have given this sub-issue (inflated into gigantic proportions by demagogic ads from the Trump campaign last year) a very wide berth. It’s not a great sign that Democrats are viewing their own party through the malevolent eyes of the opposition.
But beyond that problem, there’s a questionable tendency to assume that changing “the leadership” will address concerns that are really just the product of the party having lost all its power in Washington last November. And to some extent, the alleged “disconnect” between party and leadership is exaggerated by the lurid headlines about the poll. For example, “86% of Democrats said changing the federal tax code so wealthy Americans and large corporations pay more in taxes should be a priority, more than the 72% of those surveyed think party leaders make it a top concern.” That’s not a particularly large gap, and, in fact, there are virtually no Democrats in Congress who are not grinding away like cicadas on the message that Republicans are trying to cut taxes on “wealthy Americans and large corporations.”
The more fundamental question may be this: Who, exactly, are the “Democratic leaders” the rank and file wants to replace? It’s not an easy question to answer. I am reasonably confident that a vanishingly small percentage of Democrats could name the current chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, despite some media stories about turmoil at the DNC since his election.
According to a recent Economist-YouGov survey, 36 percent of self-identified Democrats had no opinion of the “Democratic leader” closest to actual power in Washington, Hakeem Jeffries, who is very likely to become Speaker of the House in 2027. Of those who did have an opinion, 51 percent were favorable toward him and 13 percent were unfavorable, which doesn’t sound much like a mandate for “replacing” him. In the same poll, Jeffries’s Senate counterpart, Chuck Schumer, had a 48 percent favorable and 28 percent unfavorable rating among Democrats, which is surprisingly positive given the massive negative publicity he earned for botching a confrontation with Republicans over a stopgap spending bill in March. Indeed, the favorability ratios for every named Democrat in that poll are a lot better than you’d expect if the rank and file were really in a “throw the bums out” kind of mood: Bernie Sanders is at 82 percent favorable to 8 percent unfavorable; Pete Buttigieg is at 62 percent favorable to 9 percent unfavorable; Elizabeth Warren is at 67 percent favorable to 12 percent unfavorable; Cory Booker is at 56 percent favorable to 11 percent unfavorable; Gavin Newsom is at 56 percent favorable to 17 percent unfavorable; and Gretchen Whitmer is at 49 percent favorable to 11 percent unfavorable.
Democrats obviously don’t have a president to offer unquestioned leadership, but back in the day, losing presidential nominees were often called the “titular leader” of the party until the next nominee was named. Under that definition, the top “Democratic leader” right now is Kamala Harris. Democrats aren’t mad at her, either: Her favorability ratio per Economist-YouGov is a Bernie-esque 84 percent favorable to 10 percent unfavorable. Her 2024 running mate, Tim Walz, comes in at 65 percent favorable and 13 percent unfavorable.
These findings that aren’t consistent with any narrative of a party rank and file in revolt. The source of Democratic unhappiness, it’s reasonably clear, is less about party leaders and more about the party’s dramatic loss of power, even as Donald Trump has asserted the most massive expansion of totally partisan presidential power in U.S. history. No new set of leaders is going to fix that.
Barring a really nasty and divisive nomination contest, the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee will become the unquestioned leader of the party, at least until Election Day. Jeffries, as noted, could enormously raise his profile if Democrats flip the House in 2026, and midterm elections could create new stars. Other Democrats could have big moments like Cory Booker’s after his 26-hour speech deploring Trump’s agenda or Gavin Newsom’s during his toe-to-toe messaging fight with the administration over its assault on his state. But in the end, Democrats on the ground and in the trenches won’t be satisfied until their words can be backed up with real power.