Democratic Politics
Editor's Note: The essays and material on this page are not necessarily the views of the JVCDC. Only club resolutions have that status.
How Much Should Democrats Fret about the South?
Parkes Riley, May 2005
Parkes is a political scientist and a Kentuckian so he knows whereof he speaks. He is also the distinguished past president of the Jerry Voorhis Claremont Democratic Club.
Once in a while, maybe on nights when the moon is full, Democrats mindful of American history can have a terrifying thought about the South. They can remember that during the 36 years after the 1932 elections, Democrats held the presidency for 28 years, the House for 32 years, and the Senate for 32 years. They were dominant because they were holding on to the South, which had been theirs since the Civil War, and adding a good deal else. Then politics changed. Southern Democrats were predominately conservative, and they were in an uneasy alliance with northern liberals. But the South was beginning to forget the Civil War, as was understandable after a hundred years. During the 1960s, tensions over the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War shifted the affiliation of the region.The Republicans started doing very well in elections. Ominously, for Democrats, they were appropriating the South and keeping a good deal else. To many, it was as if they had formed a top-down version of the old New Deal coalition.
They started with the presidency. In 1972, following a conscious “Southern strategy,” Richard Nixon swept the eleven states of the old Confederacy. The Democrats fought back with Jimmy Carter, and later with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, but the Republicans fought, too, with two transplanted Texans in the Bush family. In 2000, Gore lost all the former Confederate states, including his own Tennessee. By 2008, during the 28 years since 1980, the Republicans will have held the presidency for 20 years.
Congress, full of incumbents, changed more slowly. During the 1970s and 1980s, many southern conservatives stayed in office. But eventually most of them retired, died, or switched parties. The Republicans took Congress in 1994. They have kept both chambers ever since, apart from an odd two-year period in the Senate after the 50-50 split of 2000.
What does all this mean? Have the Republicans finally achieved dominance, in a way reminiscent of the Democrats from FDR to LBJ?
The simple answer is no. Republicans are not in a similar situation. For quirky historical reasons, the Democrats used to be a predominately liberal party that got a bonus from a conservative region. This was nice for them, and it is bad for them that they have lost it, but history is not repeating itself.
The Republicans, today, are a predominately conservative party that is winning a conservative region. This is nice for them, and it is good for them that they can do it, but it is not remarkable or distinctive. Conservatives normally win conservative regions. It is when liberals win conservative regions that there is news.
In general, in any ethnically homogenous country with a two-party system, the parties will tend to alternate. Typically, one will have a leftist base, the other will have a rightist base, and they will both try to win votes in the center.
Only if a country is not homogenous—as when it has a bloc based on region, religion, language, race, or something comparable—will it be likely to give one party longevity. In an extreme case, a bloc with 55% can give complete dominance to one party. A bloc with 20% or 25%—like the U.S. South—can at times give a fair degree of dominance to a party, which will not have to do much more than activate its leftist or rightist base.
But what if the bloc is itself part of the base? This is not such a helpful situation. For the Democrats of old, the South was outside the ideological base; but for the Republicans of today, the South is conspicuously in it. The Democrats have lost their special advantage, but the Republicans have not gained a special new one. The situation should be troubling for the Democrats, but it should not be terrifying. Both parties must still scramble to win votes in the center, and elections have been close.
The Democrats have plenty of things to worry about, including the decline of unionism, the expansion of corporate wealth, and the emergence of the religious right. But a regionally bolstered Republican dominance, in the style of the Democratic dominance from the 1930s to the 1960s, is not one.
(909)-626-8100
P.O. Box 1201, Claremont, CA 91711