A pretty bleak picture, I’m sorry to say, but nothing political lasts forever: http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/03/politics/southern-democrats/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
This is true, but not in all Southern states – VA continues to elect mostly Democrats in state-wide races since 2008, for example (and this might be the only example as of late). I’m hopeful that NC is very slowly tipping bluer in the long run, with GA and FL close behind.
Florida isn’t really “the South”, though. Geographically it is, of course, but culturally it’s its own thing.
It’s not a whole lot different than the plight of Republicans in the Northeast and West Coast.
Basically, the blues are bluer and the reds are redder.
There’s a saying: Tthe further north you go in Florida, the closer you get to the South.
Very much depends on where in Florida you are. Folks outside the state tend to think of Florida as Miami/South Florida, then Orlando/Tampa, then maybe Gainesville and/or Jacksonville. And none of those areas are very southern at all, true. Most of the rest of the state is quite southern, and parts of it are as “old south” as you’ll get anywhere else.
Gainesville and Jacksonville, especially their suburbs, are very “southern” in character. Jacksonville, politically and culturally, is quite similar to other good-sized southern cities.
I don’t think of Gainesville as being particularly southern. Maybe you could call it something like “New South?” Drive ten minutes in pretty much any direction from the city limits, though, and things get very southern very quickly.
25 years ago, when I lived in Arkansas, I noticed that the Democratic Party was really the only party that functioned at a local level in many small towns. Even many self-professed Republicans and Conservatives participated in Democratic Party politics at a local level for county or other local offices. That seemed to be a common pattern in the South.
It seemed that the Republican shift began at the presidential level (Goldwater in the Deep South in 1964, then Nixon and 1972, and after Carter’s interlude, Reagan and Bush from 1980 on).
Many U.S. Senators and House Members from the South remained Democrats until 1994.
Since around 2000, Democratic governors in southern states have become increasingly rare - and state legislatures have also switched.
Are there still Democratic holdouts at the county level? Are there still Democratic coroners and park superintendents at least?
It’s still the urban/rural divide you see in most parts of the country; but there are more rural and fewer urban voters than you see in other parts of the country. And you don’t have to get far out of the city; I live just yards outside the Nashville-Davidson County line, where Democrats do fairly well. But in my county next door, I’m lucky if there is even a serious Democrat on the ballot to vote for in many elections.
But that’s due almost exclusively due to liberal voters in the suburbs and exurbs of DC, a liberal enclave. The majority of Virginia geographically, especially the southern parts, are very conservative.
True, but that’s true of any state - Atlanta is liberal, the rest of Georgia is conservative. Charlotte is liberal, the rest of North Carolina is conservative.
That’s still the case here, if you go local enough. It was actually Green v. Democrats in a lot of places.
It seems so weird, since most people I know are rather staunchly Republican. Though it’s all about abortion and homosexuality, and maybe local Dems have a freedom to be pro-life at the local level.
It’s not so much a southern problem as a working class whites problem. It’s just that there are a lot of working class whites in the South. The Democrats have lost a ton of ground in the Industrial Midwest as well, which also contains a lot of white working class voters.
We’ll just have to write off states like LA, AR, TN, MS, AL, and SC for national elections. That’s okay, we just have to accept that our values and our proposals are not going to carry the day in the less forward-thinking states. The blue wall of electoral votes doesn’t include these states and doesn’t need these states.
For that matter, Illinois is largely Cook County (liberal) versus suburban Chicago and the rest of the state (largely if not exclusively conservative).
The majority of VA, population wise (for those who voted), supported Democratic candidates in the last few state-wide elections. It doesn’t matter if many of them are concentrated in certain areas. No VA region is more authentically Virginian than any other. Southern VA is not more ‘real Virginia’ than Northern VA, despite what Sarah Palin says.
nm (duplicate)
I don’t think we can afford to “write off states” so easily. We can’t just focus on the Presidency, if we want to pass legislation that endures, as opposed to executive orders that can be reversed with a stroke of the next White House occupant’s pen.
To a certain extent we have a reversed situation from the 20th Century when Republicans could count on strong Presidential majorities depending on the candidate but could not gain a majority in the House due to the entrenchment of Southern Democrats. Similarly, the number of definitely Democratic states and those that are leaning that way ensues a “firewall” for Democratic candidates in most situations, but now there appears to be an insurmountable GOP majority in the House that even without Gerrymandering would still exist due to the concentration of Democratic voters.