Will politics become increasingly stratified along North/South lines?

Great Debates
1

Reasons why this could happen

More and more Southerners are voting Republican, since the South is more conservative on matters of religion and social issues; the inhibitions to joining the Party of Lincoln appear to be dying out. True, the old-timers and die-hards won’t abandon the party, but they can’t live forever. The South will gradually become sufficiently influential to the point that its influence will dominate the Republican party (even more so than it is now). Northern Republicans will fight this trend to no avail and the GOP will become even more adament in its conservative stand on social issues (God, guns, gays, abortion, etc.).

Since they no longer have sufficient standing in the GOP to demand a place at the table, more and more Northern Republicans will become repelled at the South’s intrusive stands on social issues, throw up their hands, and vote Democratic. True, the old-timers and die-hards won’t abandon the party, but they can’t live forever. The North will gradually become sufficiently influential to the point that its influence will dominate the Democratic party. The Democratic Party will become more adament in its liberal stand on social issues and personal freedom, since Southern Democrats are no longer weighing them down and there is less reason to compromise. Southern Democrats will fight this trend to no avail.

The gist of this argument is that once this all comes to pass, the North will be dominated by Democrats and the South by Republicans, and never the twain shall meet. IMO, this should have been the case all along, but the South’s disinclination to voting Republican (even though it was more aligned philosophically) has been holding this stratification back. Now that that appears to be much weaker, the stratification will become more severe.

Thoughts?

Art

2

I don’t think so. If anything, the divide between the North and the South has lessened over the years. The liberal/conservative dichotomy, however, may intensify (especially with what passes for news these days).

3

I don’t think so. While you’re right that the North seems to be becoming more and more Democratic and the South more and more Republican, I don’t think we’re looking at pure stratification again. Maybe for the near future we are, but there are enough exceptions to this that it’s safe to say it won’t last. Southern states with populations that would sooner die than vote Republican—like Alabama and Mississippi and South Carolina—have lost many of those voters to old age, and are basically safe Republican territory. However, states where the population sees a lot of new people moving in—like Florida and North Carolina and Virginia—aren’t quite as safe as Republican quarries. We’re looking at enough significant demographic change in enough of these states that no one will be able to claim the mantle of the “solid South” again.

The ultraconservative bastions in the South don’t have much to hold on to, since the Western interior states, while growing in population, are also trending to be more moderate. A conservative Southern voting bloc won’t emerge to stymie a liberal Northeastern one. In fact, considering the increased immigration to the United States throughout the South, as well as emigration to the South from the North, I see the country on the whole as becoming more liberal. The Republican Party will react accordingly, since it will want to stay alive. Both the Democrats and the Republicans will continue to squabble over which party is more fiscally responsible. Progressive social issues will be esteemed by both. The evangelical wing of the Republican Party will be abandoned, just as it was by the Democratic Party in the 1930s. I don’t know if—or how—the evangelicals will stay politically active. I do expect the black population, as American society becomes more tolerant, to tend to stick to whichever party winds up being more conservative in the future. As long as job opportunities and economic disadvantage are widespread among blacks, they’ll tend toward the more liberal of the parties.

4

Some misconceptions here.

It’s a mistake to think the Republican Party in the South is driven by religious fundamentalism. That is an inaccurate stereotype. Fundamentalists are certainly a part of the Republican party, but they get publicity disproportianate to their numbers, IMO. Moreover, with the advent of satellite TV and the internet, it is harder and harder for fundamentalists to maintain the insularity necessary to their worldview. The facts about evolution, for example, get beamed and cabled right into their homes. They are losing the younger generation by the truckload.

You’ll find that the biggest Republican voting bloc in Georgia is in the upper middle class suburbs of Atlanta (many residents of which are actually Northern transplants). (This manifests itself in the so-called Atlanta “donut,” with the intown neighborhoods largely voting Democratic, and the suburban communities voting Republican.) These Republicans are voting on pocketbook issues, not on religion.

The stereotype of the fundamentalist Republican has caused Northern Democrats to want to abandon the South, because they think the South can only be won by appealing to religion or racism. (This attitude is demonstrated in several editorials to that effect.) This is a seriously wrong-headed approach. Instead, Democrats should be doing battle in the South on economic issues, and peeling away middle class voters.

Republican policies of the past 20 years, particularly their fiddling with the tax code, has benefited a tiny fraction of the super-wealthy at the ultimate expense of the middle class. A populist argument that breaks this down in some detail could be used to court suburban Southerners who (IMO) have been fooled into thinking that Republican policies benefit them. I haven’t seen any candidate break this down beyond the platitudinous “tax cuts for the wealthy” sound bite. (This is where I long for a good Democratic radio host, since the talk radio format would allow some time to explain this issue beyond the sound bite.)

There is some truth to the argument that old die-hard Democrats in the South are dying off. I know a LOT of older Georgians, for example, who would NEVER vote Republican. (These are the so-called “yellow dog Democrats,” as they would vote for a yellow dog before voting for a Republican.) That generation is disappearing, and they are being replaced by a generation of talk radio junkies who vote Republican. The South is trending Republican, but it is not because of racism and religion, IME. Talk radio is the single biggest factor. Every time I find myself among Southern Republicans, I hear them parroting the latest Limbaugh/Boortz/Hannity propaganda. Democrats could go a long way toward improving their position in the South (and elsewhere) by finding a way to compete on radio. Commuters are a captive audience, and right now, they have been captured by Republicans.

In sum, yes, the South is trending Republican, and the North is trending Democratic, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It would be a huge mistake for Democrats to abandon the field in the South (as it seems they are doing by nominating Kerry). The South will continue to become more influential in national politics as the demographics of the US continue to shift southward. The region is adding population at a prodigious rate. Democratic abandonment of the region puts the Democratic Party at risk of reducing itself (ultimately) to the status of a provincial irrelevancy.

5

Rich versus Poor.

And there are just as many poor folk in the south as in the north. The next big strife will be a Caste strife.

Eat the Rich has been around long enough that someone is going to start doing it.