Racism Powered Republican Triumph

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So you need six seats to win the majority, you win nine, three out of which are in the South (Confederacy defined) and it is because South is racist that Democrats lost the Senate?

Grimes was a joke from the start, there was an article from way back in summer of 2013 that said she was regarded as such on the ground in the state. Capito was going to be unstoppable in WV regardless. Did racists pad the margins, of course, but the wins would still have been wins. Iowa, Colorado, Virginia, and New Hampshire all voted for Obama twice, and Republicans won 2 of those outright and came really close in the other two.

The notion that racism powered the victory, fails to account for a Republican Senate candidates winning Jefferson and Loudon counties for instance. Maybe a factor, but it is not the only reason.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Turnout matters, of course. If you had a more representative voting public I think results would've been more favorable. But not all of the people who stayed home did so because of voting laws. If they felt it was pointless, that's not their fault, it's the Democrats'.

Indeed, all the talk of "well 2/3rds didn't vote" being used to deflect from the results fails to acknowledge the fact that if things were okay, they would have turned out or at least enough of them would have. They didn't turn out because they were pissed at the Democrats, but also hated the Republicans jsut as much or more and therefore did not have an option to vote for.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I hate to bump this, but I just noticed so much nonsense that I couldn't resist.

So you need six seats to win the majority, you win nine, three out of which are in the South (Confederacy defined) and it is because South is racist that Democrats lost the Senate?

Sure. The Republican electorate of this country nowadays is for all intents and purposes part of the South, because their present-day ideology has been irreversibly shaped by the dominance of Southerners in the Republican Party and its media. Southern culture as a whole is now altering the entire country's culture (much more so than vice-versa) as we become a larger share of the nation; why on God's green earth would that not apply to the politics of the region's dominant party? As I'm sure I don't have to tell you, there was a time in which Republicans from the North varied considerably from Republicans in the South and Republicans in the West; this really is no longer the case by and large (I'm talking about the electorate here, so please don't go into giving examples like Charlie Baker to refute). Republicans in Iowa and Colorado now respond in the same way to dog-whistling tactics as Republicans in Alabama respond to them. The Republican Party's belief system has been nationalized, and the Republican Party is now Southern.

I don't disagree with much in your post so I am at a loss as to your point. There has always been a degree of racism in the Midwest and West as well as the South and even the Northeast (Why Mecha, why?), but unless you think Conservatism is entirely underpinned by racism, it is hard to claim that it drove the bulk of Republican successes outside of those states that trended away from Obama (WV, LA, AR etc), anymore then it drove 2014 any other Republican victory going back for the last four decades and maybe you do.

Racism comes from a traditionalist mindset and so they would be naturally attracted to a Conservative Party over a liberal one, particularly over one that long ago cease to be marginally any better than the other in representing their economic interests. However, as long as the person they are voting for knows what they are fighting for and why, those voter's racism doesn't suddenly invalidate legitimate conservative points and ideology. You can play out this game to its furthest extent that you want and turn every conservative slogan into a dog whistle, but Conservatism isn't going to just disappear and the country will be all the worse for it being further divided. You would also be torturing yourself for with a two party system, "The Devil" is going to win sooner or later and to some exten I agree with Jon Stewart, in that you shouldn't demonize everything.

Plus in labeling everything as racist, you devalue the meaning of what true racism really is and run the risk of it being normalized behavior amongst a larger percentage of the population as opposed to the slow decline one could argue has been occuring over the past several decades, which I think is more what everyone desires.

I don't need to remind you also, that as the South grows it is changing and at a rapid pace. The Republican Party adapted its issue focus to cater to the South, ironically as a means to preserve itself as a conservative party and they tolerated far too much in the way of Helms, Thurmond etc to get there. The alterantive was somehow for a split to occur and with each party taking half of the racists and for two decades that was the case more or less, but you aren't going to just drop them in the ocean and if you don't want them as Democrats they are going to be Republicans (again two party system). At that point our only recourse is communication, education and eventually, generational change and that has done wonders over the decades to reduce their number.  Let that process of attrition continue.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A much better thread title would be that apathy powered the Republican triumph. And if anything, the election shows that this tactic of defining Republicans as racist et al isn't enough to get them out to vote, not when they expected results and didn't get it. NC demonstrates that more than any other state.

Culture defines the limits of what a person is willing to vote for (a swing vote is merely that narrow tract that can decided between the two) in a polarized environment, but votes are still won and lost at the kitchen table and there is always a second option even if it means not voting.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The original House version:
Southern Democrats: 7–87   (7–93%)
Southern Republicans: 0–10   (0–100%)
Northern Democrats: 145–9   (94–6%)
Northern Republicans: 138–24   (85–15%)

The Senate version:
Southern Democrats: 1–20   (5–95%)
Southern Republicans: 0–1   (0–100%)
Northern Democrats: 45–1   (98–2%)
Northern Republicans: 27–5   (84–16%)

Not a single Southern Republican voted for the Civil Rights Act; 7 Southern Democratic Senators and 1 Southern Democratic member of the House, however, did. In the North, more Republicans voted against the Act than Democrats.

At the end of the day, both a higher percentage of Northern Democrats voted for CRA than Northern Republicans, and a higher percentage of Southern Democrats voted for CRA than Southern Republicans. To simply combine the two groups and aggregate the numbers to fit your point is hilariously foolish from a historical perspective.

You got your numbers flipped in the second to the last paragraph.

To arbitrarily seperate them implies that these Democrats 1) share nothing in common with Democrats and 2) that they all left the Democrating Party and the Democrats abandoned wholesale their values. All were born and most died as the Democrats they were. Most still viewed themselves as fighting for the common man, as Democrats have nearly all agreed upon going back to the days of Jackson. Those that came to be termed as Conservatives/Bourbons embraced the business interests and continued to see the political realm through the lens of the approach versus the objective to be achieved. Those that became Populist/Progressivess/New Dealers emphasized the objective over the means and came to embrace a larger government to help the common folk. They both had in common the racist views dominant at the time. At the end of the day, those Southern Democrats were Democrats even if they were absolutely repulsive to you, they are the reason you have a Democratic Party, a suffrage beyond just the rich, a country beyond just that of the elites, a New Deal, a Great Society, a politics based on advancing those who cannot advance themselves.

Whether they took the off ramp in 1830, 1880, 1930, 1965, 1994, or 2010, they are still etched upon nature and soul of the Democratic Party. The liberalized and helped to Laborize America and you wonder why as they have streamed out of the Party to be replaced by rich pro-choice Republicans and well to do elites, that you now have a Democratic Party that doesn't stand for anything that can motivate even its new base to turn out. In rejecting their flaws, it seems something else has been thrown out with the bathwater as well.