Is the Republican South Starting to Crack?

[pbrower2a]

I think VA, NC and maybe GA will start or keep on moving leftward. While FL and the rest of the deep south stay the same or move right.

Georgia, by all observations, is actually trending RIGHT. Outside of Atlanta, there really isn't anymore Democrat areas. North Carolina and Virginia will continue to move left, and South Carolina to a certain extent, as the Charleston area continues to attract a lot of young people who tend to be more liberal. The rest of the south will remain pretty solidly behind the GOP.

I'm not saying GA is trending left right now, but I do think in the next few election cycle we will see it start to trend left, but not that far left to flip the state in a president race. I see it because like NC is right now. Lean Republican in presidental races but toss-up to lean Democratic at the state level.

North Carolina has always beenDemocrat at the state level in almost forever. It didnt just trend that way. Even when the state was nationally strong Republican, it still had Democrats in charge statewide. I dont know much about Georgia local politics, so I can't comment on them.

Perhaps people outside of North Carolina have assumed that North Carolina is a very right-wing state because of the late Senator Jesse Helms.

[pbrower2a]

I don't think that we will see another era of moderate southerner democrats. The Carter-Clinton period is definitely ended. Finally, we will see liberal northerners taking the control of the party.
The Democratic party will be a true progressive party.

To the contrary. As Democrats win Governorships and US Senate seats in the South -- offices often perceived as one election away from the Presidency, the likes of Lloyd Bentsen, Jimmy Carter, John Edwards, and Bill Clinton will return. Democrats can win in the South, but only as moderates. The Republican Party has become increasingly reactionary in the South, and it may be a matter of time.

I might not have a very high regard for the Presidencies of Carter and Clinton, but I can't deny Clinton's success in winning two landslide elections. That wasn't so long ago. The Religious Right has been weakening as a political force, and so far it can reliably deliver votes only in the South and the Plains states.

[pbrower2a]

The "upper inland South" -- Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia -- has no giant prizes, but they seem to vote in tandem. In 2008 they accounted for 42 electoral votes, which is more than any state except for California.

[pbrower2a]

Obama could make political headway in the South if he can successfully address poverty. Democrats used to rely upon poor people (at least until 1996) in the South -- white and black alike -- to win elections. Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 both treated poverty as a political third rail because Americans apparently wanted to hear nothing of it. The poverty that Obama addressed in 2008 was the threat of poverty to people who had never been poor -- the middle class in fear of destitution from mass layoffs, mass cutbacks, and deterioration of asset values. He addressed that successfully in his campaign -- but he ignored the long-term Third World poverty heavily concentrated in the South (including Appalachia). Will he need to? Maybe not. Will he? If he must, of course.

Are poor Southern whites that much different from poor Southern blacks that they can't vote alike? Most poor people are still white people.  Look at southeastern Kentucky.

[pbrower2a]

Third world poverty? no.

Southeastern Kentucky. The Black Belt of Mississippi and Alabama.  Some counties along the Mississippi River.