(Note: these learning modules encompass the
actual class lectures, and are designed for those students who have to miss
class through no fault of their own, and also as a refresher for all students.
Bold print in the notes are what the professor writes on the board.)
Well,
first of all, the South is defined as the 11 states of the old Civil War
Confederacy- the 11 states that seceded from the nation. Southern politics
scholars divide the South into the Deep South and the Rim South states.
The Deep South states had the largest number of slaves, were
the most agricultural, had the most oppressive forms of racial segregation and
disfranchisement, and today still have the highest percentage of African
Americans in their populations. The Deep South states are Mississippi, Alabama,
Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina. The Rim South states
are less agricultural, have more industry, and have fewer African Americans.
They are Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Arkansas, and Florida.
There are also differences within each of these two sub-regions. Georgia and
South Carolina, for example, are more modernized states with more industry.
Florida and Texas have more Hispanics than other southern states. Florida has
more residents who have moved there from other states. Virginia has a lot of
federal employees. The Bullock and Rozell textbook says that today the South
should be divided into new sub-regions: the Growth States and the Stagnant
States. Growth states have higher education levels, a greater share of the
population born in other states, and are less Republican; they are the Rim
South states of Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and Texas, and the Deep
South states of Georgia and South Carolina. The more Republican stagnant states
are the Deep South states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and the Rim
South states of Tennessee and Arkansas.
Those
of you who took my Political Parties class learned about how our nation’s
history can be divided into six different political eras with different
political party systems. The South was actually a part of the majority party
during the first two party eras. From 1796-1828, it supported the old
Republican Party (no relation to current GOP) of Thomas Jefferson,
who favored states’ rights and a weaker federal government, as he favored a
more agricultural republic. From 1828-1860, the South backed the Democratic
Party of Andrew Jackson, the party that was more pro-agriculture
(compared to the Whigs), and supported territorial expansion (the
Mexican-American war where the U.S. gained the southwest territory). The
Democrats were such a majority party that they even had some strength in the
North, as northern big city Democratic Party machines welcomed Catholic
immigrants into their party. Jackson was a great believer in the “common man,”
so popular democracy expanded, and states provided for the popular election of
presidential electors and of many state officials. Mississippi, for example,
elects all eight of its statewide officers. (So, while the latest Presidents
have been accused of politicizing the justice department by appointing cronies
as Attorney General, we in Mississippi don’t have that problem, as the people
elect our Attorney General and our Governor separately.) Historians pointed out
that this era of Jacksonian Democracy, while expanding democracy in America,
was nevertheless a white man’s democracy. Today, most historians are even more
negative towards Jackson, condemning his anti-native American policies (Indian
removal). Yet I can remember growing up when the current Democratic Party held
fundraising dinners called the Jefferson-Jackson day dinners,
honoring these two philosophical forebearers of their modern party.
The
Democratic Party of the 1850s was so dominated by the South that a majority of
U.S. Supreme Court justices were white southerners. In the Dred Scott decision,
they completely upheld the southern white slaveowner’s position by holding that
slaves were property, that the federal constitution protected one’s property,
and that the Congress could not outlaw slavery in the western territories.
Anti-slavery northerners were enraged, and promptly created a new political
party, the Republican Party, devoted to reversing this Supreme Court decision
and to outlawing slavery in the western territories (some Republicans even
wanted to abolish slavery in the South). When Republican Lincoln won the
1860 election, the 11 southern states promptly withdrew from the union and
called themselves a separate nation- the Confederacy. In the 1864 presidential
election during the Civil War, these 11 states were the only states that
did not take part in this election. Lincoln attempted to unify the nation
by picking as his Vice President a southern Democrat, Andrew Johnson, from
Tennessee, a poor farmer sympathetic to southern white leaders, who had been
the only southern Senator who refused to leave the Senate after his state
seceded.
Well,
the Civil War finally ended and by 1876 southern white segregationists (who
dominated the Democratic Party in southern states) using fraud and violence
had seized control of southern state governments, displacing the biracial
Republicans. This Third Party system lasted from 1860 thru 1896, and the
South beginning in 1880 was solidly Democratic. Every southern state
voted for the Democratic presidential candidate from 1880 thru 1916. Every U.S.
Senator from the South was a Democrat during this period, and nearly every U.S.
House member (except for mountainous Appalachian regions whose residents had
opposed slavery). Southern whites controlled southern state politics through
intimidation tactics and discriminatory voting procedures, which we will get
into the week after next. Yet the Republican Party won all except two
presidential elections, since they won most states outside of the South. The
Republicans were also a party of northern industrialists who opposed government
regulation of business practices and working conditions. By 1876 northern
whites had grown weary of the aftermath of the bloody Civil War (the most
costly war in our history in lives lost), so the Republican Party pursued its
pro-business policies and pretty much abandoned the plight of African Americans
in the South. During this 1860-1896 era, neither party was a true majority
party, since Democrats usually had a majority in the U.S. House, and the
popular vote for president was very close.
The 1896-1932 Fourth
Party era saw the more pro-agriculture Democratic Party absorb the very
agricultural Populist third party, thinking that that would make them the
majority party. However, the nomination of Populist William Jennings Bryan for
the presidency three times just made the Democratic party look too extreme and
completely out of touch with our industrializing nation. Even most blue-collar
workers in the big cities up north refused to vote for him. Therefore, the
Republican Party became the majority party in America, winning all except two
presidential elections (Democrat Woodrow Wilson won in 1912 only because two
Republicans ran against each other and split the GOP vote) and usually
controlling Congress. The South continued to be solidly Democratic, as white
segregationist Democrats in the 1890s enacted even more oppressive voting
devices that kept the great majority of African Americans from voting.
White Democrats had feared that African Americans might join with Republicans
or with the Populists to take power away from them. You might ask, how could
the white southerners get away with such obviously illegal actions against
their African American brothers and sisters? Well, once again, the Republicans
were based in the North, and they cared about promoting industry in their
states; their party got little support in the South, so why should they care?
Why didn’t the national Democrats do anything? Well, the Democrats were the
minority party, so the South was really important within that party. Indeed, up
until 1936 the national Democratic Party had a two-thirds rule- its
presidential nominee needed a two-thirds vote of the delegates to win, so the
South had a veto power over presidential nominees. Also, the South kept
reelecting its congress members forever, so they rose to seniority in the
Congress. Indeed, as late as the 1950s, two southerners (from Texas) held
the top two congressional leadership positions (House Speaker Sam Rayburn and
Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson).
The 1932-1968 Fifth
Party era begins the more complex modern era of American southern politics, so
I now move to double spacing, since the remainder of this material is likely to
be a question on the first exam.
Eerie historic memories- the stock market
plunged in 1929, the Great Depression started, and 25% of Americans were
unemployed. Republicans held the presidency (Herbert Hoover) and the Congress,
they were the more conservative party who didn’t want to use the federal
government much to help people hurt by the Depression, so they got kicked out
of office by voters in 1932. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) became
President, and Democrats gained control of Congress by wide margins. Roosevelt
enacted a New Deal program, which was basically liberal
domestic economic issues which helped most Americans. The New Deal
included Social Security, protection of labor unions (Wagner Act), public jobs
for the unemployed (public works, and conservation jobs in the park system),
the minimum wage, and the federal welfare program (AFDC- Aid to Families with
Dependent Children). These liberal economic programs were very popular, so the
Democratic Party’s base of southern whites and of Catholics (from the Jacksonian
era) expanded to include the low income, blue-collar workers, a majority of
African Americans (for economic reasons), Jews (victims of historic oppression,
they favored the disadvantaged), intellectuals (fascinated with the
possibilities of big government helping people), and most middle class
Americans. White southerners liked the economic liberalism of the New Deal, and
benefitted from federal crop price supports, a federally-subsidized TVA
(Tennessee Valley Authority) providing low cost electricity, and various
federal social welfare programs. Therefore, the South voted overwhelmingly for
FDR. Indeed, every southern state voted for FDR in every one
of his four elections from 1932 through 1944. For example, in 1944
Mississippi voted 94% for the Democrat Roosevelt. Focusing solely on a liberal
posture on domestic economic issues made the Democratic Party
the majority party in America.
Well, you can see a little contradiction in the
governing New Deal Democratic coalition. How can the party include white
southerners and African Americans? It was no problem when the Democrats cared
only about liberal economic programs, since both groups supported that. But
what happens when the Democrats start supporting federal civil rights measures?
White southerners start to drop out. The Democratic Party has now become the
majority party in America- it is winning not just southern states but also most
northern and western states. The Democrats are now electing congress members,
mayors, and governors from northern states. And those Democrats have African
Americans in their states and districts. Those Democratic officeholders are now
looking down at the South and thinking- how can we permit officeholders of our
party in the South to keep our African American brothers and sisters from the
fundamental human right of voting? Consequently, Minneapolis Mayor Hubert
Humphrey introduced a pro-civil rights platform plank at the 1948
Democratic national convention which would abolish the poll tax,
outlaw lynching, and guarantee equal opportunity in employment. The Mississippi
delegation and half of the Alabama delegation promptly walked out of the
convention, held meetings in southern states, and created a States’
Rights Party dedicated to the “segregation of the races”
and opposing any federal actions that interfered with the rights of states (citing
the 10th amendment of the federal constitution). This party’s
presidential candidate was Democratic governor of South Carolina Strom
Thurmond, and its vice-presidential nominee was Mississippi Democratic
governor Fielding Wright. They carried only four Deep South states, which
included Mississippi. Meanwhile, Democrat Harry Truman (who
became president after FDR died in 1945) ran a come-from-behind whistle stop
campaign, as he stressed the popular liberal New Deal economic
programs of FDR like Social Security, talked about how Democrats cared about
the little man, the worker, and blasted Republicans as only caring about the
rich and big business. Truman ended up winning the election, and winning the
other seven southern states. While Truman as President desegregated our
military, he wasn’t able to enact his other civil rights programs. (As an aside,
you can see why our former U.S. Senator Trent Lott got into hot water for his
joking comment at Republican U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday
party at the turn of the century: “Strom, Mississippi voted for you when you
ran for President. And if you had won, we wouldn’t have had all of these
problems (paraphrased).”)
Well, now the old Solid Democratic South is
beginning to crumble, as the national Democratic Party becomes a more liberal
party across a greater range of issues, not just on domestic economic issues.
White Southerners are a more conservative group in our country, so they begin
to move away from their Democratic Party heritage. This movement continues in
the 1952, 1956, and 1960 presidential elections- the Eisenhower
and Kennedy-Nixon elections. Republican Eisenhower won the 1952 election
because of voter dissatisfaction with the Korean War stalemate, the communist
takeover of mainland China, and alleged corruption in the Truman
administration. Eisenhower was a popular and non-partisan war hero, who had
been the leader of allied forces in Europe during World War 2. His Vice
President Richard Nixon was a communist fighter who as congressman had proven
that liberal Alger Hiss (an FDR aide) was a Soviet Union agent. This
combination of dissatisfaction plus national Republican conservatism played
well in the Rim South, permitting the GOP (Republicans) to win 4 of the 6 Rim
South states in both of Eisenhower’s elections. The Deep South with one
exception stuck with Democratic nominee and Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson
(a southerner was the VP pick both years). The 1960 election saw another regionally-balanced
moderate liberal Democratic ticket (Massachusetts Senator John Kennedy
with Senator Lyndon Johnson of Texas as VP) facing a moderate
conservative Republican ticket (Eisenhower’s VP Nixon), so a similar
pattern emerged. Republican Nixon won 3 of the 6 Rim South states, but lost the
Deep South (2 states cast electoral votes for a southern Democrat instead of
Kennedy, however). So, what is the moral in these 1952-1960 elections? A
majority of southern votes were cast for the Democratic presidential candidate,
but Republicans made historic gains in southern votes, and
even won a few Rim South states. This brings us to the earthquake
of 1964.
The 1964 presidential election saw the
Republicans nominate an outright conservative who was ideologically pure on all
issues, so the GOP made big gains in the most conservative subregion, the Deep
South. Indeed, Republicans carried all 5 of the Deep South states
for the first time since Reconstruction. However, Republican presidential
candidate Barry Goldwater (a Senator from Arizona) was so conservative that he
lost the rest of the nation, including every Rim South state (he only won his home state). Goldwater at the 1960 GOP
convention had urged conservatives to grow up and seize control of a party that
had not nominated a “real” conservative since Hoover.
Conservatives flooded the GOP caucuses and conventions and handed him the
nomination in 1964, but Goldwater was so conservative
that more liberal and moderate Republicans refused to support him (like New
York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Michigan Governor George Romney, Mitt’s father).
Goldwater was so consistently conservative that he even wanted to repeal the
New Deal, such as by making Social Security voluntary, selling the TVA to
private industry, and ending farm price supports. He called for victory over
Communism, victory in Vietnam, and possible use of our nuclear weapons (issuing
them to our regional military commanders around the world). Democratic
President Johnson ran an explosive campaign ad with a little girl in a field,
picking the petals off of a daisy, and then the viewer hears a mechanical voice
counting down from ten to zero, and her smiling upraised face is replaced by an
atomic bomb explosion, and on the dark screen you hear Johnson’s voice, “We
must learn to love one another, and get along with one another, or we shall certainly
perish.” The screen then reads: Vote Johnson, Humphrey, in November. In other
words, Goldwater is such an extreme conservative that he is going to blow up
the world! Goldwater was such a strong conservative that he was one of the few
Senators outside of the South who had voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations and in employment.
His “principled” support for states’ rights (he wasn’t a racist; indeed, he
favored gay rights, because he opposed big government) caused joy among white
southerners. Indeed, in 1964 now Senator Strom Thurmond switched to the
Republican Party, becoming only the second GOP southern Senator (John Tower of
Texas was the first) since Reconstruction. Another nail in the coffin for
Democrats was Johnson’s Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, the author of the 1948
civil rights platform. One big plus for Democrats in Dixie was that African
Americans were now voting 90% Democratic, a big Democratic gain among blacks
compared to their bare black voting majority in the three previous elections (African
Americans became especially important electorally after the 1965 Voting Rights
Act).
Johnson won so easily that he carried in a
heavily Democratic Congress, which proceeded to pass his Great Society programs,
which included Medicare, Medicaid, anti-poverty programs, and the 1965 Voting
Rights Act (a much-expanded New Deal, in short). But Johnson got us into the
Vietnam War in a big way, sending half a million young men (one-third of whom
were drafted) there and eventually (after Nixon kept it going for four years)
resulting in 58,000 dead young Americans. The late 1960s saw campus protests
against the war, urban riots against police brutality and continued poverty, a
rising crime rate, and a counter-culture youth movement of Hippies and Black
Panthers. Riots and the burning of buildings especially picked up after the
assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King (and of New York
Senator Bobby Kennedy, who had been a civil rights fighter as his brother’s
Attorney General). One Vietnam War protest was so large that they had to park
city buses bumper-to-bumper around the White House to protect it. Obviously
with all of this dissatisfaction, the other political party is going to be
helped, so Republicans elected Nixon as President in 1968. In addition,
some voters were so unhappy with the television scenes of violent protesters
(including young anti-war protesters burning the American flag) that they ended
up supporting a third-party candidate- segregationist Alabama governor George
Wallace. Wallace was famous for saying things like: “If one of them VietNAM
protesters, lays down in front of my motorcade… that will be the last
motorcade, that VietNAM protester, ever LAYS DOWN IN FRONT OF!” (He had the
face of a snarling bulldog.) As Wallace won most of the Deep South states
and moderate conservative Nixon won most of the Rim South states,
liberal Hubert Humphrey won only one southern state- President Johnson’s home
state of Texas. Yet, Democrats kept control of the Congress, as southerners
split their tickets and often voted for Democratic congress members, who
continued to vote in a conservative manner, such as Mississippi’s senators John
Stennis and James Eastland (who were also powerful committee chairs).
The 1972 election completed the
Democratic meltdown in the South, as Democrats nominated a very liberal South
Dakota Senator George McGovern, and proceeded to lose every
southern state (and every other state in the nation except for liberal
Massachusetts). McGovern wanted to give everyone a welfare payment, supported
national health insurance, wanted to slash our defense budget, and to stop our
support of authoritarian governments (including NATO allies like Greece and
Turkey). He wanted to pull all of our remaining troops out of Vietnam, and when
asked how we would get our POWs out, he said if necessary, “I would crawl to
Hanoi (capital of communist North Vietnam).” Nixon supporters dubbed him the
Triple A candidate- in favor of Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion. Acid in the sense
that many of his supporters favored decriminalizing marijuana, amnesty for
those who had fled to Canada to avoid the draft, and pro-choice on the abortion
issue (this was the year before Roe v. Wade, when only four states had fully legalized
abortion before fetal viability). Historically, it was shocking to not only see
the Solid South now become a solid Republican South, at least in
terms of presidential elections, but to vote Republican by such
landslide margins. Nixon got 78% of the vote in Mississippi,
for example. He won nationally on a campaign of peace and prosperity and being
a moderate conservative. Yet once again, Democrats kept control of the
Congress, though the numbers of Republicans from the South were inching up.
How quickly things
change in America- Nixon resigns before being impeached by the House, Vice
President Gerald Ford (a former Michigan Congressman and House GOP Leader)
becomes President, and he picks that “RINO” Nelson Rockefeller (a good public
servant) as Vice President. Two-term California governor and conservative Ronald
Reagan (a former actor) promptly announces his challenge to President Ford’s
renomination in 1976, and there is a bloody nomination battle that
isn’t resolved until Mississippi ends its unit rule (a winner-take-all system)
and gives Ford the nomination. Fighting for his life, Ford had dumped the
unpopular Rockefeller, prompting Rocky to campaign in southern GOP delegations
to the tune of: “Well, you SOBs, you got me off the ticket. What more do you
want?” Democrats meanwhile had reunited their party with a
more moderate liberal Born Again Southern Baptist, former
one-term governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter. Carter
played on public dissatisfaction with Ford’s pardon of Nixon, as Carter said
that he wanted a government “that is as good, and honest, and decent,
and truthful, and fair, and competent, and idealistic, and compassionate, and
as filled with love as are the American people” (Witcover, 1977, Marathon book,
p. 198). Carter straddled divisive issues like abortion, saying that he
personally opposed it but would not support a constitutional amendment to end
it. As a Born-Again Southern Baptist, who as governor had great relations with
the African American community, Carter won every southern state except
for Virginia, and with running mate Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota he
won the presidency. Yet the seeds of future Democratic failure in the South
were evident in that a bare majority of whites in the South had actually voted
in ideological terms- for a northern Republican who was a moderate
conservative, over a southern Democrat who was a moderate liberal. Only the
overwhelming African American support for Carter carried the day for Democrats
in the South.
Well, the see-saw continues in 1980. An embattled President Carter faces
high inflation (due to a Mideast oil crisis), so he puts the
brakes on the economy and we also end up with a recession and high unemployment.
Carter pushes a more liberal foreign policy that protects human rights abroad,
so our pro-American ally and dictator, the Shah (King) of Iran, gets overthrown
by Islamic militants. They proceed to take over the American embassy in Tehran
and hold 52 Americans as hostages, demanding that we send the Shah
back to Iran so that they can try him for his crimes against the Iranian people
(and execute him). The very next month, the communist Soviet Union invades the
Asian country of Afghanistan to prop up a communist leader
unpopular with his own people. In the one debate that was held, a coldly
calculating ice-man Carter kept trying to paint Reagan as a conservative
extremist, someone who would destroy Social Security and Medicare and blow up
the world. And the poised, good-natured Reagan would gently respond, “There
you go again, Mr. President,” and explain how he supported alternative
programs (like the Eldercare health care plan) that would use the free
enterprise system to help our senior citizens, and would strive to eliminate
nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. The closing summary statement was
devastating for Carter, as Reagan simply asked, “Are you better off today
than you were four years ago? Can your dollar buy as much as you could then? If
so, vote for my opponent. If not, vote for me, vote for change, give my program
a chance (paraphrased)” Then, the day before the election was the one-year
anniversary of the hostage taking, with the nightly news commemorating it with
headlines like: “Day 365, America Held Hostage!” Needless to say, Carter was
toast. Reagan won in a landslide, he won every
southern state except for Carter’s home state of Georgia,
and he even swept in a Republican controlled Senate (for the first time since
1954). The South went for a conservative Republican over a moderate liberal
Democrat, but perhaps most important was that the South like the nation voted
for a change, as they were dissatisfied and viewed Carter as a failed leader.
The next two elections saw a Solid South that
was now Republican, as Reagan wins re-election in 1984 and his
Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush wins in 1988, with every
southern state voting Republican in both elections. Both elections
saw moderate conservative Republicans defeat pretty liberal
Democrats. Reagan in 1984 ran on peace and prosperity with a
campaign slogan of, “It’s Morning in America.” Reagan had a great film
about how the economy was booming, as Lee Greenwood sang “I’m Proud to be an
American, Where at Least I Know I’m Free.” Democratic Minnesota Senator Walter
Mondale promised “I will raise your taxes” (to cope with a rising budget
deficit) and nominated a woman for Vice President, New York Congresswoman
Geraldine Ferraro. When a reporter during a debate asked the 73-year-old Reagan
if he thought he was too old to be reelected, Reagan quipped, “I will not make
age an issue in this campaign. I will not make an issue of my opponent’s
relative youth and inexperience.” Even Mondale laughed. In 1988 Vice
President Bush blasted Massachusetts governor, Democrat
Michael Dukakis as an extreme liberal, who opposed the death
penalty, had a furlough program that released dangerous criminals, was a
card-carrying member of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), and who had
vetoed a Pledge of Allegiance bill for the public schools. Dukakis didn’t help
his cause when he was asked by a reporter at a debate: “If your wife Kitty were
raped and murdered, would you still oppose the death penalty,” as he kind of
smirked and responded, “Yes I would still oppose it. I don’t think the death
penalty is an effective deterrent to crime. We’ve done other things that were
more effective in Massachusetts (paraphrased).” Yet Southerners were still
splitting their tickets, as about two-thirds of their U.S. House and Senate
members were Democrats (including Mississippi’s Senator John Stennis, Chair of
the Armed Services Committee and ultimately President Pro Tempore of the
Senate, next in line for the presidency after the House Speaker; Stennis left
office in 1989 however).
The Bill Clinton elections
of 1992 and 1996 continued the seesaw battle, as Democrats
were able to win four southern states in each election, and Clinton
won both elections. Arkansas governor and moderate liberal
Clinton (leader of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council) picked Tennessee Senator Al
Gore as his running mate, and ended up winning both of these southern
states, as well as two other southern states in each election. Clinton was
smart in moving to the center of the electorate, as he called
for abortion to be safe, legal, but rare, and as he supported the death penalty
(I have to fly back to my home state of Arkansas to sign a death warrant, he
once said). He was also tough on crime, criticizing riot-sympathizer Sister
Souljah at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition convention. Clinton also played on
voter dissatisfaction with the Bush recession with a campaign slogan, “It’s
the economy, Stupid!” Bush seemed out of touch with average Americans,
glancing at his watch at one debate where a distraught woman asked him about
the recession, while Clinton walked right up to the woman and said, “I feel
your pain. I’m from a small town in Arkansas, Hope Arkansas.” Clinton then won
re-election in 1996 over Republican Senate Leader Bob Dole from Kansas.
The economy was booming with even some Republicans asking why
they should vote for a change (I have money in my pocket, they joked). Dole
looked old, he had a mean and sarcastic image (In the 1976 Vice Presidential
debate he had blamed Democrats for every war in this century!), and at one
campaign event he even fell off the podium after a railing broke while he was
shaking hands with people in the street. In the face of these Democratic presidential
victories, Republicans were making historic gains in Congress, however. After
Clinton raised taxes, tried to admit gays into the military (he ended up with
the compromise policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell), and failed to get a national
health care plan passed, Republicans in his first midterm election of 1994 gained
control of both chambers of Congress, for the first time in 40 years. This
Republican congressional victory was made possible by the Republicans
winning a majority of U.S. House and Senate seats in the South, for
the first time since Reconstruction. Republicans also now held a majority of
southern governorships. As southern Democrats retired from office, their party
nominated more liberal candidates, and so Republicans (who were conservative)
won more and more general elections. Since 1994, Democrats have never held a
majority of southern seats in the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, or the
governorships. The Chair of the Republican National Committee during this impressive
1994 GOP landslide was Haley Barbour from Yazoo City, Mississippi, who was a
great talker in promoting the Republican agenda on TV.
Well, another
transition, this time back to the Solid Republican South for the two George
Walker Bush elections of 2000 and 2004, as Bush
won every southern state both times. Bush was a two-term
governor of Texas, who had knocked off a Democratic powerhouse governor Ann
Richards, and then won a landslide re-election with significant Democratic
support. Bush had supported an education plan as governor that benefitted
African Americans and Hispanics by imposing an indirect quota on college
admissions by individual high schools, and he called himself a Compassionate
Conservative. The Democrats nominated Clinton’s Vice President, Al Gore,
who had been a moderate liberal Senator but who had shifted further to the
left. The personable Bush projected an image of a frat boy
whom you’d like to have a beer with. Gore projected more of an image of
arrogance, as he sighed during the debates while Bush was talking, showing his
impatience, and acted as if he wanted to hog the stage. In 2004 Democrats
nominated liberal Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who had joined the anti-war
movement after serving in Vietnam. After the 9-11 terrorist attacks, most
Americans preferred the terrorist fighter Bush, who had invaded
both Afghanistan and Iraq and toppled their anti-American governments.
Rejecting UN calls for a longer waiting period in Iraq, Bush went in alone,
showing that he put American security first. In both elections, the South
seemed to be affected by the same issues that affected the nation as a whole,
but the South voted even more Republican because that party offered the more
conservative candidate. These elections suggested that the Democrats were
increasing their image in the South as a consistently liberal party, and as
they did this they lost white conservative support. From the economic liberal
party of FDR (a popular issue) to a pro-civil rights party (acceptable for
moral reasons, indeed Democrats kept control of southern Congress members after
the 1965 Voting Rights Act) to a party now blasted as being anti-defense,
pro-abortion, pro-gay rights. This expansion of Democratic liberalism to
foreign and defense policy (starting with the Iranian hostage debacle) and
civil liberty and lifestyle issues (anti-religious right issues) may explain
this continued loss of Democratic support in Dixie.
But then comes Barack
Obama, and we see Democrats being able to pick off two or three southern
states in 2008 and 2012. Obama was bright, articulate,
thoughtful, organized, and charismatic. He was smart in out-organizing
Hillary Clinton in order to gain the 2008 party nomination (he even had
delegate slates for small western caucus states that she ignored), and then
keeping in touch with Bush’s Treasury Secretary during the financial meltdown
(while Republican John McCain showed little knowledge of economics). This financial
meltdown that prompted two trillion-dollar bailout packages caused
voter dissatisfaction with the Republican presidential
administration, so Democrat Obama won the presidency (his party had regained
control of Congress two years previously because of voter disillusionment with
the endless Iraqi war). Obama then won re-election in 2012 with his empathy for
the average voter and his middle-class programs, defeating rich businessman and
former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Romney’s gaffe to
rich donors that they should support him because “47% of Americans don’t
even pay taxes, so they won’t support me,” suggested a certain contempt for
these “freeloaders.” In both elections, while Republicans won most southern
states, Obama was able to twice win both Florida and Virginia (two rim South
states with many non-southern origin residents), and in his first election he
also carried North Carolina. Once again, in most southern states voters
went for the more moderate conservative candidate, the Republican.
But Obama’s reelection suggested that if a Democrat could win at least two
southern states, he or she could win the Presidency.
And so finally we come to Donald Trump. Trump in 2016 won every
southern state except Virginia, and he won a majority of the electoral
college to become President. Again, he was a more moderate conservative compared
to the moderate liberal Hillary Clinton. At a time of voter dissatisfaction
with politicians, Trump was the Outsider, having never held public
office. He played on this outsider theme by mocking his opponents as “little
Marco,” “low energy Jeb,” “lyin’ Ted,” and “crooked Hillary.” He also took on a
Democratic theme of fair trade and even trade wars, campaigned a lot in
the Rust Belt, and won normally Democratic states like Michigan and
Pennsylvania. Many conservatives liked his obvious contempt for political
correctness. While Trump campaigned among blue-collar types,
Hillary showed her contempt for some of them, as at an LGBTQ speech she called half
of Trump’s rally attenders a “basket of deplorables… racist, sexist,
homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic”. In 2020, Trump again was strong
in the South, winning every southern state except Virginia and Georgia.
Again, Trump was the moderate conservative candidate compared to the moderate
liberal Democrat Joe Biden. This time, though, the dissatisfaction issue
hurt Trump and cost him the election, as the incumbent was blamed by many
voters for the national Covid pandemic. Trump’s response to the pandemic
was viewed as fairly slow while Biden emphasized the disease’s seriousness with
his mask-wearing and his socially distanced car rallies. While not decisive to
his victory, Biden’s ability to win two southern states (Georgia as well as
Virginia) suggested his popularity nationally. The 2024 election was
more like Trump’s first victory, as he won every southern state except for
Virginia. Voters were clearly dissatisfied with high inflation
(more than double Trump’s first term) and the virtually open borders. Though
Democrats prevailed on Biden to leave the ticket after his fumbling debate with
Trump, elevating his Vice President Kamala Harris to the top spot did not help
them.