Regionalism and the Democratic Party

After the 2004 elections, the cry went forward that the Democratic Party as a majority party was dead. This echoed Zell Miller’s book, A Majority Party No More. This sentiment was somewhat furthered in an article,
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=8954, by Michael Lind. Mr. Lind’s article is a brief history of political parties in the United States during the past two centuries. It offered, among other the things, that the Democratic Party needs to find a Midwestern candidate who has a connection to New England, the Pacific Northwest, and the south. He also noted that New Englanders who ran as Democrats after Kennedy have failed in their presidential bids and that Clinton and Carter, both southerners, were successful only because of Ross Perot and the fallout from Watergate respectively. He further states that Democrats should embrace a particular stand on social and economic issues that appeal to the center majority. He feels that blacks, Latinos, and gays are the heart of the democratic party in metropolitan areas joined with New England liberal types. All of his observations may be true, but I believe there is something else afoot. This post will offer a few observations in that regard.

What I offer is that there is a degree of intolerance in America’s electorate that is devoid of reason where it concerns individual choices or differences. Democrats have had the misfortune of not providing the essential message of their beliefs. Democrats believe in the rights of every individual whoever or whatever they are. They don’t pick and choose worthy people because of their region, their religion, or their beliefs about social and economic issues. If you are a human being, you belong in the Democratic Party - period. Democrats have been able to vote for Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton who won and for Stevenson, Humphrey, McGovern, Dukakis, Carter, Gore, and Kerry who lost. On the Republican side, the Republicans who won are Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. The losers were Dewey, Nixon, Goldwater, Ford, and Bush I. Bush II would have been a loser were it not for the Supreme Court’s interdiction. The New Englanders were Roosevelt, Dewey, Kennedy, Dukakis, Kerry and Bush I. The southerners were Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Gore, and Bush II. The Midwesterners were Truman, Eisenhower, Stevenson, Ford, and Reagan. Goldwater and Nixon were from the West.

Candidates from all parts of the country have run either to win or lose the presidency. Thus it is that it is not the candidate’s regionalism, but rather the mood of the regionalists who vote that determines the outcome of an election. I was born a southerner and a member of the minority racially, but was educated and reached my maturity as a Midwesterner while, during my last thirty plus years, I have lived as a southerner. I believe in the principles of the Democratic Party and always will.
I chose to live in the south because of its aura and weather, not because of its politics. Southerners tend to adhere to their past and are loath to get rid of it. Southern Democrats felt betrayed by the Democratic Party because of the Civil Rights Movement and betrayed by the Republican Party because of the Civil War and its aftermath, thus they have vacillated between the two. In the end they will always go the way which they feel with best serve their traditions. Their current refuge is in the religious tradition. Simplicity with elegance is what attracts them most. The present Republican Party has crafted a party that is different from the party of Lincoln and also different from the party of Roosevelt. A political party cannot survive as a party of religion because the two simply don’t belong together. A person’s religion is with them from birth, while a political party affiliation deals with the rhetoric of the day.
Republicans of the present decry Hollywood, the mainstream media, unions, lack of family values and the host of other ideas that are not rooted in religious tradition. They espouse morally acceptable programs in the media, schools, and the general public, but in reality, Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, Desperate Housewives, and Hollywood movies are more popular in the south than anything else. Southerners know that Roosevelt’s New Deal was good for them as well as was the influx of Eastern (New England) economic ideas. That economic success allowed them to return to ideas of simplicity and elegance that existed during the ante-bellum period. They justify their nostalgia through religious dogma because it allows them their heritage of traditional values. They know that their current political ideas don’t really jibe with what is actually written in the Bible.

What the Democratic Party needs to do is to engage Southerners where they are ad where they want to be and, in that process, show them that Democrat principles allows for change where essential while maintaining a tradition which allows freedom of religion as well as social and economic success.