Short take: Donkey Rising defends the South
The folks at Emerging Democratic Majority's Donkey Rising blog (who noticed our post earlier this week about the South's prominent role in next year's presidential primaries) opine on Thomas Schaller's latest ode to the "lost" South:
Schaller is right about the above factoids. But will somebody -- anybody -- please explain why, if the south is so hopeless, Democrats currently hold majorities of both houses of the state legislatures in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina and West Virginia (and one House in TN and KY), as well as the governorships of Louisiana, Arkansas, Virginia and Tennessee, two U.S. Senate seats in both Arkansas and West Virginia, and one each in Virginia, Florida and Louisiana.Good question. Read the whole thing to see what they're talking about.
Labels: Election 2008
4 Comments:
The State Senate in Mississippi is controlled by Republicans - and DINO's (Democrats In Name Only) who are still riding the coattails of the 'good-ol days' when the Democratic Party was the party of racism and segregation. The DINO's are mostly old white men who are there by virtue of being re-elected for multiple terms. To say that the State Senate in Mississippi is controlled by Democrats is only technically correct and very misleading. No progressive legislation gets through the Mississippi Senate, period. They are the tool of Haley Barbour.
See, this is why I come to this blog. It's great to see people fleshing out the local details of these stories. Thanks Blueneck. I do think, however, that in some of the states mentioned in the main post (e.g., North Carolina) that the democractic victories represent more than legacy votes and do suggest that a dem effort in the South could amount to more than a feint.
Blueneck makes a fair point. There are some DINOs in MS and a few in 'Bama. But the south has more than a few progressive Democrats and moderates, yes even white ones, who don't vote for Republican policies. I don't think there is any good data on DINOs, so it's all kinda impressionistic. But the Donkey Rising article nonetheless made a strong case that Dems can win statewide throughout the south. They forgot to include NC as at state with a Dem gov, so the case is even stronger than DR stated.
The Alabama legislature is not very progressive, but several younger, fairly progressive folks have been elected in the last 6 years. There is a special election next week to fill the vacancy in House District 22 (parts of Madison and Jackson counties) created by the death of Albert Hall. Mr. Hall was a conservative Democrat, some would say a DINO. There has been a lot of talk about how this district is trending Republican and would go Republican in the next election. I live in HD22 and I thought that was the case.
The primary election last month delivered one big surprise: Democratic turnout was 3.7 times Republican turnout. The general election is next Tuesday and we will see if the Jan.23 primary was just a fluke or if more of these rural voters (HD22 is very rural) are starting to draw back from the Republican party. The GOP candidate has just started negative direct mail here, so they clearly don't think they have it in the bag.
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