Atlanta, Ga.: Your article mentions that Democrats should eye the Southwest at the expense of the South because of the large and growing Hispanic population in the Southwest. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, six southern cities (Raleigh, Atlanta, Greensboro, Charlotte, Nashville, and Greenville) have experienced "hypergrowth" in Hispanic populations. Hypergrowth is defined as a greater than 300 percent growth in Latinos since 1980. Given this, isn't it premature for the Dems. to be writing off the South?
Thomas Schaller: I sort of addressed the issue earlier, with the discussion of "ideopolis" growth in selected areas of the south. Yes, I lived in NC and FL and saw the surprising numbers of Hispanics moving and settling there. Quite remarkable. But remember those percentages tend to be calculated with a low denominator to begin with. If a state's Hisp pop jumps from 1 percent to 4 percent, that's a 300 percent growth, but if it jumps from 20 percent to 30 percent, that's only a 50 percent growth -- even though the latter state has 10 percent absolute more hispanics and the former only gain 3 percent absolutely. I believe in MD our hispanic population grew the last decade by more than 100%, but it's still small comparatively. Ah, as twain said: Lies, damn lies and statistics. Not calling you a liar, please understand. Just saying that number can deceive.
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Rockville, Md.: In "Making of the President: 1968" Howard Phillips quotes a Republican figure (I forget who) as wanting to emphasize racial issues saying "Divide the country in half, and we get the bigger half."
Is non-competitive in the South the price the Democrats pay for being right about Civil Rights, or are the issues a lot deeper than that?
Thomas Schaller: Short answer: No doubt. Longer answer: This is exactly what Nixon tried to do, and has now succeeded. Remember, he didn't figure this out in 1960, and in fact, people may not realize this but JFK/RFK played the race card in 1960 by handing out pictures of Nixon smiling with black children to WHITE neighborhoods. The GOP was for decades the party of blacks, because of Lincoln's historic role. When Nixon realized he could flip the script and get into the white house, he did. The Dems did the right thing, siding with history and justice, and no good deed goes unpunished now, does it? (P.S.: I think it was one of the southern senators, perhaps GA's russell, who made that quip when LBJ signed the civil rights act of 64 or the voting rights act of 65....but don't hold me to that, plz. I haven't slept much this week.)
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Huntsville, Ala.: Thomas Schaller is exactly the problem with the Democratic party: Northeast liberals telling them how stupid Southerners are to vote with their hearts and minds. Does Professor Schaller know the results of the census bureaus study of segregation? That the most segregated areas of the country are not in the South, but in New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois?
Thomas Schaller: I have studied racial segregation formally, even calculated racial segregation indices. Without going into too much detail, the point here is that, just because blacks and white are intermingled in both urban and even rural areas of, say, NC (low segregation) and highly concentrated in a few areas of states like PA (almost all in Pittz and Philly) that doesn't mean that geographic segregation is a perfect proxy for voting polarity. indeed, perhaps because blacks and whites live so close together they vote in different directions. I lived in Chatham County, NC, a rural black-white poor county OUTSIDE chapel hill when I went to school there. I waited tables (only male, because i was told that's women's work, sir) in a fish fry restaurant where, after church on sunday, the patrons would file in from their respective parishes. but they didn't consort much with each other, and i could either literally hear (or invidiously feel) racism moving in both directions between the tables. And this despite the fact that their stations in life were essentially the same. So long as divide-and-conquer working class voters works, the GOP will prevail. I never said southerners were stupid, and don't think they are.
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Camp Springs: Our country has been highly mobile for 50 years and isn't getting any less so. Since many people in South used to live in Pennsylvania (and vice versa) why isn't the country becoming more politically homogeneous?
Or is it becoming more homogeneous, and the current divisiveness just all of use standing between the 50- and two different 40-yard lines? (e.g. the issues are narrower, but the positions on minor differences are more intractable)
Thomas Schaller: I would refer you to two great articles in recent but separate issue of the Atlantic monthly by jon rauch and david brooks. rauch, who i know and is a super thinker and writer, talks about how people are acculturating into american life despite arriving as recently as a few years ago and moving around. brooks talks about how we are on the surface heterogeneous, but really cluster ourselves, such as how Dems in DC area live in Montgomery County, Md., and Republicans live in Northern, Va. people gravitate naturally to similar people. were it only less so, we'd have the sort of melting pot some like myself would like to see. but brooks concludes that it's not melting, merely congealing. I agree.
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Chevy Chase, Md.: Hi Tom,
Should the Democrats also abandon the Rocky Mountain states which have become equally hostile to Democrats. Along with the South, this is the fastest growing area of the country. To win without any Rocky Mountain or Southern states strikes me as the equivalent of drawing an inside straight -- possible but not very likely. Shouldn't the Democrats really work hard on mobilizing constituencies like Latinos who vote at low rates in order to turn some of these states like AZ, FL and TX more Democratic?
Thomas Schaller: To me, the most puzzlng region in american is the rocky mountain states. These are the states that vote for independents and alternative candidates. (go check perot's 1992 totals again.) they are also the progressive states that gave women the right to vote in state elections BEFORE passage of the 19th amendment. frankly. i'm not sure why they're so republican. i'd be happy to learn from a reader why. As for the SW and hispanics, i do talk at length about that in the piece, and if I thought cubans might swing Democratic I'd put Florida back in the competitive column.
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Boston, Mass.: This is a broad question, but briefly, why is the south so different?
Many of us here in New England cannot fathom why anyone would display a Confederate flag. And the outpouring of support for ex-Justice Moore and his 10 commandments is also baffling -- is there any way that a document that starts "I am the Lord your God" could -not- be considered to be an establishment of religion?
Thomas Schaller: Volumes, quite literally, have been written on this subject. But as a native new yorker, i'd be remiss if i did not remind you (Huntsville, AL, you still with us, I hope?) that some of the WORST race riots in american occurred in cities including rochester and boston. the north may not have the symbolism, but there is still a residual problem in many places there -- but it's more subtle and refined, what political scientists call "the new racism." but that's too long a sidebar for today....
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Alexandria, Va.: Professor Schaller, I agree completely with your theory. Gore came within 4,000 votes in New Hampshire of winning the presidency without a single Southern state. Thus, it could be done. Given the fundraising disadvantage of the Democrats, they should probably spend little time and money trying to win Southern electoral votes. However, it may still be valuable to have a Southerner on the ticket, either for Pres. or for V.P. To convince undecided non-Southerners to vote Democrat in Nov. 2004, it may help to have a Southerner on the ticket. Many undecided non-Southerners seem convinced that, no matter what a Democratic candidate says, he cannot possibly be moderate enough to lead the nation unless he is from the South. The current conventional wisdom is that there are no more undecided voters and that the nation is completely polarized. Thus, everyone focuses on the "base." Is this really a sure bet? What do you think of the idea of putting a Southerner on the ticket to help win over the fence-sitting voters in the Northern, Great Lakes, and West Coast states?
Thomas Schaller: Base v. independents. Well, there is not majority party in america, at least based on survey responses and registration. for some reason, the "greatest generation" didn't do such a great job of socializing its partisan values into its progeny, i'm sorry to say. since the early 1960s, if not earlier, partisan attachments have crumbled. part of that is the failure of elites, vietnam disenchantment, and the tensions that the civil rights movement created. but it's sad, really, that people don't pick a party, even they don't agree with it fully, and work from within to change and promote it -- rather than throwing their hands up and staying home. but party elites and elected officials, because they have set themselves up in safe districts, have no incentive to party build. i wish it were not true, but consider that of the 434 house seats each two years, both parties agree that only 30 or 40 are even in play. that's not democracy. that's two-party plutocracy.
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