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Two generations ago Kevin Phillips challenged Republicans to envision a southern-based national majority. In Whistling Past Dixie, Tom Schaller issues an equally transformative challenge to Democrats: Build a winning coalition outside the South.
The South is no longer the "swing" region in American politics — it has swung to the Republicans. Most of the South is beyond the Democrats' reach, and what remains is moving steadily into the Republican column. The twin effects of race and religion produce a socially conservative, electorally hostile environment for most Democratic candidates. What's wrong with Kansas is even more wrong in the South, where cultural issues matter most to voters.
Yet far too many politicians and pundits still subscribe to the idea that Democrats must recapture the South. This southern nostalgia goes beyond sentimentality: It is a dangerously self-destructive form of political myopia which, uncorrected, will only relegate the Democrats to minority-party status for a generation. The notion that Democrats should pin their hopes for revival on the tail of a southern donkey is no less absurd than witnessing the children's variant of the party game, for both involve desperate attempts to hit elusive targets while wandering around blindfolded.
Meanwhile, political attitudes and demographic changes in other parts of the country are more favorable to Democratic messages and messengers. The Midwest and Southwest are the nation's most competitive regions. There are opportunities to expand Democratic margins in the Mountain red states while consolidating control over the reliably blue northeastern and Pacific coast states. Before dreaming of fortynine-state presidential landslides like those of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, the Democrats ought to first figure out how to win twenty-nine states. And that means capturing Arizona — or even Alaska — before targeting Alabama.
Republicans cannot win without the South, Schaller argues, but they also can't win with the South alone. Much as Democrats were confined to the South for decades prior to the New Deal, the Democrats should South but little else. After winning and governing successfully elsewhere, Democrats can then present their record of achievement to the South — the nation's most conservative region, but one that is steadily assimilating with the politics of the rest of America and, therefore, will become more competitive in the future.
But for now, Democrats must put strategy ahead of sentimentality. To form a new and enduring majority coalition, they must whistle past their electoral graveyard. They must whistle past Dixie.
Review:
"Instead of 'futile pandering to the nation's most conservative voters,' in the South, Democrats should build a non-Southern majority to regain dominance, argues Schaller, a University of Maryland political scientist, in this focused, tactical account. The Republicans' Southern monopoly may have helped them achieve national majorities in the past, but it has never constituted a majority alone, Schaller explains. There are greener pastures for Democrats at all levels of elected government: the Midwest, Southwest and Mountain West. Schaller's demographic numbers buttress a solid argument, but he contradicts himself at times — as when he argues that many voters (deceived by Republican politicians) empowered 'a radically conservative agenda' against their own interests but are 'smart' enough to understand a nuanced Democratic platform on American liberties (e.g., connecting gun rights and gay rights). But the basic truth of the author's fight-fire-with-fire strategy is undeniable: a much-needed shot of realpolitik in the arm of the modern Democratic Party, whose greatest weakness lies not in the lack of good ideas but in compromising them. Charts, maps." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"Everyone has advice for the Democrats these days. If you're ever stranded on a desert island, the quickest way to get attention may not be to launch a signal flare but to declare your candidacy as a Democrat. Someone will be with you shortly to explain what you should do. The minority party attracts so many caring advisers because it has lost five of the last seven presidential elections... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) and is constitutionally prone to deep bouts of soul-searching. It is going through such an identity crisis now, as liberal activists debate with those in the center-left over how to win back the majority. Making the situation especially urgent is the tantalizing disarray in the GOP ranks: Neoconservatives have been discredited by the Iraq quagmire, Northeastern moderates dislike Southern social conservatives, and small-government-loving fiscal worriers are outraged at the GOP-led government's lack of budgetary restraint. As the midterm elections loom, Democrats have an opportunity; they just need the right plan to embrace their moment. Thomas B. Edsall and Thomas F. Schaller have both contributed well-documented and thoughtful arguments that might help direct Democrats out of their wilderness. Edsall's accessible 'Building Red America' is not presented as a guidebook but as a tour of the political landscape. Republicans have learned how to manage that landscape and adapt more quickly to changes on it. Democrats, on the other hand, keep losing for a reason: Their party is no longer a populist coalition, but it keeps trying to run as one, and its leaders fail to understand the connection between middle-class voters' economic self-interest and their concerns about cultural values. These days, both parties have abandoned the middle ground. Republicans don't care about it, and Democrats aren't talented enough to find it. But in this dim world, Republicans keep coming out on top. 'The Republican Party holds a set of advantages, some substantial and some marginal,' Edsall writes, and unless Democrats find a way to solve their problems, 'the odds are that the Republican Party will continue to maintain, over the long run, a thin but durable margin of victory.' Some of the ground covered by Edsall, a veteran Washington Post political reporter now writing for the New Republic, will feel familiar (the rise of conservatives in the South, white flight from the Democratic Party and so on), but unless you're the kind of political junkie who is so intense that people move away from you at cocktail parties, you won't get bored. 'Building Red America' nicely weaves together the strands of contemporary politics, moving from descriptions of tactical electoral strategy to broader cultural currents to demographic shifts. If you've ever wondered why 'activist judges' are the two most powerful words in Republican politics, the book offers a tidy explanation. (Corporate executives and small-business owners worry that judges will enforce regulations and reward plaintiffs; social conservatives worry that judges will destroy the institution of marriage and give unfair advantages to women and minorities.) In analyzing the conservative ascendancy, Edsall has clearly done his reporting and spent time trying to figure out both parties. With a few rare exceptions, he doesn't step into the reporter's trap of falling in love with every bit of his own field work. There's plenty of data, history and anecdote here, but it's not applied with a trowel. The analysis is clinical, not emotional, which means that Edsall can be sympathetic to conservatives' genuine cultural concerns even as he's being clear-eyed about the GOP's rejection of the politics of consensus and its use of anger and fear to rouse its base and demonize its opposition. This should make partisans on both sides angry, which is a good place to be as a political writer. If Edsall portrays Republicans as cynical and manipulative, he paints the Democratic Party as hapless and structurally flawed. The party has not come to terms with eroding public support for the liberal agenda, he argues; it is held captive by special interests such as unions and trial lawyers but hasn't found a way to manipulate its core constituency groups over long stretches of time the way the GOP has. The occasional bursts of populist sentiment from Democratic candidates — Al Gore's 'people against the powerful' theme, or Howard Dean's claim to represent the 'Democratic wing of the Democratic Party' — will continue to fail because the affluent college-educated voters who make up much of the party's base are more interested in socially liberal issues. 'At the top, the ascendant wing of the party is not populist,' Edsall writes. 'It is elitist.' If that zinger doesn't get him an inbox full of angry letters, Edsall's view of the Democratic Party's cultural failings will. He disagrees with those on the left who argue that Republicans have won voters through trickery — by emphasizing values issues like abortion or prayer in school and then doing nothing to help those voters economically. Instead, he argues that Democrats should forge a link with voters who feel that rapid cultural change undermines the sense of family and community that they believe are preconditions for economic success. 'Traditional values of family, neighborhood, church, school, and the workplace are, to millions of voters, `money in the bank' — they are what holds people together, providing security against a rainy day.' Schaller's 'Whistling Past Dixie' is more prescriptive and less rewarding. He's got a thorough plan for Democrats, as well as maps and tables to show the party how to win. He wants the party to stop worrying about the former Confederacy and start focusing on the Midwest and the West. The geographical theory makes sense — so much sense, in fact, that it's not very revolutionary. There are not a lot of presidential strategists arguing that Democratic candidates should spend time in Alabama, Mississippi or South Carolina rather than Ohio, Wisconsin and New Mexico, some of the states the book offers as particularly ripe targets. Yet Schaller argues the case at great length, as if the party were busily planning to build a coalition from the South outward. Moreover, where Edsall is judicious about dealing with only what is useful in his notebook, Schaller's book makes you suspect there isn't a statistic, chart or study he has left off the page. His analysis is also ideologically tainted. He's a Democrat offering advice for Democrats, so his sources and opinions come almost exclusively from the left. You can feel his thumb on the scale. It also clots the writing; he dishes out clunkers such as, 'the Republican minority sheep is bleating loudly while dressed up in a majority wolf's disguise,' and 'political catnip for tort reform tigers, culture-of-life lions, pro-family panthers, and cages brimming full with a variety of sharp-clawed conservative fat cats.' Oh my. Schaller's case would be more persuasive if he'd run it by a cast of Republican strategists and then let us hear their voices, either supporting his view or trying to poke holes in it. If you can wade through the first part of 'Whistling Past Dixie,' it does pick up steam as Schaller discusses the battleground states and the set of ideas that Democrats should embrace to build a new majority. The analysis of target states is well done, and if you read it before the midterms, you're likely to feel a rush of revelation as you realize how crucial battles in Ohio, Colorado and Nevada are. Schaller's suggestion that Democrats improve their national security credentials by focusing first on homeland security is tightly argued. (This whole set of issues is strangely lacking from the Edsall book.) Schaller also challenges liberal orthodoxy by proposing that Democrats embrace the language of Second Amendment rights to capture the votes of Midwestern and Western gun owners. At least one suggestion — that Democrats realign their primary and caucus structure to spotlight winnable Western states — is so prescient the party has done just that by moving Nevada's voting earlier in the process. The least attractive suggestion in the book, though, is that Democrats should 'run against the conservative South' in much the same way that Republicans have ridiculed 'liberal elites' along the Eastern seaboard. Lampoon evangelicals in the South, and you offend fellow travelers in those other regions you're trying to win. It would also seem hard to create more negative stereotypes of the Southern Republican than those so often applied to George W. Bush, the supposed know-nothing cowboy, or the cultural conservatives who have supported the GOP majority. The coming midterm and presidential elections are likely to be highly exciting: Both parties are engaged in deep internal struggles, and the issues are as grave as they have been since the early days of the Cold War. The rhetoric and punditry will be foggy and furious. Two books like these, with hard facts and data, will be useful to have during the storm. John Dickerson is Slate magazine's chief political correspondent and the author of the forthcoming 'On Her Trail,' a book about his late mother, the pioneering newswoman Nancy Dickerson." Reviewed by John Dickerson, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Synopsis:
Two generations after he challenged Republicans to envision a Southern-based national majority, Phillips issues a bold challenge to Democrats to transform American politics by building a winning coalition outside the South.
Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South
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Thomas F. Schaller
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352 pages
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Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Instead of 'futile pandering to the nation's most conservative voters,' in the South, Democrats should build a non-Southern majority to regain dominance, argues Schaller, a University of Maryland political scientist, in this focused, tactical account. The Republicans' Southern monopoly may have helped them achieve national majorities in the past, but it has never constituted a majority alone, Schaller explains. There are greener pastures for Democrats at all levels of elected government: the Midwest, Southwest and Mountain West. Schaller's demographic numbers buttress a solid argument, but he contradicts himself at times — as when he argues that many voters (deceived by Republican politicians) empowered 'a radically conservative agenda' against their own interests but are 'smart' enough to understand a nuanced Democratic platform on American liberties (e.g., connecting gun rights and gay rights). But the basic truth of the author's fight-fire-with-fire strategy is undeniable: a much-needed shot of realpolitik in the arm of the modern Democratic Party, whose greatest weakness lies not in the lack of good ideas but in compromising them. Charts, maps." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Synopsis"
by Libri,
Two generations after he challenged Republicans to envision a Southern-based national majority, Phillips issues a bold challenge to Democrats to transform American politics by building a winning coalition outside the South.
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