Univ of Maryland prof Thomas Schaller had a really interesting item in the Washington Post yesterday in which he suggested that Democratic presidential candidates can’t expect to win in the South, so they’d be better off giving up on the region and focusing attention elsewhere.
“Solid Republican victories in the Kentucky and Mississippi governors’ races, coupled with Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s clumsy overture to Confederate flag-waving Southerners, have raised anew the question of whether the Democrats can compete in the South,” Schaller wrote. “They can’t. And precisely because they can’t, they should stop trying.”
It’s a provocative thesis, to be sure, and one in which many agree. Nevertheless, while I found Schaller’s essay intriguing, I believe he’s wrong.
First, let me point out where I agree with the argument. Schaller points out, accurately, that the “Southern strategy” initiated by Nixon in 1968 has “reached full fruition.” I agree. It took a generation or so, but the South is now solid GOP territory at every level of government.
Schaller also notes the obvious: Gore lost every southern state in 2000, including his home state of Tennessee, on route to coming just one state (any state) short of winning the presidency.
This picture leads Schaller, among others, to look at the South and ask, “Why bother?” I can appreciate the temptation to ignore the entire region. Dems are now in the minority in the South and Bush remains far more popular there than anywhere else in the country. Why not just give up on the region all together?
As a matter of electoral college math, I realize it’s possible to win the White House without the South. For Dems with an eye towards history, this may be counter-intuitive. In the last 10 presidential elections, the only successful Dem presidential candidates — Johnson, Carter, and Clinton — have come from the South. That said, Gore failed there miserably and still effectively won the election. Can’t the Dems just ignore the South, concentrate on the states Gore won in 2000, and pick-off one or two competitive red states (New Hampshire and Arizona, for example)?
That may work mathematically, but not practically.
Let’s describe the South as 13 states between Virginia and Texas — the 11 states of the Confederacy plus Kentucky and Oklahoma. As the LA Times’ Ron Brownstein noted today, for next year’s election, population growth will “swell the number of Electoral College votes from those 13 Southern states to 168.”
In other words, if Dems decide in advance that they’re not even going to try and compete in these states, the party will effectively be spotting Bush 168 electoral votes next year before a single vote is cast. Bush will be 62 percent of the way to a second term and he won’t have to spend a dime to do it.
So what, Schaller may ask. The Dem nominee can win enough votes elsewhere, right? Not necessarily.
If Bush doesn’t have to worry at all about those 13 states, his extremely well-funded 2004 campaign can simply focus its unprecedented resources on key battleground states that he barely lost in 2000. A lot of people seem to think that Gore’s “blue states” were easy Dem victories in the last election. They weren’t. Gore won “traditional” Dem states such as Iowa, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Oregon by incredibly small margins.
For example, Gore won Pennsylvania (23 electoral votes) by just 3 percent and Bush has traveled to the state, on average, every other month since his inauguration as part of an effort to make Pennsylvania a key piece of his ’04 strategy. Just as importantly, Gore won Iowa by just .3 percent, Oregon by .4, Wisconsin by .2, and New Mexico by .06. We’re talking about a few thousand votes out of millions cast here.
If the Dems completely write off the South, Bush can target the heck out of these five states, spend ungodly sums of money, and erase the incredibly narrow gaps he lost by in 2000 because he wouldn’t have to worry about spending any time or resources south of the Mason-Dixon.
In addition, I don’t accept the simple premise that Southern voters won’t support Democrats anymore. Recent evidence clearly suggests otherwise. Virginia has a Dem governor, as does Oklahoma and Tennessee. North Carolina has a Dem governor and a Dem senator. Arkansas has two Dem senators. As of 48 hours ago, Louisiana became one of only a handful of states with a Dem governor and two Dem senators (a feat that Dem strongholds like Massachusetts, California, Maryland, New York, and Vermont can’t claim).
Granted, Dems that succeed in the South may be more conservative than, say, Dems in New England. However, it’s folly to assume that these states would be willing to elect Dems in statewide elections but would refuse to support Dems in a presidential election.
As a realistic hypothetical, consider the landscape if Dems were to nominate Wesley Clark. It’s not unreasonable to assume that he’d seriously compete in states like Arkansas, Louisiana, Virginia, and North Carolina. At a bare minimum, Bush would have to seriously fight for those states, as opposed to simply having them in his back pocket. (Of course, if Dems nominate Dean, this hypothetical more or less falls apart)
Schaller’s essay noted that Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager, likes to remind reporters that winning all the Gore states plus New Hampshire would put Dean in the White House. “Because the Bush states gained seven electoral votes as a result of the 2000 Census, Trippi’s math is a bit off — in 2004, that combination only yields 264 electors, six shy of the magical 270 threshold,” Schaller explained.
What Schaller and Trippi fail to appreciate is how difficult it will be simply to keep Gore’s coalition of states together, not to mention finding the extra six electoral votes somewhere, once Bush begins spending his $200 million and is free to ignore 13 states that will automatically support him.
I don’t care how well-organized the Dems are in Gore’s blue states; giving an incumbent president a 168 electoral vote head start is a recipe for disaster.