Democrats right now are arguing among themselves over the "southern problem."
The first question is whether the problem is real or not. Tom Schaller notes that the party succeeded this year despite the South, building a coalition that excluded its interests for the first time. They note that northeastern Republican parties today are as dead as southern Democratic ones.
Others, like James Carville (right), insist that the party must find a way to appeal to "NASCAR dads" and win in the South. Carville actually floated the trial balloon of replacing DNC chair Howard Dean with a southern loser, Harold Ford.
Well, I’ve been covering Southern politics full time here at Voic.Us and, while most southern states voted Republican again this year, it wasn’t for the reasons Carville and the rest of the smarty-pants think. It wasn’t racism, it wasn’t knee-jerk conservatism.
It was because, in most of the South, there is no Democratic Party.
Oh yes, there is a party in every southern state using the
Democratic brand. But these are not the 21st century parties of Howard
Dean, anxious to confront Republican ideas and organize on a local
level. These are the local equivalent of Washington parties. They are top-down "me-too"
Republican parties that have leaned against the Southern Strategy
thesis, said "yeah-but" to it, until voters have decided there’s really
no difference and no choice.
What were the real issue differenecs in Georgia this year between
Gov. Sonny Perdue and Democratic challenger Mark Taylor (left)? What were the
differences in Alabama between Gov. Bob Riley and challenger Lucy
Baxley? How about the differences between South Carolina Gov. Mark
Sanford and challenger Tommy Moore?
The answer: damned few. Not enough to be meaningful. So marginal voters went for what they knew. They voted for the Republican.
What’s needed here is actually more Dean, not less. Southern
Democrats have to become proud Democrats, and they have to challenge
Republicans head-on everywhere. There is an enormous opportunity here,
because the exurban growth of southern cities is reaching its limits.
As gas prices rise, as environmental degradation gets worse, people
eventually figure out they can’t move away from their problems, that
the problems inevitably follow. This has already happened in the
northeast and midwest, where distances are smaller. Inner-ring suburbs
have turned Democratic, and that area of Democratic control is
expanding outward, leaving Republicans isolated.
This economic process has not yet come to the South, but it will. Even
before it does, however, there are countless local issues where local
activists can get local results. All they need is to a little help in
their struggle, and a connection to the brand.
Do I need a study on this? Not really, because I have the North Carolina results. North Carolina, the most exurban state in the region (there really are no urban centers there worthy of the name) went blue this year. Not a dark blue, true. A pale blue. A Carolina blue, if you will. They did it through local organization, through the technology of blogs like BlueNC, through building a farm team. North Carolina has a Democratic Governor, a Democratic legislature, a majority of its Congresscritters are Democrats (such as Heath Shuler, right), and its Republican opposition is now deeply divided.
So here’s a very simple, Dean-like solution to the "problem" of Southern Democracy:
- Hire organizers from the national party to go into areas where each state’s party is weakest.
- Organize in every single county. Make sure all your technology is
available to every group that will buy into the Democratic brand. - Divide organizations into smaller local affiliates until every
group consists of people actively working on solving real problems. - Build your farm team from these local leaders.
What you’re trying to build are relationships among people — that’s
what Meetups and Drinking Liberally are for. But you’re also trying to
turn those relationships into meaningful action.
Maybe these folks want to move against a school administrator who is
selling Genesis over science. Maybe it’s a chicken plant that’s
polluting the water. Maybe it’s a developer who built crappy homes.
Maybe it’s helping the local soccer team get a better field, or
supporting girls’ sports. Let the drinkers decide.
Building from the bottom-up will take time, but it will result in
lasting change. Building based on a national brand means you gain from
every victory, and every defeat. Building using technology means you’re
ahead of your competition.
The purpose of a political party is to organize people so they can
command government to solve the problems they identify. The Republican
Party does this through chambers of commerce and churches. Democrats
need to build their own social infrastructure everywhere, something
that can replace and support the social club network that used to help
commu
nities come together a generation ago.
The Dean vision isn’t really about technology. It’s about organizing
based on a national brand, in every town and subdivision, about
activating people to solve their own problems.
Start there and it will build on itself. If you want to build a strong party, you start with a firm foundation.
