The Decline Of the South: About Time!!

TW: Few folks realize how powerful the Southern states have been in American politics. Going all the way back to the founding of the country, the South has played a pivotal role in everything from the design of the original constitution to civil rights to foreign policy. As Drum outlines, this role has for now at least come to a crashing halt. As a child of the South, I view this as one of the better developments ever in American politics. The South for centuries has pulled the United States further right than it would have otherwise been.

Folks forget that the Democratic party pre-1968 was really two parties, a reactionary one based in the South and a progressive one based in the North. The "FDR" Democratic majorities in Congress which lasted for fifty years were similarly hollow. Read a JFK biography, his problems in Congress had to do with his own Southern Democrats rather than the Republicans. With the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1965, a process which had started post WWII whereby the South reactionaries migrated to the Republican party came to a head. Nixon in '68 put together the first Republican coalition using Southern votes and the Republicans proceeded to win 7 of the next 10 presidential elections with the South as its core. All 3 Democratic victories were by Southerners running to the middle.

The Republican Party post 9/11 has become dominated by reactionaries. Leaving the Republican Party in the Northeast decimated, as the old Rockefeller wing of the party has migrated en masse to the Democrats (there are now ZERO Republican reps in the House from New England). Previously the South had aligned with either a Democratic or Republican bloc sufficiently strong to create a majority, no longer. Eventually the Republican Party will moderate to create a new majority but in the mean time the Democrats will be working around the edges of the South (e.g. VA, NC etc.) to push that day as far into the future as possible.

From Kevin Drum:
"...As of January 20th, however, the Democratic Party will control the American political agenda once again. But Southerners are still Republicans, which means that their political influence will be nearly nonexistent.
In other words, for the first time since Reconstruction, the South will be almost completely shut out of national power. There are still a few liberal Southerners who belong to the Democratic Party, of course, but the reactionary, traditionalist South is, for the time being, nearly powerless. They will not control anything, their caucus is a discredited rump, and their influence will be negligible. There is no reason to fear them or to care what they think. Their power to filibuster, itself guttering and only barely alive following the 2008 election, will be all they have left.
This is the first time this will be true in well over a century. So say it again: The South will have essentially no influence over the course of American politics for the next eight years. We live in momentous times."