Posted on 01/01/2011 9:33:20 PM PST by Zakeet
Georgia Democrats enter the upcoming 2011 session of the General Assembly reeling from a series of defections and facing an uphill climb toward relevance.
The once-dominant party holds 85 of 236 seats in the House and Senate, Democrats’ lowest ebb since Reconstruction. And the number has been slipping.
Since the November election when the party lost control of all statewide offices, nine Democratic legislators have become Republicans, including Athens Rep. Doug McKillip, who switched less than a month after his colleagues elected him chairman of the House Democrats.
Now party leaders are scrambling to find new growth strategies while attempting to be more than a speed bump for the Republican majority.
The task is daunting. Mirroring a trend across the South, much of the state party’s white, rural base has fled to the Republican Party and Democrats have struggled to find attractive candidates for statewide posts they held for generations.
Newly elected House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta, admits her party’s primary function in the short term will be as a check on the Republican majority’s power.
[Snip]
The defections by rural, white Democrats continue a trend that’s made the Georgia Democrats a more urban and African-American party. As a result, the power of its African-American Democratic leaders has grown while the party’s statewide influence has dwindled.
[Snip]
Fifteen years ago, African-Americans made up a third of Democrats in the House. Now they are a two-thirds majority in the House Democratic Caucus and hold most of the leadership positions. In the Senate, African-Americans make up more than half of Democrats compared to one in four in 1996.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
If blacks want to stay in the minority, they’ll be whistling “Dixie” til the cows come home. In our generation, the Republican realignment in the South is now nearly an accomplished fact.
ahahaha
It took Obama to complete the work LBJ began a generation ago. He looks greatly diminished this year next to the Gipper, who had a Republican Senate to work with the first six years of his presidency and then had to deal with a Democratic Congress in his last two years in office.
HAHAHA! And I’m NOT kidding!
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I’d offer to delete all the excess postings if I could. Most of the time, FR just works fine!
I love you. All is forgiven. Please come home. The kids miss you.
If blacks want to stay in the minority, they’ll be whistling “Dixie” til the cows come home. In our generation, the Republican realignment in the South is now nearly an accomplished fact.Our [FL] governor has wisely decided to attach education money to the student and wants to allow the parents to decide where to use the money to educate their children. The democrats are usually against this, but blacks want this. It may be a way to finally to make it clear to the black community that the democrats don't have their best interests in mind. Blacks may finally be able to leave the democratic plantation.39 posted on 01/01/2011 10:53:53 PM PST by Waryone
I don't understand how that could happen. The Democratic Party has become the party of "Affirmative Action" - and with a black POTUS that makes them the party of discrimination against the people who are of a different race than the president. What could cause whites to leave a party like that? <sarcasm>Problem for blacks is that it takes a ton of character to voluntarily get off a gravy train like that - and that level of character is never overabundant in people, whether black or white. So nine out of ten blacks stay on, and whites with any sense tend to leave. Forcing the Democrats to target convinced Reagan Democrats who have had a couple of object lessons in the fact that "blue dog" Democrats actually are Democrats. A process which can't spread north fast enough . . .
I looked up the Georgia website and I’ll leave you to guess who holds the legislative leadership posts in the Democratic Party.
There are very few whites left. And if all they have is their base, it is truly an uphill climb.
Its the party’s policies that have turned off a wide swatch of Southern voters. The Left will blame it on racism but that dog don’t hunt.
White Democrats don’t see a future for them staying on in a party in which they are no longer welcome. That’s been happening not just in GA but across the South. Its truly the end of an era.
I was a page for the first Republican state senator elected to the GA General Assembly since Reconstruction, State Sen. I.W. (Bill) Gregory. Since then, ca ‘64, we know what the story has been. The problem is what happens when all of those former Democrats become Republicans. Many of them are descendants of the New Deal Democrats, and many of them have the same proclivities towards government “solutions” for everything and their appetite for logrolling and pork barrel spending.
This has been a problem with the South as a whole; we end up with liberals such as Lindsay Graham (SC), Juan McCain (AZ), Thad Corcoran (MS), Richard Shelby (AL), Hal Rogers and Mitch McConnell (KY), and Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander(TN). Until we work with Tea Parties to cull the liberals and sell outs the Republic is in jeopardy. The conduct of some of the afore-mentioned legislators has bordered on treason.
Verify then trust. And kick out those who abused their trust.
We sure got rid of Crist in Florida.
Did you get one of those electronic vote counters hooked up to your computer?
You were supposed to seed it with the name of the Democratic candidate, then turn it on!
;-)
(from CT—where they first steal the governor’s election, then raise our taxes.)
That we did, my dear, That we did! We also short circuited another group of RINOs from taking his and other places.
I am looking forward to the first few months of press releases coming from the new Governor’s office after hearing him speak last week of things they have already targeted. I was most encouraged by listening to the press reporters questions and his answers to them. What was priceless was the looks on their faces when turning away to go file their reports.
The problem for southern Dems isn’t whites; many of them left long ago. It is the small but increasing number of blacks that have lost faith in the party.
Nationally, the problem for Dems is being viewed as the “non-white” party; there are simply not enough of them (yet) to win nationally. Hence, they have to try to keep “Kennedy-type” whites (usually females, or Chris Matthews) in the party, while trying to accomodate blacks and Hispanics (the whole time promising all of them affirmative action goodies, for which they are fighting each other).
In the unlikely event the Democrats begin hemorrhaging black support, we may see the end of the Democratic Party as a political force in this country. That day isn’t here yet.
Some of the black support is being eroded by the obvious preference the Dems are sometimes forced to show for Hispanics (when push comes to shove); any black votes lost are usually replaced by 2 or 3 Hispanic ones (and their population is growing faster). Blacks are most discontent where Hispanics are a growing presence (should I say a more-rapidly-growing presence? They’re “growing” everywhere); in these areas the national (still white) Dem leadership has backed Hispanic candidates (over black ones) and appointed many Hispanics to patronage positions formerly granted to blacks. They know they have to fight harder for the Hispanic vote, and if they anger blacks, where would they go anyway? Apparently, a small number of blacks have started figuring out they can go elsewhere rather than sit home. Obama’s “coalition of minorities” was a facade to conceal deep strife between blacks & Hispanics in terms of affirmative action goodies (jobs/promotions), urban funds, prisons, etc.; everything that had been used to buy black votes in the past are quietly being offered to Hispanics now instead, and blacks are realizing it.
There is not enough loot to go around and the Democrats can take blacks for granted since they’re not a swing voter group. Hispanics are. The Democrats today to rephrase Willie Sutton, are going where the votes are. And if that means offering more affirmative action goodies to Hispanics means blacks have to go sit in the back of the bus so be it. Jim Clyburn showed how meek the blacks in willing to be used by a party that only has contempt for them.
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