The South's Gonna Rise Agin'!
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(Please Don't Flame Me. This is intended as humor. Nothing more.)
Posted on 11/04/2004 7:11:02 PM PST by Former Military Chick
If Tuesday's election returns were a bitter pill for Democrats nationally, they were pure poison for Democrats in the South. Five formerly Democratic U.S. Senate seats were up for grabs. Republicans swept them all.
Superficially, the results simply continued the region's long-running shift into the embrace of the GOP. In a fractured nation, however, the aftershocks may be felt for years to come.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans have fattened their Senate majority to at least 55 with a batch of young conservatives likely to be deeply loyal to President Bush and his agenda. U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, already plans to talk to the president about re-nominating former Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor for a lifetime federal judgeship.
Earlier this year, Bush gave the Mobile native a temporary appointment to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, after Senate Democrats blocked Pryor's candidacy for a permanent seat on the grounds that his views are extreme. Tuesday's losses may now lead those Democrats to understand that "they can't blindly oppose highly qualified (judicial candidates) ... and not pay a price," Sessions said Wednesday.
From North Carolina to Louisiana, Tuesday's returns may have also dealt a lasting blow to Democrats' efforts to stay competitive in the region. Of the 22 Senate seats located in the states of the Old Confederacy, Republicans will now hold a historically unprecedented 18, said Earl Black, an expert on Southern politics at Rice University in Houston.
"This is a huge net gain," Black said, "because the signal that it sends to a lot of ambitious young Southern politicians is that it's very hard to run statewide as a Democrat."
In Alabama, the party has already struggled at times to find credible candidates for state and federal offices. On Tuesday's ballot, the re-election of U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, to a fourth six-year term was no surprise. But Democrats lost all three state Supreme Court races, meaning that the high court will be entirely Republican for the first time since Reconstruction. Democrats also didn't come close to regaining any of the five congressional seats held by GOP officeholders.
The most telling defeat came in east-central Alabama, where freshman U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Anniston, skated to a second term in a district drawn to elect a Democrat. In southwest Alabama, Democratic challenger Judy Belk of Citronelle mounted an aggressive run against U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile, only to lose in a landslide. While she blamed media inattention to her campaign and President Bush's coattails, University of South Alabama political scientist Sam Fisher doubted that any Democrat would have fared better in a district held by Republicans for 40 years.
"It's just a case of numbers, of demographics," Fisher said.
In an omen for the future, though, President Bush carried some predominantly white rural counties, such as Choctaw, Colbert and Jackson, that have remained Democratic strongholds in the state Legislature. If Republicans can field attractive legislative candidates in the 2006 elections, "they're going to pose a threat" in such counties, said Jesse Brown, a professor of government at Athens State University.
With the exception of 1998, the state Democratic Party has now given up ground in every election in the last decade. In the view of some observers, it is still flailing for a strategy to reverse that decline.
Because Democrats are seen as occupying the wrong side on social issues such as gay marriage, "they can't seem to do anything to keep whites from deserting the party in droves," said William Stewart, a retired University of Alabama political scientist and noted authority on state politics. "They need some leadership they don't have."
Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Redding Pitt could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Throughout the region, however, there were wispy flickers of Democratic hope.
In Georgia, Democrats recaptured a U.S. House seat. In North Carolina, they held onto the governorship. In Alabama. U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham, easily won a second term representing the majority-black 7th District and U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, also had no problem keeping his 5th District seat.
Still, Davis called Tuesday's results "an unmitigated disaster" for Southern Democrats, suggesting it could take years to recover. Like other observers, Davis singled out the difficulties of running on the same ticket as presidential nominee John Kerry of Massachusetts.
"Nominating northern liberal Democrats is not a prescription for victory in the South," he said.
But Davis added that Southern Democrats need to figure out what they stand for, rather than merely hurling attacks and running on "Republican-lite" themes. Noting the re-election of North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, he said that Democrats should focus on winning governorships because they better understand the "constructive role" that government can play in people's lives.
Democrats had a particularly tough challenge this year in trying to retain the five Senate seats vacated by Democrats who were retiring or seeking other offices in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana.
Although few handicappers expected Democrats to hold on to all five, a shutout was generally not predicted. While President Bush's popularity in the South obviously helped shape the results, local factors also contributed, analysts said.
In Georgia and Louisiana, for example, winning candidates U.S. Reps. Johnny Isakson and David Vitter each managed to meld a vote-rich suburban base with successful appeals to rural voters, Black said. The victor in South Carolina, U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint, had the advantage of representing the state's most populous county, said Bill Moore, a political scientist at the College of Charleston.
His Democratic opponent, state education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum, ran as an "independent Democrat" who supported the death penalty and the war in Iraq. But Republicans sought to portray her as someone who would vote with "liberal Democrats" in Washington if elected to the Senate.
Those pitches were "definitely" effective, Moore said. DeMint won the seat with about 54 percent of the vote.
(Mobile Register Capital Bureau Reporter Sallie Owen contributed to this report.)
I have a feeling the dems are smarting right about now.
Go Dixie!
Funny Weird Algore could not carry his own state either.
ping
Funny Clinton's state learned its lesson
The first Republican state rep in Meade Co, KY history was elected Tuesday!!!
more history than that: The Republicans elected their first georgia gov. two years ago and the senate (with some party changing) went republican. This year the house and senate are decidedly republican for the first time in 150 years.
I just love the fact that there were 3 big name Democrats campaigning for Kerry and they couldn't even hand him one state.
She forgot to include the Dems' "GREATEST" success in the south..Cynthia McKinney recaptured the seat she lost in 2002..She's BAAAACCCCKK!!!!
I've heard that they didn't even win Edwards' home county, let alone the state, which is truly amazing.
The problem for the Democrats is that they honestly believe that they are viewed by the majority of the people in this country as being correct on the issues. It doesn't matter that they are losing increasingly large tracts of territory every election cycle to us. They simply refuse to acknowledge that they are wrong and that they need to do some serious re-evaluation of their positions. Their values and beliefs are out of touch with an enormous section of geographic middle of this country and the folks who live in those areas are beginning to become aware of this.
They came within less than 500,000 votes total (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin) of losing the entire US except the Northeast and West Coast against a president who probably would have been quite vulnerable to a moderate. Their margins in many liberal strongholds declined from Gore's totals of 2000. That should be a big-time wakeup call, but apparently the blinders are on a little too tight. They seem content with the status quo of being rendered increasingly irrelevant by their own actions.
It's about time. We Southerners should have been electing Republicans for the last 25 years. The Democrats only care about gay marriage, high taxes, and denigrating Christians like me every chance they get. By 2006, I hope the only Dems in Dixieland are those with electorates much too stupid to understand that the GOP is the answer. The Dems are the problem, without a doubt.....
What happened to that dingbat McKinney? I heard she was so confident that she was already scoping out new office space in DC. But I haven't seen anything posted since the election.
My rep's also Mike Rogers. Hopefully this one's also a good guy.
Al Gore carried his birthplace, the District of Columbia...it just happens not to be a state.
Touché.
The South's Gonna Rise Agin'!
Click the Pic
(Please Don't Flame Me. This is intended as humor. Nothing more.)
If you recall, Kerry in the primaries even said that EDWARDS could not carry his own state. This was common knowledge, because Edwards, the moment he went to DC, forgot NC and started running for President. He did not run for re-election because he knew he could NOT win.
I do not think the dems thought they had a chance in the South. They pulled their ads in NC ...knowing it was a waste of cash.
They never expected to carry the South. No surprise.
southern shock **ping** (hint democrats)
DIXIE PING!
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