"White Southern liberals still exist, but they are too rarely a viable political or social presence, particularly in the Deep South of Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and rural Georgia. Back home in Nashville, I had lunch with one such rarity. David Carlton is a history professor at Vanderbilt University (and a Presbyterian church elder) who grew up in a South Carolina mill town before escaping north to Amherst. But he was drawn back, both by his intellectual pursuits and his regionalist pinings. Over sandwiches and coffee, he foretold of dark times. "I don't believe the political realignment of the region is complete yet," he said. "What appears to be an increasingly toxic blend of traditional conservatism and 'Christian' moralism continues to gain strength."
YMMV. Mine certainly does. :)
That's why newcomers in places like Northern VA or Southern FL are so important to the Democrats. They're outside of the existing tribal paradigm and not bound by its categories and restrictions. The same was true of some of the Republicans who led states like FL, VA, or TX from the Democrats in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. At least some of those voters and organizers and candidates were outsiders -- like G.H.W. Bush -- who were more comfortable with the Republicans than most native Southerners.
You can see something of the same pattern in Northern states where the traditional divide wasn't so much Black-White as Catholic-Protestant. It's the outsider, who doesn't fit neatly on one side of the divide or the other, who can get around tribal chasms and change things, and the newcomer who leads the way in voting for a minority party on the rise.
I don't want to underestimate the contributions of those on the inside who buck existing trends, and I'm not rooting for the Democrats, but sometimes the people who can best break with taboos and tribal hostilities are those who aren't aware of such things or who can't take society's divisions so seriously.