The Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) say it’s time for Democrats to return to their compassionate roots when priorities were civil rights and humanity:
The Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) 2012 “Progressive Southern Strategy” will help restore faith in the Democratic Party while ensuring the re-election of President Barack Obama
It is important to learn from history when both major parties touted a “Southern Strategy” to win the hearts of “Dixie”
Author Steve Kornacki story
Steve Kornacki describes it this way:
“Democrats thought they had solved their Southern problem in 1976, when a peanut farmer-turned-Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter swept through the old Confederacy, winning every state except Virginia en route to a narrow Electoral College victory over President Gerald Ford.
For the first time in 12 years, the Democrats had won a national election — and Dixie was the reason why.”
http://www.zimbio.com/Ronald+Reagan/articles/oK4zz9xVJP1/Progressive+Democrats+America+PDA+say+time
Republicans returned in 1980 with their nasty version of a “Southern Strategy” after grandpa-esque Ronald Reagan managed to have “Dixie” stab President Jimmy Carter in the back – four years after propelling Georgia’s “native son” to victory.
“The story of why Reagan was in position to run against Carter in 1980 — and how he managed to turn Carter’s prideful home region against its native son — really begins in 1964, when regional tensions within the Democratic Party finally reached a breaking point.
Since Reconstruction, when white Southerners developed a bitter hostility to Reconstruction and its northern Republican liberal architects, Dixie had been the most staunchly Democratic region in the country“
— Wrote Steve Kornacki
Actually, Carter ran stronger in the South than in the rest of the country in 1980. The electoral math was complicated by a third party candidate who ran strong in other parts of the country, but no way did the South "stab Carter in the back" in that election. It was his own incompetence that did Jimmy in.
First off was Steve even alive then?
Secondly, and more important, Carter ran as sort of a middle of the road Southern Democrat. Once in office he showed himself to be completely in over his head. Runaway inflation, the misery index, gas lines and Iran showed how clueless he really was. The whole hostage crisis bumbling, which climaxed in the botched rescue (the Jimmy Carter Desert Classic) put the lid in his reelection hopes. By the end of his presidency anyone could have beat Carter. Lucky for the country we had Reagan who not only beat Carter but won such a convincing landslide he was able to get much of his agenda passed, despite a liberal House.
In short Steve, there was no back stabbing. Jummy Carter was an incompetent fool, who looks like a genius compared to B.H.0., but he was still a fool.