On Obama, Race and the End of the Southern Strategy

For the past several years NDN has been making an argument that for progressives to succeed in the coming century they would have to build a new majority coalition very different from the one FDR built in the 20th century. The nation has changed a great deal since the mid-20th century, as we've become more Southern and Western, suburban and exurban, Hispanic and Asian, immigrant and Spanish-speaking, more millennial and aging boomer and more digital age in our life and work habits than industrial age. 21st century progressive success would require building our politics around these new demographic realities.

Looking at the leadership of the Democratic Party today, there is cause for optimism on this score. The four leading Presidential candidates includes a mixed race Senator of African descent, an accomplished and powerful woman, a border state governor of Mexican descent and a populist from the new South. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi represent areas west of the Rockies. Taken together these leaders represent a very different kind of politics, a 21st century politics, for the Democrats.

But of all these great changes the one that may be most important today is the growth of what we call the "minority" population. When I was born in 1963 the country was almost 89 percent white, 10.5 percent African-American and less than 1 percent other. The racial construct of America was, and had been for over hundreds of years, a white-black, majority-minority construct, and for most of our history had been a pernicious and exploitive one. Of course the Civil Rights Movement (particularly the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act) began to change our understanding of race around the time of my birth, but it was the Immigration Act of 1965 that changed the face of America. That act changed who would enter America, reorienting our new immigrant pool from Europe, as it had been for over 300 years, to Latin America and Asia. And America changed.

As our chart shows, today America is 66 percent white and 33 percent "minority". While the African-American population has grown a bit, most of that increase has come from the recent historic wave of Asian and Hispanic immigrants. In my half a lifetime the "minority" population in the United States has tripled. When I was born one of out ten people walking around America were non-white. Today it is one out of three.

I think it is safe to say that America is going through the most profound demographic transformation in its long history. If current trends continue, America will be majority minority in my lifetime or soon thereafter. In a single lifetime we will have gone from a country made up largely of white Europeans to one that looks much more like the rest of the world.

If Senator Obama becomes the Democratic nominee this profound change will become something we all begin to discuss openly. Today the nation is having a big conversation about this change - whether it understands it or not - through our ongoing debate over immigration. While this debate has seen some of the most awful racist rhetoric and imagery since the days of Willie Horton, what should leave us all optimistic is that only 15 percent of the country is truly alarmed about the new wave of immigrants arriving in America. Consistently about 60 percent of the country says we need to leave all the undocumenteds here, indicating a pragmatic acceptance of the changes happening around our people and their families. Once again the uncommon wisdom of the common people appears to be prevailing here, and it is my hope, perhaps my prayer, that if Obama is the nominee American can begin to have a healthy and constructive discussion of our new population rather than what we have seen to date.

My final observation this morning is a point we focus on in our recent magazine article, The 50 Year Strategy. This election is the first post-Southern Strategy election since 1964. The Southern Strategy was the strategy used by Conservatives and the GOP to use race and other means to cleave the South from the Democrats. This strategy - welfare queens, Willie Horton, Reagan Democrats, tough on crime, an aggressive redistricting approach in 1990 - of course worked. It flipped the South (a base Democratic region since Thomas Jefferson's day) to the GOP, giving them majorities in Congress and the Presidency. 20th century math and demography and politics dictated that without the South one could not have a majority in the US. But the arrival of a "new politics" of the 21st century - driven to a great degree by the new demographic realities of America - has changed this calculation, and has thankfully rendered the Southern Strategy and all its tools a relic of the 20th century. As Tom Schaller has noted, today the Democrats control both Houses of Congress without having a majority of southern Congressional seats, something never before achieved by the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Lyndon Johnson.

In our article we lay out what might become the next great majority strategy, one yet unnamed, that we believe may be used by the Democrats to build a durable 21st century majority. It will be built upon an America described above, and will embrace the new diversity of 21st century America at its core. At a strategic level, resistance to the new demographic reality is futile, which is why GOP leaders like George Bush, Ken Mehlman and even the Wall Street Journal's editorial page (here and here) have railed against the GOP's approach to immigration. They rightly understand that positioning their party against this new demography of America may render them as much a 20th century relic as the Southern Strategy itself.

Liberating American politics from the pernicious era of the Southern Strategy should be one the highest strategic priorities for left-of-center politics. Last night a powerful and thoughtful man emerged on the national stage who deeply understands - and is himself the embodiment of - the moral and political imperative of moving beyond this disappointing age. He appears to be summonining the courage, the vision, and the conviction to usher in a whole new - and better - era of politics for America. At its core this new politics will embrace diversity and difference rather than exploit it; at its core this new politics will be defined by hope and tolerance not fear and Tancredoism; at its core this new politics of tolerance is not just a requirement for a more just America here at home, but is a requirement if America is to reassert itself abroad in the much more globalized, multi-polar, interconnected, and open world of the 21st century.

And of course the arrival of this new post-Southern Strategy age of American politics will be accelerated by the extraordinary level of political participation of Millennials, the largest generation in American history, whose life experiences and values are much more Obama than Nixon.

Whatever happens in this campaign, the arrival of Barack Obama and his politics is a welcome development for our nation struggling to find its way in a new and challenging day.

Originally posted at NDN

Comments

[Doofus]

'End of the Southern Strategy'?

Running Barack Obama against some Repo man will be one way to find out for sure.

[bethinCary]

I hope you will be right about Obama.

This country needs him right now.

[outnow]

I have ancestors from several Southern States so I visit every few years for six decades. I was raised for the majority of my young life in Whittier, California, the second home town of Richard Nixon. Before that Independence, Missouri, hometown of Truman, whom we knew also.

The nation is still divided along racial lines. Younger people are getting better. There is a huge amount of sexism, too.

The economic divisions are very important also. Free traders are taking jobs away. Resource wars are being fought all over the planet while you worry about what a bunch of idiots in Iowa think and feel as a barometer of your own agendas, a weathervane of your own projections. Obama is a trial balloon only but there is nothing new under the sun.

Obama is about projections. If the man makes you feel good, then go for it. But the forces underlying the killing and racism are about money and oil.

I will be in Augsburg where torture was not outlawed until 1806.

The Fuggers owned entire countries, two as a matter of fact - and virtually all the gold, silver, copper, and mercury in Europe, more money that the top ten multinational corporations of today, as adjusted for inflation. There in Augsburg socialized housing was created by the Fuggers that exists today. The family bought the politicians like the Holy Roman Emperor for resource wars.

We are at the same point where politicians are bought for mercantile and resource wars against indigenous peoples in the third world. What does Mr. Obama propose to do for these people and how knowledgeable is he about the Cradle of Western Civilization? (In Europe) Even housing - he has not even seen the first housing project for the poor, which is still in operation today.

Enthusiasm leads only to a cult of personality. Synthetic hope does not mean change. Edwards knows that money rules. It's about the "money people" using race as a wedge issue, not about the race itself. Be careful about buying into the very wedge issue that you object to.

[The Collinbrandt]

Firstly, I doubt any real changes can be made by any candidate until we have another even more bloody civil war. Every aspect of life in this country has been set in stone by a few wealthy rulers such that, maybe universal health care is the unltimate prize any candidate can deliver to the American People. That said, maybe Senator Obama could be our next president. Edwards and Kucinich are more the revolutionary style I prefer but, status quo Bush-hugging Clintons make me more than a little ill.

[Grrr]

Great post. BUT, I live in the deep south and I'm here to tell you RACE MATTERS. I worked for Harold Ford Jr in Tennessee during the '04 race. Not only did the RNC run overtly racist tv and radio ads, but at the polls I heard derogatory epithets hurled from the rank and file repugs as easily as they say "howdy neighbor." Funny thing is: Harold Ford was far more conservative and more aligned with the values of these good ol' boys than his white, wealthy opponent. Face it, the south is as entrenched in it's racist history as ever and along with much of the rest of rural America has added a new racial target du jour----latinos.

As much as I yearn to believe we're a nation ready to be colorblind in the choosing of our leaders, my day to day life in the rural south tells me otherwise.

[sparkandy]

celebrating loosening the grip the south has on presidential elections might be premature. the south is so varied. florida is as cosmopolitan as they come. then there are the super conservative old confederacy states. texas is practically like a whole other country. oklahomans are southerners when it suits them, or westerners, or midwesterners, according to whatever works at the time. missouri is very southern in the south, maybe not so much in st louis. but for all the variety, southerners can be pecluliarly monolithic politically. it might be best for both parties not to abandon a southern strategy just yet.

[rabun666]

Remember the Republican Party wants to preside and creates the DSA, the DIVIDED STATES OF AMERICA, that's how they conduct their campaigns and this election cycle will be the same. The Republican Party wants no part of the USA, the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Just observe their conduct, they just refer to America, not the USA.

[joja]

Ending the South's grip on the nation's politics is waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy overdue. Like 200-plus years overdue!

[barackoblogger]

If the Democrats want to WIN the White House, they would rally around Obama as the nominee. Hillary Clinton is a sure loser. Her negatives and polling numbers put her in the same realm as John Kerry, able to win the Democratic nomination, unable to win the presidency.

Also, Hillary does not have the capacity to cross over. Republicans can't stand her. And you can't even count on the woman vote, because as Iowa demonstrated last night, Obama pulled from more women voters than Hillary.

And we've all seen the Zogby poll that predicts she will lose against the Republicans.

http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2007/12/poll_obama_more_electable_than_hillary_and_edwards.php

Why oh Why is America still stuck on the Clintons? Why are the baby boomer Democrats still stuck on race? I'm a Democrat and I want to WIN and that's why I support Barack.

[rssrai]

I am sick to death of the white liberal guilt. I don't think AAs have been any more persecuted than the cajuns or the slavic people. Should my ancestors who were murdered and thrown out of their homes over and over again get special previleges because that is what happended to the cajuns. Obama gets a free pass from the MSM and anyone just because he is an AA. If he got the same treatement as JRE he would have a lot tougher time of it, believe me.

[amberglow]

The GOP has not given up their Southern Strategy and in fact keep expanding it each cycle (this time against Hispanics). What makes you possibly think that the GOP rejects it? They don't--it works for them. And their new "voter id" bs is part of it.

No Democratic candidate changes GOP strategy, and Obama may actually exacerbate it. And why and how is the opposition's entrenced hatefulness and bigotry countered by presenting one of the objects of their decades-long strategy personified in the candidate?

"We're not racist--see? We even nominated a black guy" is nothing to base anything on.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

The southern strategy will only collapse when the white southern male gives up his race hatred and his desire to dominate his women.
Nothing else really matters.
It's really up to them.

[rayo]

You are totally off base. We have lost the election, if you think Obama is the man. White is white, Black is Black, Hispanic is Hispanic (as I am). I see the bigotry, the condemnation of minority groups. Bigotry will surface with Obama. Think what you like, but your envisioning something that will not happen in 2008. It is a step, but its a long, long road to accept a minority to run the country. It is sad, but its true. You, as part of the white majority, do not understand the bigotry that pervasive in our society, and Obama can't and will not change that.