In the realm of American politics, the southern
strategy, historically, was a Republican
Party stratagem designed to increase political support among white
voters in the South
by appealing to racism against African Americans. The Civil Rights Movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s clearly
exacerbated existing racial tensions in the Southern United States. Republican
politicians, including presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully
contributed to leveraging the political realignment of many white, conservative
voters in the South that had traditionally supported the Democratic Party
rather than the Republican Party. The strategy also contributed to pushing the
Republican Party more to the right.
Those familiar with American political history
will recall that African Americans had most frequently leaned Republican, as in
the Party of Lincoln. In fact, even today, many conservative Republicans are
fond of noting the KKK was the machination of Democrats. As a technical and
factual point, that is true. However, what it does not take it to account is
the political musical chairs that occurred as a result of the Southern
Strategy, which in effect led to the switching of allegiances, if not total
re-labeling of the Parties. In other words, conservative whites, who in the 19th
and early 20th centuries, would naturally have been Democrats, fled
and/or abandoned the Democratic Party en masse to become Republicans, in large
measure due to the connection of the Democratic Party to the Civil Rights
Movement.
The prevailing widely-held opinion that the GOP
was the active vehicle for facilitating white supremacy in the South,
especially during the Goldwater
campaign and the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972, made it difficult for the Republican
Party to win the support of black voters in the South. Years later, in 2005, Republican
National Committee (RNC) chairman,
Ken Mehlman formally apologized to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), a national civil rights organization, for exploiting racial
polarization to win elections and ignoring the black vote.
The phrase "Southern strategy" is
often attributed to Nixon's political strategist Kevin
Phillips. However, though he didn’t originate the phrase, he made it
resonate with Southern whites in general, and in the Republican Party in
particular. In an interview
included in a 1970 New York Times article, Phillips articulated his
analysis based on studies of ethnic voting:
”From
now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of
the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would
be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South,
the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become
Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks,
the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local
Democrats.”
From 1948 to 1984 the Southern states, long a
stronghold for the Democrats, became key swing states, providing the popular vote margins in the 1960, 1968 and 1976 elections. During this era,
several Republican candidates expressed support for states' rights, a reversal of the position held by southern states prior to
the Civil War. A number of political analysts asserted this term was used in
the 20th century as a "code word" to represent opposition to federal
enforcement of civil rights for blacks and to federal intervention on their
behalf; many individual southerners had opposed passage of the Voting Rights
Act. The preceding paragraphs neatly summarize the essence of the Southern
Strategy as originally conceived.
That was then. We now find ourselves on the
cusps of yet another historical and political intersection. There is a Biblical
passage that I believe addresses the current situation:
“Genesis
50:19-21 (NRSV) – (19) But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the
place of God? (20) Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it
for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. (21) So
have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.” In this way
he reassured them, speaking kindly to them.
In its original conception and configuration,
the design of this strategy was intended to harm African Americans, or black
folks, or, as they were deemed at the time, Negroes. Whether this is true is
not up for debate. As noted above, in his official capacity, an RNC Chair
formally apologized for using the Southern Strategy to exploit racial
consciousness to the detriment of African Americans. Full stop!
That happened. And now, as they say at the
directional signs in the mall, “You are here.” Louisiana, North Carolina,
Virginia, and Alabama, four Southern states where recent voting patterns have re-awakened
the notion of a Southern Strategy; reinterpreted, if you will, this time with a
positive spin for African Americans.
In the most recent of the preceding cases,
Alabama, Doug Jones pulled out an improbable upset win against Judge Roy Moore.
In a race in which the Republican President of the United States endorsed the
conservative, evangelical, racially regressive candidate, stoking sentiments
similar to those leveraged in the original Southern Strategy, Democrats
responding by forging a coalition that included their base supporters,
millennial voters, moderate white Alabamans of both Parties, centrist white-collar
white voters, college-educated suburban whites (especially women), and minorities,
especially the Democratic Party’s most loyal go-to voters, African Americans.
The latter voted in numbers in excess of their proportion of the population,
and at percentage higher than they did for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
As Democratic constituencies become more
energized, and many suburban swing voters trending toward being uneasy with
President Trump, Southern Democrats are suddenly finding a potentially viable
path to assembling a coalition similar to the one used in other regions of the
country. This is a development Democrats in the South are hoping to leverage
into competing for, and perhaps winning suburban House districts in 2018, but
also possibly statewide contests, including the Governor’s race in Georgia, and
the Senate seat in Tennessee.
It’s far too early to project any sort of
full-fledged Democratic revival. After all, the Party has quite a ways to come
in order to characterize them as having recovered. During the 2016 election,
Trump beat Hillary Clinton in all 11 states of the Confederacy, except
Virginia. He carried Alabama by 28 percentage points, and over 590,000 votes.
Counting Mr. Jones win last week, Democrats still four of the region’s 22
Senate seats, and just 3 of the 11 Southern Governors’ mansions.
One may argue that Alabama is a special case
because Judge Moore’s candidacy was impaired by numerous allegations of sexual
impropriety. Those circumstances notwithstanding, the Party also won
Governorships in Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia, all since 2015. At
this juncture, what is clear is that Democrats hope to turn a previous
nefarious methodology on its ear and use it to plot a course to victory in
future elections across the South. To that end, “Democrats Pivot: The Reinterpretation of the Southern Strategy!”
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