Why Democrats Shouldn’t Write Off the South

Georgia gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms speaks in Atlanta on Could 19, 2026.
Picture: Dustin Chambers/Bloomberg/Getty Photos

Twenty years in the past, after two presidential elections wherein George W. Bush received each electoral vote within the former Accomplice states, there was a loud debate amongst Democrats over the concept the social gathering ought to quit on the South altogether. The considering, promoted most avidly by political scientist Tom Schaller in his guide Whistling Previous Dixie, was that the South was a hopeless proposition for any progressive social gathering and that pursuing the chimera of southern consolation would inevitably imply kowtowing to the area’s militarism and atavistic cultural views. Certainly, wrote Schaller, Democrats ought to run towards the South in the remainder of the nation.

Two years later, Barack Obama broke the GOP electoral-vote lock on the South by carrying Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. And by 2020, Georgia was electing two Democratic senators (one Black, the opposite Jewish) with views tough to differentiate from these of their social gathering colleagues elsewhere. Sure, Republicans have typically maintained a robust maintain on the area. However nobody can credibly argue that competing there would compromise the social gathering elsewhere, except for including to calls for for {dollars}.

There are superb causes for Democrats to aggressively interact within the South proper now. For one factor, the area is rising in inhabitants and can accordingly achieve clout after the following decennial Census. The Brennan Heart predicts that after 2030, Florida and Texas could every receive 4 extra U.S. Home seats, whereas North Carolina ought to obtain one as properly. This, after all, can even shift electoral votes in presidential contests.

However the rationale for the social gathering to step up its efforts within the area goes past that chilly sensible calculation. Democrats have each an ethical obligation and a political alternative to answer Republican makes an attempt to monopolize legislative illustration via the racially minded partisan gerrymanders inspired by the U.S. Supreme Court docket choice in Louisiana v. Callais. Hundreds of thousands of southern Democrats, notably Black voters, might lose almost all their affect in states the place Republicans maintain governing trifectas (and thus the ability to attract maps that give the GOP unanimous congressional delegations and supermajorities in state legislature). Preventing again by devoting nationwide Democratic assets to viable southern gubernatorial candidates (e.g., Georgia’s Keisha Lance Bottoms) and prioritizing state legislative races would go a great distance towards addressing long-standing issues each in and past the area that the social gathering takes Black help without any consideration. Plus, busting up a number of GOP trifectas in 2026, 2028, and 2030 would safeguard towards a gerrymandering massacre now in addition to when the maps are all redrawn in 2032.

There are indicators that Democrats are prepared to battle GOP efforts to monopolize southern political energy. The social gathering’s have to make a present of pressure within the South is coming into into choices concerning the 2028 presidential-primary calendar, as Politico reviews:

As Democratic Nationwide Committee members meet in D.C. this week to debate which states will lead the following presidential nominating contest, the GOP push to dismantle majority-Black districts and dilute Democrats’ energy throughout the South is ratcheting up the choice stakes. Some members are actually advocating for 2 southern states to make the reduce because the Callais ruling provides recent urgency to Democrats’ long-running debate over the way to amplify the voices of Black voters who’ve lengthy been the social gathering’s spine.

Starting the presidential primaries in, say, New Hampshire, and even in Nevada as Republicans are decimating Black illustration within the South may not be an excellent look within the eyes of essentially the most loyal Democratic constituency. However down the highway, Democrats would possibly envision a real comeback within the South whereby Black — and in some states, Latino — voters construct a excessive ground for a Democratic citizens that’s now not an outmatched minority. To gas that revival, the social gathering might flip to the identical variable that received 10 southern states in 1976 and 4 in each 1992 and 1996: a southern Democratic presidential nominee. There may be already some discuss Jon Ossoff as a possible 2028 candidate (assuming he holds his Senate seat on this yr’s election). It’s simple to think about his Georgia colleague Raphael Warnock showing on lists of potential presidential contenders as properly. And if Bottoms wins the governor’s race, she might be a part of the senators within the nationwide highlight.

Above all, critical Democratic competitors within the South would stop Republicans from consolidating an unshakable regional base after which intensifying it via gerrymanders, making it perpetually simpler for the GOP to get to 218 U.S. Home seats, 51 U.S. Senate seats, and 270 electoral votes. If Democrats are actually decided to rediscover their social gathering’s heritage as one which speaks to all People, they will start to show it within the robust however wealthy terrain of the South.