Can Democrats Win Back the Deep South?

[octoberlib]

In the coming weeks, Hanauer and Loranne Ausley, a former member of the Florida House of Representatives, plan to launch something they're calling the Southern Project, which will conduct research and formulate messages that can help Democrats win over Southern voters. A pilot study conducted in North Carolina in February, for example, concluded that under the state's Republican governor, Pat McCrory, "there is a clear sense that hardworking taxpayers are getting the short end of the stick at the expense of big corporations and the wealthiest." The set of talking points advises progressives to make arguments "focused around fairness and accountability," whether the issue is tax reform or charter schools. The Southern Project will equip Southern Democrats with similar examples of messages that have been poll-tested to resonate with voters.

Ausley, who ran unsuccessfully for statewide office in Florida in 2010, said Republicans across the South risk alienating voters with their hard rightward turn. Every Republican-led Southern state has rejected the federally funded expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, she noted; in Florida, Governor Rick Scott tried to accept the funds, but his own Republican-dominated legislature blocked the move. Southern Republicans have recently decried women's entry into the workforce and advocated teaching schoolchildren about proper gender roles.

"Republicans are doing the same thing over and over again to appeal to their base, and at some point it has to come back to bite them," Ausley said. Southern voters are generally conservative, but they're not extremists, as Mississippi showed in 2011 when it overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have declared a fertilized egg to be a "person" with rights. Genteel Southern moderates like Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia find themselves increasingly endangered by Tea Party primary challenges; Chambliss has chosen not to run for reelection next year, setting up a race that will test Democrats' ability to win in that state.

The Democrats working in the South emphasize the long-term nature of their project. "The South is not where the West was" a decade ago, Hanauer told me. "But there is a lot of infrastructure starting to be built, and Republican legislators are going further than the Southern public wants. There's going to be a backlash."

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/can-democrats-win-back-the-deep-south/277123/

[Gothmog]

1. Many of the concepts appear to be similar to the plans of Battleground Texas

The premise of Battleground Texas is that we can make a deeply red state into a blue state in part because the GOP is going too far and alienating voters.

[octoberlib]

2. I was just reading an article on the abortion bill passed at 4 am today.

Sounds exactly like something our legislature would pull. I believe Battleground Texas and groups like them will be successful precisely because of stunts like this.

[Gothmog]

3. This stunt has really energized the women groups

There have been a number of e-mails to get people to go to the people's filibuster and to support this cause. I think that the women vote will be out in force in the next election. I know that people are trying to get Wendy Davis, a State Senator from Fort Worth, to run for governor. She would be a great candidate. Senator Davis is scheduled to lead the filibuster tomorrow on the anti-abortion bill.

If the SCOTUS strikes down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the State of Texas will become subject to a voter id/voter suppression bill designed to steal the vote of the poor, minorities and the old. The Texas Democratic Party is planning to use the GOP voter suppression tactics as a way to motivated minority voters. If Hispanic voters in Texas started to vote in the same percentages as California, then Texas would be a blue state.

There is some good polling that shows that Hispanic voters may get angry at GOP voter suppression efforts and the TDP is planning on making sure that Hispanic voters understand why they are being targeted by the GOP

[gklagan]

4. Outcome comparisons?

I assume that there are people smarter than myself who are gathering the data needed to say "This is what NC would have looked like with the medicaid expansion _____________, and this is what's actually happening ___________. This expense and human suffering is a direct result of the legislative decision to reject expansion." If no one is planning to do that, um, we should....

[Gothmog]

5. I have seen some numbers for Texas

Texas may be competitive if we can get Hispanic voters out in the same percentage as in California. The GOP attempt to steal their votes may help

[davidt2974]

6. Win with Better Ideas

Here in NC, the strategy needs to be two-fold.

1) Obvious. Hammer home the facts about the extremist overreach of the GOP/NCGA. All of those crazy early session bills (nip slips anyone)..the budget, Voter ID and on and on.

2) We have to follow that up with a surge of "better ideas". We can't just be the party yelling "Look at what they're doing!" without immediately afterward saying "And this is what we need to do instead".

My thing I've been pounding home to people lately is "motivate, activate, amplify". We have to motivate our base and unaffiliated/swing voters, we have to activate them to start working now for 2014 and beyond, and then we have to amplify our voices as the opposition party and the party of better ideas.

[octoberlib]

7. +1 nt