The American Prospect TAPped blog comments "There's an intriguing article in next week's New Republic by John Judis, who argues that John Edwards points the way to a viable Democratic southern strategy -- contrary to those who argue that the South is dead to Democratic hopes Part of Judis' argument is practical: The Democrats can't afford to cede the Republicans 153 electoral votes and 22 Senate seats before the race even starts. But he also has a solution. Thanks to demographic shifts -- chiefly Latino immigration and the rise of idea-industry professional classes in southern suburbs -- Democrats in the region need no longer run as anti–national-party conservatives:
In the '80s, aspiring Southern Democratic politicians had to cobble together majorities by combining the black vote with the little that remained of white, working-class loyalty to Democrats. But the emergence of these new, post-industrial areas has provided Democrats a new potential base of support. At the same time, the national party's turn toward the center under Bill Clinton made it possible for Southern Democrats to court white, working-class voters without dissociating themselves from the national party.
Kenneth Baer has a differing view
The brilliance of the Edwards selection is not that he will enable Kerry to win states in the South (short of a landslide, they are still completely out of reach), but that he will help Kerry remain competitive in “southern” areas of non-southern states
Baer cites a very insightful study, Beyond Red and Blue, by Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth which break the country down into ten political regions. Most states are a mixture of two or more political regions.
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