The Democrats' Southern paradox

In the South, black voters may want Anybody but Bush, but whites like what they see in the president -- themselves. It's up to the Democrats to convince them otherwise.

By Tim Grieve

Feb 2, 2004 | Sixty miles east of Columbia on the Strom Thurmond Highway, the Darlington water tower rises high above cedar swamps and cotton fields. The word "Darlington" is painted high on the water tower, right next to the NASCAR logo.

There's a raceway here in Darlington, and on every Labor Day for 54 years race fans have poured into town for the Southern 500. It brings in a lot of money, that race, and the town is grateful for it. Signs all over Darlington say "Race Fans Welcome Here." The police cars are painted with checkered flags.

But you don't find a lot of NASCAR dads here, at least not on a February day when the raceway is quiet and the Southern 500 seems a long way off in the rear-view mirror. What you find are guys like Bernard Ervin: He's 43, a father of five, and black. Ervin used to work in the factories and mills around Darlington. But since George W. Bush became president, he has been laid off three separate times.

"Ever since Bush has been in there, it seems like having a job don't mean nothing anymore," Ervin says. "You can have a job one day, and you can get laid off the next day." Ervin works as he talks, dishing out barbecue and slaw inside his parents' ramshackle little restaurant where he helps out, waiting for something better to come along. He's hoping the Democrats bring it.

This is the good news for Democrats in the South. As the race for the Democratic presidential nomination goes national this week with primaries from South Carolina to South Dakota and from Delaware to Arizona, black Southern voters are focused sharply on the troubled economy -- the loss of jobs, the lack of opportunity -- and they're holding George W. Bush responsible for it.

But that's only half the story. People like Chris Newman are the other half. Newman is 21, white, and a senior at Francis Marion University in Florence, S.C., just up the road from Darlington. North Carolina Sen. John Edwards pulled into Francis Marion for a campaign appearance last week. But as Edwards fired up a couple hundred supporters with his "two Americas" stump speech, Newman was picking up his baseball glove and heading off for practice. "I voted for Gore, but I'd probably vote for President Bush if I had to do it again," Newman says. "I like that he's a Christian and that's he's not afraid to admit it. I can relate to that."

And that's the problem for Democrats in the South this election year. While African-American voters may be solidly on the "Anybody but Bush" program, many white Southerners -- even some who voted for former Vice President Al Gore in 2000 -- can "relate" to Bush and plan to vote for him in November. They see in the president a man like themselves: a Christian who shares their political views on issues like abortion and homosexuality, and a red-white-and-blue patriot who stands with them in supporting the men and women in the U.S. military.

"Bush is immensely popular with white voters in the South," says Jack Fleer, professor emeritus of political science at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. "He makes a big issue of his religion, and that's a very big thing in the minds of many Southerners. And despite his limited service in the military, he really buddies up to the military, and that's important in the South."

And what's important in the South, Fleer says, ought to be important to the Democrats. While it's mathematically possible for the Democrats to win the presidency without winning the South -- a point Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry made last month in language that caused some to speculate he would ignore the region in his campaign -- it's a whole lot easier to win the White House with the South than without it. And appealing to voters here is important for at least two other reasons, Fleer says. First, the sort of moderate views needed to win the South will also help win over swing voters elsewhere. Second, he said, if the Democrats run a candidate who can't compete in the South, they'll risk losing not just the presidency in November but also five Southern Senate seats the Democrats hold but that are in danger of going Republican.

"Democratic candidates ran away from Dukakis in 1988 and McGovern in 1972," Fleer said. "It could well be the case that you would make the campaigns for the Democratic Senate candidates much more viable if you had a presidential nominee with whom people can comfortably run."

That may be easier said than done. The Republicans have dominated Southern politics since the 1960s, when the party began distancing itself from its prior support for civil rights for African-Americans. Jimmy Carter took the South in 1976, and Bill Clinton carried four Southern states in 1992 and 1996. The South has been otherwise impenetrable for Democrats since the reign of Lyndon Johnson. Al Gore couldn't even carry his home state of Tennessee in 2000.

Traveling through South Carolina in the weeks leading up to Tuesday's primary, it's hard to miss reminders that the South remains distinctly different -- more religious, more patriotic in the flag-waving sense -- than bicoastal, blue-state America, a place where it will be hard for even a moderate Democrat to play well.

Jesus seems to be on every other radio station, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger is on the rest. Newspaper editorial pages feature daily Bible quotations, and the dreamy teen making lattes in Charleston is wearing a church T-shirt over his low-slung corduroys. In a funky coffeehouse in a Columbia basement, a hipster kid with a guitar is doing a mock-earnest version of Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" that somehow comes out achingly beautiful, but he's playing on a stage that sits under a huge American flag.

The differences are subtle, sometimes, and then sometimes they're not. Outside the Democratic presidential debate in Greenville last week, two burly guys walked up and down the street carrying Confederate flags. Another stood silent sentry a few feet away from a pack of Kerry supporters, literally wrapped in the Southern Cross. A young family moved through the crowd carrying signs that said, "God save Dixie from D.C."

Joshua Greenwood, a 24-year-old mortgage broker, stood his ground outside the debate holding a sign in which he listed people who had run on "the hate ticket": Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Howard Dean, John Kerry and John Edwards. "I support George W. Bush," Greenwood said, just before he began jostling for position with a supporter of Sen. Joe Lieberman who tried to block Greenwood's sign from the view of TV cameras taping Lieberman's arrival at the debate site. "The Democrats are trying to tear down the morals of this country."

Next Page: Do the Democratic contenders hear from God?

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