I don’t want to pick a fight with white southerners, but we do have to deal with certain facts:
The problem for Republicans is that the Democratic weakness appears confined to the white South. Even though some analysts suggested that Mr. Obama was historically weak among white voters more generally, he fared better than recent Democratic nominees among white voters outside of the South. That’s how he won battleground states like Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin and New Hampshire. Whatever is causing Republicans to excel in the South, whether religion or race, just isn’t helping them elsewhere.
Southern whites have decided that the Democratic Party is a party for black people, which comes as a surprise to the rest of white America. I think religion does play a big part in this, too, but the result is that the Democrats will have a hard time winning control of the House of Representatives while the Republicans will have a harder time winning the presidency.
Part of the problem for Republicans is that there are other racial minorities besides blacks, so they’re losing badly among Latinos and Asians and non-Christians in state after state.
Maximizing their advantage with southern whites is helping the Republicans maintain control of states like Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina that have sizable black populations, but it is actually hurting their chances nationally.
It’s also polarizing our politics along racial and regional lines in a familiar but very unhealthy way.
