Dixie's long reign of terror has finally ended. [View all]

[Pab Sungenis]

Last night Barack Obama did something no other Democratic President other than Franklin Roosevelt has ever done: he managed to win more than 270 electoral votes in two elections without a single Southern state.

At 11:15 pm, Ohio put Obama over the magic number by bringing his electoral total to 274 and ensuring his re-election. When that happened the southern "swing states" of Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida had yet to be called. Even though Virginia eventually fell into his column and Florida is likely to do so once absentee ballots are counted today (North Carolina returned to form by going back to Romney), their votes were icing on the cake. A coalition of Northern and Western states soundly broke the pattern formed by Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and laid to rest 236 years of terror pushed upon this country by reactionary southerners.

In 1776, American Independence was nearly scuttled by South Carolina over the issue of slavery; only after the removal of a reference to slavery from the Declaration of Independence and a tacit promise to preserve the "peculiar institution" did the resolution declaring Independence pass. From that day up until the Civil War, the Southern States held an effective stranglehold on American politics through the three-fifths rule (which counted slaves toward population, and thus representation and electors, while not granting them voting rights) allowing them to block any legislation that might negatively impact them. After Reconstruction, the "Solid South" formed by racist white Democrats in the former Confederacy gave them effective control of the Democratic Party.

The adoption of a civil rights platform plank in 1948 began the defection of racist whites from the Democratic party with the formation of the "Dixiecrat" party, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 led to a nearly complete exodus of this bloc to the Republicans. Richard Nixon courted these votes to carry him to victory in 1968, and from that day until the election of Barack Obama the southern states have either joined the landslide or provided the winning edge in every Presidential election.

With the building of an electoral coalition that can carry a Democrat to victory without having to pander to the South, the effective control of American policy by Dixie has ended. The racist elements of the Old Confederacy have been shown that in the end they are irrelevant. We don't need you, so you don't get to have a veto over our candidates or our policies any longer.

So whither the South? Who knows. Perhaps the progressive elements in some of the states will reassert themselves (as has happened with Virginia twice now, and happened in 2008 with North Carolina). Maybe the moderates in those states will finally come to the table to collaborate rather than dictate. Maybe the last of the old guard will die out and demographics will overtake them. The South may still prove itself a political force, but Dixie no longer will.