What can be done to make the South more blue?

[LDS Jock]

I started a thread in the Southern Democrats forum, but would like input from everyone. Thanks.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=234x336

[sui generis]

1. the first thing that comes to mind is the rapture

and good riddance

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Import more liberals

We have a growing number of them coming to settle in Newton County AR. Another thing to do is to let people know that liberals do good things-like a benefit for a charity, a canned food drive, etc. etc. Talk about local events and their impact on people's lives-and how the Bush Administration has made things harder.

These are my ideas.

[KnowerOfLogic]

3. Not a damn thing. Look at the history. The Blue states will secede

before the red states turn blue. On edit, i should say that mass immigration could do it, by simply outnumbering the reds with new transplants to the state.

[giasangria]

4. Northern liberals--retire in the beautiful South!!

There is a much lower cost-of-living. I know people in my area (north Alabama) who have retired and moved here from the North. Many are able to retire earlier by moving here. There is really a lot of beautiful land for those of you who are nature-lovers. It's warmer here. I wouldn't want to retire here but maybe it all seems rather quaint and charming if you didn't have to grow up here.

[w4rma]

5. Out gun the Republicans by supporting even less gun control, aimed at

specifically rural voters.

ALLOW Democratic politicians to talk more about religion and how liberals values are Jesus Christ's values. I think they want to but are held back by a few loud people who are mostly in the Democratic base. Anytime they try to talk about religion these knee-jerk anti-religious folk shout them down. You have to remember that Jesus Christ's message is a good one and its not a bad thing to be evangelistic about Jesus Christ's message. Its bad when the message is twisted into (a Satanic message?) one of hate toward folks of other religions, cultures, ethnicities, social standing, etc.

Forget about gay marraige, alltogether. Don't let big media and Republican appointed judges suck you into that argument again. But, fight hard for getting civil unions into law.

Be tough on illegal immigrents. Remember that they are breaking the law by being here. Forget about pandering to Hispanics with stupid things like supporting drivers licsenses for illegals. Illegals don't vote. Pander to the hispanics who are American citizens, not hispanics who are not supposed to be here.

Never ever support *anything* that sends the jobs of Americans overseas. And you must be very very clear about that to southern Americans, because they know who passed NAFTA: Bill Clinton. And they blame Democrats for NAFTA and they think that Republicans are basically the same. You MUST defeat this fallacy. And anytime big media makes hay about some Democrat who opposes "protectionism" and supports NAFTA as written hurts Dems in the South, regardless of what the DLC may tell you.

[Meritaten1]

6. The article cited in this thread might help?

It presents some very interesting communications ideas:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1391102

[m berst]

7. build more cities

Rural counties in the North are just as conservative as the South.

Or, reclaim populism from the Republicans by returning the party to its roots - the voice of the "little guy" against the corporations and the moneyed interests.

[belle]

8. Get a plain-spoken, charismatic guy from working-class roots who

talks like a preacher and walks progressive. That is, he's a genuinely religious/spiritual man who's able to communicate his ideas through language that resonates with evangelicals, rural folk, and the working class. Class, charm, and church.

[BillZBubb]

9. There is simply not much that can be done except to wait.

The Democrats lost the South by supporting civil rights. Even though we were right, that created resentment of yankees, liberals, and "big" government to the point of obsession here. There was a massive transference of hatred. The Southerners had to go from abusing blacks, which was now socially unacceptable, to abusing the new enemies which was socially applauded.

Our only true hope in the South is for an economic meltdown. It's very sad that hope has to be based on such a disaster. But, it is the only way to re-orient Southern thinking about issues. The good (and bad) news is that Bush* will probably supply the disaster.

[Lexingtonian]

10. Build up high tech industries in the cities, and wait

High tech industries to bring in and raise up cosmopolitan people, and prove that education is destiny rather than birth. Basically, run the young off the Republican Party and conservative misChristianity by showing it both to be the provincial, regressive, dying entities that form a Hopelessly Lost Cause.

Truly rural people, i.e. farmers, tend to be pragmatic and very moderate conservatives- they have relatively open minds about politicians but not much good information (in most places).

The extremists IME are the small town/exurb folk- people who have crappy business jobs, limited possibilities in life generally, and are looking for someone to blame. The militaristic Right, plutocratic Right, and the Christian Right are their escapisms and elitarianisms. They're the Left Behind- the smarter people of their generation migrate to the cities, they're quite aware that they're considered the dregs and weren't good enough or daring enough or lucky enough to get out. They hate the city folk (their supposed betters) and hate rural people who 'don't belong' and they consider their social inferiors (blacks/Hispanics/Indians/hippies, the rural poor aka 'trailer trash').

Basically, we have to depopulate the small towns and see to it that their radical Right, ressentiment-defined, high subsidy parasitic 'culture' is unmaintainable. Their Achilles heel is that they all run on coerced subsidization from the cities in various forms. In essence all that has to be done is to drive the Republican state governments into resisting the coercion and cutting them off, one by one. Their kids have to get jobs in cities and get some deprogramming/deprovincialization.

[Carson]

11. What comes to mind first

is stop ridiculing the South and painting everyone who believes in God as an ignorant rube.

[Boosterman]

13. Yeah I agree but many here dont.

I think the biggest problem facing us now is this. We lost the south. We lost the moderates. Part of it IMo is when the neo cons get to paint us at people who hate and are bitter and angry. This plays right into their hands. JMO though.

[Osamasux]

22. I don't agree that we've lost the moderates

[xerox]

12. convince them

to vote democrat.

[RagingInMiami]

14. Hack the vote

[Nik Jam]

15. Get more registered blacks.

I hear the black population in the South is better than the white population, I guess for some reason they don't vote. Or the black popluation is mostly children.

[demobabe]

16. start by....

Automatic reinstatment of voting rights to ex-felons...
Focus on getting more Democratic judges elected (they're partisan races down there)...
Reform the prison industry (it is an industry - they get a lot of federal money for prison systems)

[journalist3072]

17. Turning the Red to Blue

I think we simply have to show people in the red states that they are voting against their own interests. People vote against their own interests sometimes, without even realizing it.

Look at it this way: According to the U.S. Census report, 54% of the African-American population resides in the south. We all know that African-Americans are the most loyal constituency for the Democratic Party.

So why is it that when nearly half of the Democratic Party's most loyal constituency is in the South, we can't win the south?

People voting against their own interests. We need to explain that to them.

[lawladyprof]

18. Turning the other cheek idea

Help towns in red states that have closed plants due to outsourcing (tie to Bible--loving your enemies)--great man bites dog publicity and reversing some of the vitriol that has been heaped on liberals for years (kind hard to malign someone who dug deep to help you out at your time of need). Reclaim the moral high ground.

[marions ghost]

19. Make Everybody Purple

The Red/Blue Divide is not between the North and South. It is between progressives and conservatives, urbanites and rural dwellers, the tolerant and the intolerant, the rich and the not rich.

Whatever you do to make the North more Blue will make the South more Blue.

If you do visit the South, try not to be arrogant, condescending, and superior. Try to bridge the gap. Talk a lot.

Work for election reform, because some of the worst abuses are still taking place in the South, even in places like Florida where Northerners have colonized heavily.

Think Purple, Y'all.

[JanMichael]

20. The strangulation of world economics may do it.

The tighter the finances get, the bluer our faces will turn.

[DoNotRefill]

21. Don't just distance ourselves from gun control...

but work to repeal some of the stupider gun control laws out there.

[tsuki]

23. Close half the military installations in the south.