Bob Moser says they can. He’s talking about how to do it at SMU this week.
Can’t make it? Buy the book.
The William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies
and the Geurin-Pettus Program in the Department of Political Science
at Southern Methodist University
invite you to
Bob Moser, editor of the Texas Observer and an award-winning political reporter for The Nation, has chronicled Southern politics for nearly two decades.In Blue Dixie he argues that the Democratic Party needs to jettison outmoded prejudices about the South if it wants to build a lasting national majority. With evangelical churches preaching a more expansive social gospel and a massive left-leaning demographic shift to African Americans, Latinos, and the young, the South is poised for a Democratic revival. Moser shows how a volatile mix of unprecedented economic prosperity and abject poverty are reshaping the Southern vote. By returning to a bold, unflinching message of economic fairness, the Democrats can in in the nation’s largest, most diverse region and redeem themselves as a true party of the people.
Books will be available for purchase.
THURSDAY, October 29, 2009
Noon to 1 pm
Texana Room, DeGolyer Library
6404 Hilltop Ln. & McFarlin Blvd
Bring your own brown bag lunch!
Better, make it to the lecture, buy the book, listen to Moser and let him autograph it for you.
For more information, please call 214-768-2526 or email carberry AT smu DOT edu
Invite a friend to a brown-bag lunch:
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Even though I allow corned beef sandwiches — encourage them, in fact — and accept ‘contact’ as a verb, of course. No globe, but one Oriental rug.
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Prup writes:
Nero?
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As somebody who hasn’t made it to Manhattan in 3 years — and I live in Brooklyn — my Wolfeian immobility made it unlikely that I could make the lecture. However, I’ve heard the same argument repeatedly, both ‘live’ and in history books. I even used it myself in arguing that West Virginia was a ‘lock’ for Obama — and we saw how that worked out.
The trouble is that the South — and ‘border states’ — have, in almost every case chosen ‘race’ over ‘economics’ and ‘conservative Patriotism’ over progressivism when given the chance.
Look at history, both recent and distant. A Fulbright could only be re-elected by mouthing the expected racism — and lost a chance to make an even greater impact because of it. Both Kefauver and Sparkman — the last two opponents of racial integration to be nominated on a national major-party ticket — were somewhat progressive, but — especially Sparkman — were elected despite rather than because of it. In fact, the Southern progressives that Roosevelt brought in with him turned conservative pretty fast — Kefauver and Claude Pepper being the exceptions.
(Going all the way back, read C. Vann Woorward’s biography of Tom Watson, who started his career as a member of the Southern Populist Party, committed to racial equality, decided that the reason it failed was that the racial issue got in the way of the other economically progressive ideas, went into seclusion and emerged as one of the most vicious racists and anti-Semites around. — See the Leo Frank case for the best example of his ‘handiwork.’)
I think there is a VERY good way for Democrats — and even progressive Democrats — to make inroads in the South, but it requires that they challenge incumbent Republicans, holding their feet to the fire until they either accept or denounce some of the wilder ravings of the Limbaughs, Becks, County Chairman, State — meaning Texas — party platforms, and even the Taitz’ of the world. If they accept them, they will turn off whatever proportion of ‘sane Republicans’ still remain, if they denounce them they will get strong primary opposition. The New Paranoid Right is nothing if not ‘ideologically pure’ like some left-wing groups traditionally were, and that thinking always leads to their vulnerability to factional infighting.
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