Synopsis
A powerful case for a new Southern strategy for the Democrats, from an award-winning reporter and native Southerner
In 2000 and 2004, the Democratic Party decided not to challenge George W. Bush in the South, a disastrous strategy that effectively handed Bush more than half of the electoral votes he needed to win the White House. As the 2008 election draws near, the Democrats have a historic opportunity to build a new progressive majority, but they cannot do so without the South.
In Blue Dixie, Bob Moser argues that the Democratic Party has been blinded by outmoded prejudices about the region. Moser, the chief political reporter for The Nation, shows that a volatile mix of unprecedented economic prosperity and abject poverty are reshaping the Southern vote. 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. By returning to a bold, unflinching message of economic fairness, the Democrats can win in the nation’s largest, most diverse region and redeem themselves as a true party of the people.
Keenly observed and deeply grounded in contemporary Southern politics, Blue Dixie reveals the changing face of American politics to the South itself and to the rest of the nation.
The New York Times - Chris Suellentrop
Bob Moser falls squarely in the camp that thinks the South is just waiting for the Democrats to remind her of all the good times they used to have together before she shacked up with the Other Party. The party of Franklin D. Roosevelt needs to stand on the Mason-Dixon line, hoist a portable stereo over its head and blast the song that brought the two of them together in the first place—that old-time New Deal religion—into the South's bedroom window, Moser suggests. In Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority, he doesn't succeed in making a persuasive case that this plan would work, but he does achieve a secondary goal: convincing Democrats that the South is a lot more complicated and interesting than they have made it out to be. It just might be a worthy object of their affection.