The long goodbye

AFTER President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he reportedly turned to his press secretary and lamented that Democrats “have lost the South for a generation.” Johnson's judgment was optimistic. Despite brief flashes of strength during the presidential elections of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats—particularly white Democrats—have been losing ground in the South for half a century.

In the Congress that passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the eleven former Confederate states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia—had a total of 128 senators and representatives, of whom 115 were white Democrats (see chart). In 1981 Republicans took control of the Senate for the first time since 1953, but most Southern elected officials remained white Democrats. When Republicans took control of the House in 1995, white Democrats still comprised one-third of the South's tally.

This year, however, it seems that white Southern Democrats have met their Appomattox: they will account for just 24 of the South's 155 senators and congressmen in the incoming Congress. The delegations from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina held only white Democrats in 1963; when the new Congress convenes next January, they will have none. Georgia was also once a Democratic stronghold—in 1981 its House delegation's lone Republican was a fresh-faced young history professor called Newt Gingrich—but this year Republicans won every statewide office. Democrats do well in black and Hispanic-dominated districts, the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, and the university-heavy areas around Raleigh, North Carolina and Austin, Texas. Otherwise the South is largely red.

This does not indicate a disappearance of liberals. White Southern Democrats were largely conservative before, and the Democratic domination of Congress in the second half of the 20th century rested on an uneasy coalition between men such as James Eastland, a senator from Mississippi who insisted three years after Brown v Board of Education banned segregation that “the vast majority of Negroes want their own schools, their own hospitals, their own churches, their own restaurants”, and northern urban liberals such as Ted Kennedy. Strom Thurmond, Richard Shelby and Phil Gramm—Southern Republican stalwarts all—were first elected as Democrats, and of the 37 Democrats who voted against the health-care bill in March, 16 were Southern whites.

Some have argued that such conservatism dilutes the Democratic brand: that Democrats lost in November because voters knew what Republicans stood for but could not say the same of Democrats. Ari Berman, author of “Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics”, wrote in the New York Times that “Democrats would be in better shape and would accomplish more with a smaller and more ideologically cohesive caucus.” If by “accomplishing more” Mr Berman means “make liberals feel better”, he might be right; but if he means “pass more legislation”, he is wrong. Moderates and conservatives outnumber liberals in Congress, among congressional Democrats and among the electorate at large. Democrats built their 2006-10 majority by extending their reach into traditionally conservative districts. Abandoning those areas, many of them Southern, after the first mid-term election of a new president's term—when the president's party tends to lose seats anyway—would probably be a blunder.

Bob Moser, author of “Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority”, sees two roads to salvation for Southern white Democrats. The first is economic populism of the sort that helped elect Jim Webb in Virginia and Heath Shuler, who is considering a run against Nancy Pelosi for House minority leader, in North Carolina. The second is demography: as the South grows more populous and diverse, Mr Moser contends, it will become friendlier towards Democrats. Perhaps, though that flies in the face of recent history. As the South's population has expanded in absolute and relative terms, the region has become more Republican.

And Democrats face more immediate problems. Next year most states, using census data from 2010, will draw new congressional districts. Nine of the 11 Southern states will have Republican governors, and six of those will have Republican-controlled legislatures as well. Only the Arkansas legislature remains in Democratic hands. Two generations—and counting.