Democrats shouldn't abandon the South. They should abandon Blue Dog-ism.

Southerners deserve good policy too

Landrieu
(Image credit: (Stacy Revere/Getty Images))

To precisely nobody's surprise, Mary Landrieu lost her special Senate election, which means the end of the last Democratic senator from the Deep South. The great political realignment which began after the end of Reconstruction is now complete: What used to be the Democratic "Solid South," a region which held the balance of power in the party for generations and decisively influenced the New Deal, is now almost as solidly Republican.

Michael Tomasky used this development to resurrect an old argument among the left wing: that the South should be abandoned as a Republican wasteland. He is right that the classic political stance of Southern Democrats — positioning themselves between conservative Republicans and more liberal Northern Democrats — is as dead as a bag of hammers. However, he's very wrong to conclude that the South should therefore be totally ignored:

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.