I don't have much to say to that, since it might well be a true assessment. I might echo urbeatle's skepticism that enough Southern votes are really available to be gotten by anyone else.
This is not to say that these states are necessarily one-party places forever. There's something of a modest centrist-Democratic resurgence happening in state politics in Virginia, just because of the aftereffects of Jim Gilmore (a Republican governor who was elected more or less entirely on the basis of an unfulfillable pledge to repeal the car tax, and didn't do so hot). I doubt that Virginia is in play in the presidential election, though.
I have a crazy idea that, as Republicans keep running the whole government and spending it into the ground while pandering to the cultural-authoritarian base, eventually libertarian-minded people in the intermountain West are going to find common cause with liberals. But it isn't going to happen any time soon; the idea that the Democrats are the big-government spending party has a tenacious hold on the imagination. Maybe 2012. Nevada and Arizona might be in play sooner than that. I have seen a few extreme Libertarian Party types toying with voting for Dean; his stance on guns might have removed the main deal-breaker.
I am by no means convinced that Dean can actually win, and to say that I like him is something of an exaggeration; I just don't think that his nomination would be that huge a disaster compared to the nomination of somebody else, and I think it might even be the best thing for the longer term.
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Date: 2003-12-09 11:46 pm (UTC)This is not to say that these states are necessarily one-party places forever. There's something of a modest centrist-Democratic resurgence happening in state politics in Virginia, just because of the aftereffects of Jim Gilmore (a Republican governor who was elected more or less entirely on the basis of an unfulfillable pledge to repeal the car tax, and didn't do so hot). I doubt that Virginia is in play in the presidential election, though.
I have a crazy idea that, as Republicans keep running the whole government and spending it into the ground while pandering to the cultural-authoritarian base, eventually libertarian-minded people in the intermountain West are going to find common cause with liberals. But it isn't going to happen any time soon; the idea that the Democrats are the big-government spending party has a tenacious hold on the imagination. Maybe 2012. Nevada and Arizona might be in play sooner than that. I have seen a few extreme Libertarian Party types toying with voting for Dean; his stance on guns might have removed the main deal-breaker.
I am by no means convinced that Dean can actually win, and to say that I like him is something of an exaggeration; I just don't think that his nomination would be that huge a disaster compared to the nomination of somebody else, and I think it might even be the best thing for the longer term.