WI: Dems Didn't Nominate Carter

kernals12

Banned
One thing I find fascinating about the 1976 election is how Jimmy Carter provided a large dead cat bounce for Democrats in the South. 1976 marked the last time ever that a Democrat won South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi or Texas. And after his home state went for him in 1980, Georgia has only gone Democrat one time since, just barely for Bill Clinton in 1992, and North Carolina has only gone blue for Barack Obama in 2008. 1980 was also the last time ever that the South has voted more Democratic than the nation.
Carter's popularity in Dixie certainly helped down ballot. The Democrats continued to dominate the region's congressional districts and state legislatures into the 1990s. It wasn't until 2012 that the last Democratic controlled state legislature in the former confederacy (Arkansas) flipped to the GOP.

So what if the Democrats had nominated, say, Birch Bayh? Would we see the last vestiges of the Solid South vanish by 1990?
 
Don't forget that Carter's southern-ness had disadvantages as well as advantages. It (especially the "born-again" piety) was rather culturally alien to many urban and suburban voters in the North. Arguably it cost him CA and IL in 1976. He got only 52.06 percent of the vote in San Francisco, worse than not only Humphrey in 1968 but McGovern in 1972; he also lost such Bay Area counties as San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Contra Costa, all of which Humphrey had carried in 1968 and Dukakis would carry in 1988. He carried Cook County, IL by only 53.4-44.7--not a terrible showing, but not as good as Truman's 54.2-45.2 in 1948, let alone JFK's 56.4-43.3 in 1960 or for that matter Dukakis' 55.8-43.4 in 1988. (To some extent he made up for this by doing better than national Democrats usually did in southern Illinois.) It might even have cost him the state of New York if not for the aid-to-New-York-City issue.

So it's not clear whether if the Democrats had nominated a non-southern candidate in 1976, he would have lost or would have made up for a worse showing in the South by a better one in the North and West.

And the South would still generally vote Democratic in non-presidential elections for a while; the GOP was not able to overcome the region's habitual ticket-splitting until 1994, long after Carter's presidency.
 
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kernals12

Banned
Don't forget that Carter's southern-ness had disadvantages as well as advantages. It (especially the "born-again" piety) was rather culturally alien to many urban and suburban voters in the North. Arguably it cost him CA and IL in 1976. He got only 52.06 percent of the vote in San Francisco, worse than not only Humphrey in 1968 but McGovern in 1972; he also lost such Bay Area counties as San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Contra Costa, all of which Humphry had carried in 1968 and Dukakis would carry in 1988.l He carried Cook County, IL by only 53.4-44.7--not a terrible showing, but not as good as Truman's 54.2-45.2 in 1948, let alone JFK's 56.4-43.3 in 1960 or for that matter Dukakis' 55.8-43.4 in 1988. (To some extent he made up for this by doing better than national Democrats usually did in southern Illinois.) It might even have cost him the state of New York if not for the aid-to-New-York-City issue.

So it's not clear whether if the Democrats had nominated a non-southern candidate in 1976, he would have lost or would have made up for a worse showing in the South by a better one in the North and West.

And the South would still generally vote Democratic in non-presidential elections for a while; the GOP was not able to overcome the region's habitual ticket-splitting until 1994, long after Carter's presidency.
The South was beginning to bolt from the Democratic party already in the 70s. Republicans were winning senate and gubernatorial elections with increasing regularity.
 
The South was beginning to bolt from the Democratic party already in the 70s. Republicans were winning senate and gubernatorial elections with increasing regularity.

True, but the fact remains that as late as the 103rd Congress (1992-4) the US House delegation of AL was 4-3 D, of GA 7-4 D, of LA 4-3 D, of MS 5-0(!) D, of NC 8-4 D, of TN 6-3 D, of TX 21-9 , and of VA 7-4 D. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/103rd_United_States_Congress This was long after Carter had left office.
 

kernals12

Banned
True, but the fact remains that as late as the 103rd Congress (1992-4) the US House delegation of AL was 4-3 D, of GA 7-4 D, of LA 4-3 D, of MS 5-0(!) D, of NC 8-4 D, of TN 6-3 D, of TX 21-9 , and of VA 7-4 D. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/103rd_United_States_Congress This was long after Carter had left office.
But obviously congressional results don't happen in a vacuum and are impacted by the guy running for President. For 24 years, we had solely Republican Presidents with a brief interlude by a Southern Democrat.
 
But obviously congressional results don't happen in a vacuum and are impacted by the guy running for President. For 24 years, we had solely Republican Presidents with a brief interlude by a Southern Democrat.

It's worth remembering that Carter's defeat in 1980 came with losses for Congressional Democrats around the country, including in the South. If anything, Democratic losses in the South would be mitigated by an alternate 1976 nominee who performs better than Carter as President. (Even if this different President loses to Reagan, a more narrow loss would help Democrats nationally).
 
I think that the ‘68 and ‘72 tickets are what really damaged the Democrats in the South. Humphrey seemed uninterested in trying to win the region over and paired his Midwestern liberal background with Edmund Muskie’s Northeastern liberalism. Next up was George McGovern, who people found to be radically left wing in Northern suburbs and who didn’t stand a little bit of a chance in Dixie. By 1976, the South had voted against the Democrats for 8 years and the Deep South had for 16 years. It was a pretty damn embedded idea that the Democrats had given up on trying that hard to win the South anymore. That mixed with Republican Party adopting conservative Southerners and allowing downright segregationists into their party, the South had been won by the GOP on policy and would only go back to the Dems column when they put up a favorite son.

If you want to make the GOP takeover of the South happen any faster, have the Dems try and muscle out their more conservative Southern members and put up more Northern tickets. Bayh in ‘76 would be a good start, as he was considered to be very liberal but was also mainstream to the Democratic Party.

If you wanted the Dems to keep the South, Humphrey picking a Southern running mate (maybe Sen. Al Gore Sr.) or a moderate Southerner wins the Dem. nomination in ‘72. Imo, ‘76 is just too late to even kind of hold onto the once Solid South for more than one presidency.
 

kernals12

Banned
I think that the ‘68 and ‘72 tickets are what really damaged the Democrats in the South. Humphrey seemed uninterested in trying to win the region over and paired his Midwestern liberal background with Edmund Muskie’s Northeastern liberalism. Next up was George McGovern, who people found to be radically left wing in Northern suburbs and who didn’t stand a little bit of a chance in Dixie. By 1976, the South had voted against the Democrats for 8 years and the Deep South had for 16 years. It was a pretty damn embedded idea that the Democrats had given up on trying that hard to win the South anymore. That mixed with Republican Party adopting conservative Southerners and allowing downright segregationists into their party, the South had been won by the GOP on policy and would only go back to the Dems column when they put up a favorite son.

If you want to make the GOP takeover of the South happen any faster, have the Dems try and muscle out their more conservative Southern members and put up more Northern tickets. Bayh in ‘76 would be a good start, as he was considered to be very liberal but was also mainstream to the Democratic Party.

If you wanted the Dems to keep the South, Humphrey picking a Southern running mate (maybe Sen. Al Gore Sr.) or a moderate Southerner wins the Dem. nomination in ‘72. Imo, ‘76 is just too late to even kind of hold onto the once Solid South for more than one presidency.
No, LBJ's signing of the civil rights laws are what did the Democrats in in the South.
 
No, LBJ's signing of the civil rights laws are what did the Democrats in in the South.

Eh, kinda. That had a significant impact on the Democrats in the South and what allowed the Republicans to ever be competitive there, but it was the following few elections that did them in. JFK made Southerners question if the Democratic Party was still the Party of the South. LBJ pushed this further and ended up with the Deep South voting for Goldwater, but the rest of the South stuck with him. Humphrey and McGovern made the South feel as though the Democratic Party did not care about them at all anymore and solidified the Democratic Party as the liberal party that did not care about the South.

Had LBJ not done what he did, the Republicans would not have been able to get inroads into the South at all, but had the national Democratic Party following Johnson tried to appear more palatable to the South I think that it wouldn't have been such a clean and straightforward break. The South would not stay solid, but there would be more Democratic strongholds and a more politically centrist South (as it stands there are plenty of liberals in the South, they just don't vote). We'd probably have the Democrats as a bigger tent party with more appeal in the South than we do today.
 
Eh, kinda. That had a significant impact on the Democrats in the South and what allowed the Republicans to ever be competitive there, but it was the following few elections that did them in. JFK made Southerners question if the Democratic Party was still the Party of the South. LBJ pushed this further and ended up with the Deep South voting for Goldwater, but the rest of the South stuck with him. Humphrey and McGovern made the South feel as though the Democratic Party did not care about them at all anymore and solidified the Democratic Party as the liberal party that did not care about the South.

Had LBJ not done what he did, the Republicans would not have been able to get inroads into the South at all, but had the national Democratic Party following Johnson tried to appear more palatable to the South I think that it wouldn't have been such a clean and straightforward break. The South would not stay solid, but there would be more Democratic strongholds and a more politically centrist South (as it stands there are plenty of liberals in the South, they just don't vote). We'd probably have the Democrats as a bigger tent party with more appeal in the South than we do today.

Even before JFK, the GOP was beginning to make inroads in the South. Eisenhower had won Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida in 1952 as well as Louisiana in 1956. As the South began to develop economically after WWII, the region became more and more attracted to the business-friendly aspects of the GOP. Additionally, northern Republicans started to move to the Sun Belt to pursue new economic opportunities (with George H.W. Bush being a prominent example). So the GOP didn't need to oppose civil rights in order to win in the South. However, civil rights is what made the GOP the party of the South at a national level under Nixon and Reagan. Had Goldwater not been nominated in 1964 (and had there been no Republican Southern Strategy), modern electoral maps might look more like 1960 with both the Democrats and the GOP competitive in the South.
 
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