Dems' Southern Strategy

Don't believe the Democratic National Committee's official storyline — the DNC's decision to make South Carolina the first Democratic presidential primary in 2028 isn't about introducing more racial diversity into the early contests.

It's actually about keeping power in the hands of the party establishment, the people who backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, and who are likely to wind up supporting Kamala Harris in 2028.

The fix is in.

South Carolina was the establishment's firewall against Bernie Sanders' left-wing insurgency twice over.

In 2016, Sanders nearly beat Hillary Clinton in the first caucus, in Iowa, and went on to defeat her in the New Hampshire primary.

Four years later, there was a brief moment when Sanders looked like the frontrunner — until he got clobbered by Joe Biden in South Carolina.

It's true that the black voters who make South Carolina's primaries more racially diverse than the contests in Iowa or New Hampshire are also less politically radical, so it's easy for the DNC to say it's not trying to choke off support for the socialist wing of the party, it's just giving black voters more of a say.

The Democratic Socialists of America, the left fringe of the party, is disproportionately white — even its New York City chapter is 60% white, according to DSA's own membership polling.

That's astonishing considering NYC itself is only 34% white.

This racial split between the Democrats' most ideologically intense faction and the party's elite, which only holds onto power thanks to black voters' loyalty, is a fault line with the potential to reshape American politics.

South Carolina doesn't just lean toward establishment Democrats, it backs them overwhelmingly — nearly three quarters of the state's Dem primary voters chose Clinton over Sanders in '16, while Biden beat Sanders in '20 by a ratio of more than 2 to 1.

A candidate like Harris or her fellow Californian Gavin Newsom fits the profile, and Harris' unbeatable name recognition — as a former vice president and '24 nominee — and race-and-sex diversity qualifications likely give her an edge.

DSA members won't stay home and let another Republican succeed Donald Trump rather than turn out to vote for Harris or Newsom, but if the establishment candidate goes on to lose in November '28, the party will be ripe for a revolution.

Will black voters who have so far resisted Sanders-style socialism be just as content with a DSA-led party as they have been with the Democrats' old guard?

With Republican states growing while blue states like California shed population and businesses, the Democrats face a terminal problem in the Electoral College and U.S. House of Representatives.

With each decennial census, Republicans stand to gain House seats and electoral votes.

But Democrats can offset the GOP's growth advantages if they start flipping Southern states back into the blue column.

Georgia is the test case — the state has prospered under Republican leadership, but that prosperity has fueled the growth of Atlanta and turned many of the city's suburbs blue.

Virginia, of course, has already become a purple state, if not a reliably Democratic one, and while Washington, D.C. is a unique influence as the center of the federal government, the growth of the state's deep-blue D.C. suburbs — which keep extending further into Virginia's interior — is not so different from the effect Atlanta is having on Georgia.

North Carolina is another weak link in the Republican Party's Southern wall.

Despite backing a string of losers — Hillary Clinton a decade ago, Biden and Harris both in the last election — the Democratic establishment thinks it's hit upon a strategy both for keeping control of the party and wresting the South away from Republicans.

And it's confident the DSA will fall in line. After all, the elite Democrats are more allergic to the socialist label than they are to socialistic policies.

They can give DSA much of what it wants, while DSA is just as devoted to identity politics as the establishment is.

Yet a plan is one thing — the reality is there's a knife fight for control of the party, and these pieces won't fit together easily.

That gives Republicans a chance to stop socialism and the Democrats' racial spoils system.

But to do it they'll have to win the South anew — thinking of it as a battleground region, rather than taking it for granted.

Republicans will also have to slow, if they can't immediately reverse, the leftward drift of urban politics.

South Carolina might not be in play anytime soon, but by holding their first 2028 presidential primaries there, Democrats are executing the first move in a grand strategy Republicans have to be prepared to counter.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 08/11/26: Homebuyers Deserve the Facts About Crime and Schools
• 08/04/26: Diversity, Equity, and Confabulation
• 07/28/26: Democratic Socialists of America vs. John Adams
• 07/21/26: Why Dems Can't Do Better Than Kamala Harris in 2028
• 07/14/26: Prescription for a Socialist Workforce
• 07/07/26: The Smithsonian's Patriotism Problem
• 06/30/26: Bill Maher, Liberalism's Apostate
• 06/23/26: Can Anyone Govern Britain -- or America?
• 06/16/26: University Professors Against Academic Freedom
• 06/09/26: Pope Leo Courts the Global Left
• 06/02/26: A Mass-Graves Myth Is Media Malpractice
• 05/28/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/26/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/12/26: Dems finally come clean 'bout their radical design
• 05/05/26: The Silenced Generation
• 04/28/26:Colleges Are Making Political Violence Worse
• 04/21/26:Immigration Amnesty by Any Other Name
• 04/14/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 04/07/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 03/17/26: Why Are Senate Dems Making Air Travel Worse?
• 03/10/26: Cuba Should Accept Trump's 'Friendly Takeover'
• 03/03/26: Immigration Enforcement Saves Lives
• 02/24/26: How a Party Offends Its Voters
• 02/17/26: Why Are Anti-ICE Activists Building Borders?
• 02/10/26: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain
• 02/03/26: The Trump Coalition Wins But the GOP Brand Doesn't
• 01/27/26: Canada Should Warm to Trump's Arctic Plans
• 01/20/26: From Rock to Tech, Talent Flees Taxes
• 01/13/26: Woman Who Weaponized Car Against I.C.E Endangered Her Life -- and Yours
• 01/06/26: Tim Walz Personifies Dems' Decline
• 12/30/25: Harvard Says Yes to Discrimination, No to Western Civ
• 12/23/25: JD Vance Gets America's Creed and Heritage Right
• 12/16/25: Trump's Inflation Trap
• 12/09/25: Biden's Immigration Debacle Is the Media's, Too
• 12/02/25: 'Iryna's Law' and the Bad Judges Who Make It Necessary
• 11/26/25: Marjorie Taylor Greene's Exit Is a Warning to Republicans
• 11/19/25: Trump Hasn't Lost Hispanics (Yet)
• 11/11/25: Trump's Tariffs on Trial
• 10/28/25: MAGA Makes Allies Great Again
• 10/21/25: How To Make the AmericaS Great Again
• 10/16/25: Columbus Day Celebrates Our Civilization
• 10/09/25: Why Sharpies Are Made in America Again
• 09/30/25: Assata Shakur and Other Parents of Political Violence
• 09/09/25: Who's Accountable for Autopen Pardons?
• 09/02/25: Gender dysphoria is a mental-illness, NOT an all-encompassing delusion
• 08/26/25: Trump's Industrial Policy Is Realism, Not Socialism
• 08/19/25: Is Gavin Newsom the Dems' Answer to Trump?
• 08/12/25: Just Say No to More Marijuana
• 08/05/25: Will the GOP Make Libs Generous Again?
• 07/30/25: Trump's Trade Lesson for Economists (and the World)
• 07/22/25: Whose Politics Canceled Stephen Colbert?
• 07/08/25: A Big Beautiful Test of GOP Principles and Discipline
• 07/01/25: Dems Need Populism, But Not Zohran's Sort
• 06/25/25: Secure Borders Win Wars Like This One
• 06/18/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/17/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/04/25: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print