XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: ghf@aol.com   
      
   For generations, Southern Democratic politicians could count on   
   doing better at the ballot box than the national party, which   
   had long been abandoned in the South in presidential elections.   
   No longer.   
      
   Despite efforts to distance themselves from President Obama,   
   none of the Democratic Senate candidates in the South outdid his   
   2012 results. Democrats lost Senate races, sometimes by wide   
   margins, in Kentucky, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas and North   
   Carolina, most of which were thought to be competitive for much   
   of the year. They nearly lost in Virginia, where they were   
   thought to be heavy favorites and where The New York Times has   
   not yet projected a winner.   
      
   The inability of Southern Democrats to run well ahead of a   
   deeply unpopular Mr. Obama raises questions about how an   
   increasingly urban and culturally liberal national Democratic   
   Party can compete in the staunchly conservative South. It raises   
   serious doubts about whether a future Democratic presidential   
   candidate, like Hillary Clinton, can count on faring better   
   among Southern white voters than President Obama, as many   
   political analysts have assumed she might.   
      
   The Democrats running in the South this election season were not   
   weak candidates. They had distinguished surnames, the benefits   
   of incumbency, the occasional conservative position and in some   
   cases flawed opponents. They were often running in the states   
   where Southern Democrats had the best records of outperforming   
   the national party. Black turnout was not low, either, nearly   
   reaching the same proportion of the electorate in North   
   Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia as in 2012.   
      
   Yet none of them — not Mary Landrieu, Alison Lundergan Grimes,   
   Michelle Nunn, Kay Hagan, Mark Pryor or Mark Warner — was able   
   to run Tuesday more than a few points ahead of President Obama’s   
   historically poor performance among Southern white voters in   
   2012, according to the exit polls. There were some predominantly   
   white counties in every state where the Senate candidates ran   
   behind Mr. Obama, even in the former Democratic strongholds of   
   Kentucky and Arkansas.   
      
   Perhaps most symbolic of the Democratic struggle was Ms. Nunn.   
   She was the strongest Democratic Senate nominee of the cycle by   
   some accounts: a prodigious fund-raiser and the daughter of a   
   popular former senator. She had never run for office and thus   
   had no record for which she could be easily attacked. And her   
   opponent, David Perdue, was a corporate executive who once said   
   that he was proud of his record of outsourcing.   
      
   Yet Ms. Nunn was defeated by nearly eight percentage points in   
   Georgia — nearly the same margin by which Mr. Obama lost to Mitt   
   Romney in the state two years ago. She may have fared somewhat   
   better than Mr. Obama among white voters, but not by much. She   
   ran no better than Mr. Obama — or even behind him — in many of   
   the state’s whitest counties.   
      
   The most surprising result was probably the close race in   
   Virginia, where Mark Warner leads by just a half percentage   
   point after having been favored by a wide margin. Some election   
   watchers weren’t even paying attention to Virginia coming into   
   Election Day.   
      
   Mr. Warner had a long record of performing well among the   
   state’s culturally Southern voters. His success in appealing to   
   so-called Nascar voters appeared in nearly every media profile   
   over the last decade. The lore was well founded in the results:   
   Mr. Warner swept the southern half of the state when he won the   
   governor’s mansion in 2001, and then he won nearly every county   
   in his 2008 Senate race.   
      
   But Mr. Warner’s standing in southern Virginia was reduced to   
   that of just any other Democrat. He barely outperformed Mr.   
   Obama in his traditional strongholds and underperformed Mr.   
   Obama elsewhere.   
      
   Ms. Grimes of Kentucky was a third Senate candidate who seemed   
   well positioned to outperform Mr. Obama. She, too, was a   
   political novice, free to devise a platform distinct from the   
   national party. She was critical of the Obama administration’s   
   policies on coal, and refused to say whether she voted for him.   
   Her opponent, Mitch McConnell, may have been an incumbent, but   
   he entered the campaign with approval ratings in the 30s.   
      
   Yet Ms. Grimes only ran three points ahead of Mr. Obama, winning   
   just 41 percent of the vote.   
      
   Ms. Grimes’s inability to avoid Mr. Obama’s baggage was perhaps   
   most evident in the heavily unionized stretches of eastern   
   Kentucky coal country, which was among the most reliably   
   Democratic areas of the country in the 20th century. But the so-   
   called war on coal has dealt a devastating blow to Democratic   
   fortunes in the region, and by extension, to Democrats seeking   
   office in states like Kentucky and West Virginia.   
      
   Ms. Grimes did everything she could to distinguish herself from   
   Mr. Obama on coal policy. But she was crushed even in the once   
   reliably Democratic counties of eastern Kentucky. She lost Knott   
   County by a 21-point margin. John Kerry, by contrast, won the   
   county by 27 points in 2004.   
      
   In Arkansas, Mark Pryor, a two-term Senate incumbent whose   
   father was also a senator, won just 39.5 percent of the vote —   
   less than 3 points better than Mr. Obama. Arkansas was perhaps   
   the Southern state that held on to its Democratic tradition the   
   longest after the 1960s, but it is hard to detect any tradition   
   left today. The state also voted overwhelmingly for a Republican   
   governor.   
      
   There was no winner in Louisiana, where Senator Mary Landrieu   
   and the Republican Bill Cassidy will go to a runoff. But Ms.   
   Landrieu, who is widely expected to lose the runoff, ran less   
   than two points ahead of Mr. Obama.   
      
   In North Carolina, Ms. Hagan’s inability to outperform Mr. Obama   
   in North Carolina was less surprising. She was a first-term   
   incumbent, she was a liberal and her approval ratings were poor.   
   But she led in nearly all of the pre-election polls over the   
   final few months of the race, and yet she too was defeated by a   
   two-point margin — the same as Mr. Obama in the state in 2012.   
      
   There were a few other bright spots for Democrats in the South.   
   Gwen Graham defeated the Republican Steve Southerland in   
   Florida’s Second Congressional district, an area that votes   
   strongly for Republicans in presidential elections with a large   
   number of registered Democrats. But the newly re-elected   
   Republican governor Rick Scott made some of his largest gains   
   over his prior performance in the same area.   
      
   It remains to be seen whether Democratic weakness in the South   
   will outlive the Obama years. The national Democratic Party has   
   fully embraced and even defined itself in terms of cultural   
   liberalism — on gun control, gay rights, immigration, abortion,   
   environmental policy and other issues. Generational and   
   demographic change are likely to push the Democrats further in   
   this direction, if anything. If that’s true, it will be very   
   hard for Democrats to win back the House, and it may even be   
   hard for them to win back the Senate.   
      
   Comments:   
      
   Rick Ohio 1 hour ago   
      
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