Mississippi and other states in the South have high percentages of young and minority voters, but Democrats are still struggling to get these voters out to the polls for presidential elections, journalist and author Bob Moser said Wednesday.
In his new book, “Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority,” Moser explores this issue and others.
“I knew why Republicans had succeeded, but I didn’t know why Democrats had failed in the South,” said Moser, the chief political reporter for The Nation, a weekly political magazine.
Moser was at Turnrow Book Co. Wednesday evening to sign copies of his book and talk about the challenges Democrats in the region face and how they can overcome those obstacles and win back the South.
Moser grew up in a Democratic family in North Carolina and watched the Democratic Party decline in the South during the 1970s and 1980s. He said Democrats elsewhere have given up on the region because of the negative stereotypes associated with white Southerners, a problem he calls “Dixie phobia.”
He said Dixie phobia benefited George W. Bush in the 2000 and 2004 elections because neither Al Gore nor John Kerry campaigned extensively in the South outside of Florida.
Barack Obama has already campaigned in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, but Moser said he still needs to get out more in the South if he expects to win more electoral votes in the region.
“I suspect that Obama’s people are waiting to see how good of a shot he has here,” Moser said.
Moser also said the Obama campaign is suffering because many voters, including Democrats, view him as a gamble, and they are not willing to take a risk during tough economic times.
“I think it’s a long shot … I think he’s going to run a pretty close race in Mississippi, though,” Moser said.
Moser added that in the past, racial segregation has weakened the Democratic Party in Mississippi and other states, but Obama may be able to cross the divide and appeal to progressive young voters, both white and black.
“If you look at below-45 and over-45 voters, the difference is incredible in the way they look at Obama,” Moser said.
But he said Democrats in the South also face the challenge of retaining these progressive voters in the future, because many young people are choosing to leave the South after high school or college. Though some will return, the problem still exists.
“The kind of healing needed doesn’t happen overnight,” Moser said.
