To hear Democratic strategists and political commentators tell it, the selection of John Edwards as John Kerry's running mate heralds the dawn of a new Democratic day in the South, with the Carolinas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Virginia suddenly in play this November.

After all, as the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, Jr. points out, since 1960 the three Democratic tickets that didn't feature at least one southerner all lost, while the five that included a son of the South all won. By that logic, Edwards is the perfect pick: he was born in South Carolina, lives in North Carolina, and has a drawl as thick as molasses.

In 1951 the political observer Samuel Lubell, surveying the almost two decades of Democratic rule and the dominance of New Deal liberalism, noted that in the American “political solar system,” the Democratic Party was the sun (the majority party) and the Republican Party was the moon (the minority party). In such a universe, Lubell wrote, “it is within the majority party that the issues of any particular period are fought out; while the minority party shines in reflected radiance of the heat thus generated.”