WHO HOLDS POWER IN AMERICA. Yes, America is defined by the South and the hinterlands. Look at how our Senate is set up, giving disproportionate power to small and low-population states. Look at the inability of Democratic presidential candidates to win election without the support of at least four Southern states. Look at the inability of non-Southerners to win the presidency as Democrats. Look at the fact that twice as many people live in the South as in the Northeast. Look at the fact that the South is growing in population size, while the Northeast and Midwest are losing residents. Whether we like it or not, Southerners have been able to determine the course of the nation’s politics — though not its culture — for the past 30 years. That is an inescapable fact.
And while the pendulum of American political life is finally swinging back toward the left, it is still far, far, far, to the right of where readers of this site might wish it to be. A lot of the progress that there has been, at least in terms of building a real progressive movement, has to do with the rebellion of people within the liberal centers — from MoveOn in California and New York; from bloggers in Berkeley, Philadelphia, and Manhattan; from a new-media network based almost entirely in Democratic cities; and from a presdential candidate and later DNC chair from Vermont. People living in places where their views are the norm and where they are not a political minority are rising up to create a political counterweight to what has existed. This movement for change is not coming from Washington, because it can’t come from it, given how and where DC is. Washington Democrats and liberals are adapting and helping, but they have not been the major initiators of the change.
As for the racial question, let it be noted that the majority of African-Americans live in the South, and that Virginia is much more racially diverse than Massachusetts. Indeed, according to the 2000 Census, 54% of African-Americans live in the South, and only 18% in the Northeast. On average, one in five Southerners is African-American, compared to less than one in 10 from the Northeast. The majority of Latinos are similarly concentrated geographically, though in the West and Southwest, not the South.
