The most powerful phenomenon in this year's Democratic presidential primary is not John Kerry, the Internet, McCain-Feingold, or even the party's spunky comedian-turned-grappler, Al Franken. It's ABB.
That's short for "Anybody But Bush," of course. Recognizing its potency, each of the 2004 Democratic candidates has had to not only make the case for why he would be a good president, but also for why he has the best shot of becoming president. Joe Lieberman cites his ideological centrism; Howard Dean promises to motivate the base and expand the electorate; Kerry and Wesley Clark say their military experiences allow them to stand toe to toe with George W. Bush.
The electability claim being made by John Edwards, who won the South Carolina primary last night, is different because it's geographic. He's says he can win because he's a southerner who will not concede his "backyard" in the South to President George W. Bush.
But Edwards is applying an otherwise compelling justification to the wrong region: As either the nominee or a running mate, Edwards' southern sensibilities give him electability because having him on the ticket would help the Democrats outside the South.
Southern Democrats possess many political assets that appeal to moderate white voters in swing states. People often forget that Bill Clinton would still have won the presidency in both 1992 and 1996 without a single southern electoral vote. But Clinton couldn't have won absent the skills he gained as an Arkansas politician.
The South is more conservative than the rest of the nation, especially on divisive social and racial questions. Successful southern Democrats are unusually savvy at first winning primaries dominated by African American and white liberal voters, then turning around a few months later and winning election among the more conservative electorate in November. In short, they know how to appeal to African Americans -- and, increasingly, Hispanics as well -- without alienating whites. Typically, southern Democrats inoculate themselves against claims that they are too liberal by favoring the death penalty, identifying with gun owners, or both.
As important as the positions that southern Democrats espouse are the language and rhetoric they use to espouse them. They are far more comfortable invoking values like faith and patriotism than coastal or northeastern Democrats are. Even if their abortion-rights positions differ little from their nonsouthern counterparts, southern Dems deftly lament the frequency of abortion along with the rise in sexual promiscuity.
In short, the positioning and rhetorical skills that seem to come naturally to southern Democratic politicians make them electable in downballot races in a conservative region that is increasingly hostile to the Democratic Party.
But that doesn't mean those skills are most effectively or efficiently applied to the task of winning electoral college votes in the South. Instead, what Edwards would bring to the presidential ticket is needed help in Rust Belt and border swing states, including Democratic "nail-down" states like Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, and potential "pick-up" states like West Virginia, Ohio, and Missouri.
Consider the case of the vaunted "NASCAR dad." We reject the notion that any niche demographic holds the key to the election, but, for the sake of argument, let's assume that NASCAR dads will be a key target group this year. If so, they are less likely to be the decisive voting bloc in Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, or even Edwards' North Carolina. But notice that there are plenty of NASCAR dads in Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia -- in other words, in states where the votes of white moderates and independents are more likely to prove decisive.
Edwards' greatest asset is that he has the legitimacy to persuade voters in these states to focus on economic issues instead of the social and cultural wedge issues upon which Bush hopes people will cast their votes. Although he was too blunt for southerners, this was the notion Dean raised when he encouraged people in the region not to vote on "god, guns, and gays." Edwards is clever enough to avoid using Dean's jarring phraseology. His biography also gives him greater credibility in delivering the more subtle message that socially conservative whites ought to be thinking about kitchen-table economic issues.
That said, if Kerry runs the table to the nomination, the Massachusetts senator would be wise to select Edwards -- and to flout tradition by doing so immediately rather than waiting until just days before the Democrats' national convention in July. Kerry could then dispatch Edwards and Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, to the states Democrats will need to win in November.
Edwards could also be deployed to the South to bolster the Democratic candidates struggling to hold on to highly vulnerable and open Senate seats in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina. A Republican sweep of these five seats would pave the way for the adoption of an ultraconservative agenda by the new Congress, and probably ensure GOP control of the Senate for the rest of the decade.
Too often ideological centrism is equated with geographic southernism. That oversimplifies the geographic patterns of partisan support, falsely portraying the South as a swing region that it no longer is. Indeed, by rejecting many of the liberal orthodoxies that helped defeat previous nominees, Clinton made critical gains outside of the South that propelled him to victory in 1992. Eight years later, Bush softened the edges of the Republican Party on racial and social questions -- again, not to help him in the South but outside the region.
Edwards likes to remind his listeners on the campaign trail that Democratic candidates have always needed to carry "at least five" southern states to win. Al Gore's near victory in 2000, and Clinton's two wins before that, disprove this outdated bit of conventional wisdom.
But even if the Democrats no longer need the South, it doesn't mean that they can't use a solid southerner like Edwards on the ticket to help them elsewhere.
David Lublin is an associate professor of public affairs at American University and the author of The Republican South: Democratization and Partisan Change. Thomas F. Schaller is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the managing editor of The Gadflyer, a new progressive Internet magazine.
