Democrats War on Southern White Men?

Don’t blame us, the headline is right out of Bloomberg News: “Democrats See South as No Country for White Men in Senate.”

Talk about your southern strategy … Bloomberg explains why we are seeing mostly female Democrat candidates in the South and somehow manages to avoid pointing out how absolutely cynical it is, if not downright sexist. Most certainly, it’s a form of gender-based discrimination when it comes to picking candidates.

It worked six years ago when the party recruited Kay Hagan to defeat Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina and Senator Mary Landrieu won a third term in Louisiana, both with outsized support from women voters.

Now Democrats are applying that model in Kentucky, where Alison Lundergan Grimes is trying to oust Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Georgia, where Michelle Nunn is seeking to replace retiring Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss. Both have made an appeal to women voters a centerpiece of their campaigns.

It also highlights the cynical and purely political nature of all the “War on Women” hype Democrats like to throw at Republican. It has little or nothing to do with advancing women’s rights, or causes, they are merely using them as a tool to try and gain or retain power as a political party.

By and large, it’s not working. Perhaps the women of the South are more sophisticated in making their ballot choices than Democrats are willing to give them credit for?

Grimes is running only about even with McConnell among women voters in Kentucky and is trailing him in the race, polls show. Still, her backers defend her approach, which they say will help improve the lives of women in the state

“The party realignment in the South has made it more important for Democratic candidates to motivate young people, black voters and women” as white men have increasingly become Republicans, said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Democrats are looking to replicate voting patterns that helped Hagan defeat incumbent Republican Dole in 2008. That year, the Democrat benefited from a 14-point edge among women voters, according to exit polling.

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