Solid South? Forget em...

From Political Wire.

A Regional Realignment

Thomas Schaller, author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, sent Political Wire this analysis of the midterm results several hours before the polls even closed yesterday.

There seems to be a developing narrative which suggests that expected Democratic victories this year are somehow the result of Democrats "running as conservatives." Republicans, and conservative Republicans in particular, have an obvious stake in perpetuating such a narrative. But it is patently untrue.

Pull back the lens and what appears to be happening this year is a regional-ideological partisan correction in which Rockefeller-Ford Republicans are purged from the NE/NW Rust Belt, and prairie progressives pick off selected seats in the Far West. The regional realignment over the past 40 years, which slowly converted Dixiecrats into Republicans, has now entered its final stage, as voters north of the Mason-Dixon line and west of the Mississippi provide a countervailing response to the southern-led Republican majority.

This transformation is occurring at the Senate, House and gubernatorial levels. Indeed, because Rust Belt Republicans will be replaced by progressive Democrats, regardless of the final totals tonight, the 110th Congress, in both chambers, will become more progressive as the Democratic shares grow and more conservative as the Republican shares shrink. As just one indication of this trend, consider this stunning fact: If Pelosi gets her majority, for the first time in 52 years, the party with a minority of House seats in the South will the majority party chamberwide.