[NEWREPUBLIC] Not long after the polls closed on Tuesday night, Georgia Congressman John Barrow earned his place in history when he lost his reelection campaign to Republican Rick Allen by almost 10 points--a peculiar place he undoubtedly didn't want. Barrow, a five-term Democratic incumbent with a conservative voting record that earned him endorsements from both the National Rifle Association and the Chamber of Commerce, was the last white Democrat in Congress from the Deep South.This fact has occasioned some eloquent obituaries for that most endangered of political species, which is on the verge of extinction. Not only will there be no white Southern Democrats left in the House come January, but it's a good bet there won't be any white Southern Democrats in the Senate either (Mary Landrieu is likely to lose in the Louisiana run-off next month). Throw in the election of South Carolina's Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate and, as The New Yorker's Nicholas Thompson pointed out on Twitter, "there are now more black Republicans than white Democrats from the Deep South."
Much as this is a problem for white southern Democrats, it's a crisis for black ones. That's because blacks in the South--who, notwithstanding the very compelling counter-example of Tim Scott, are almost invariably Democrats--have for decades relied on coalitions with white Democrats to increase their political power. Lacking white politicians with whom they can build coalitions, black politicians are increasingly rendered powerless. The situation for southern black Democrats has only grown more dire after Tuesday's midterms.
Here's the problem: Blacks have come to make up the most important voting bloc within the Dem world. They make up 13 percent or thereabouts of the nation's population. You can't go around calling everybody in sight a racist and then expect them to vote with you. If I'm a racist no matter what I do, I'll do as I damned well please, which won't be supporting black candidates simply because they're black. I think we all heard Michelle Antoinette telling blacks to vote the color, not the candidate. She's not the only one, though I'll admit she put it more bluntly than most.