George Packer:
“Every President elected between 1976 and 2004 was, by birth or by
choice, a Southerner, except Ronald Reagan, who enjoyed a sort of
honorary status. (When he began the 1980 campaign in Philadelphia,
Mississippi, scene of the murder, in 1964, of three civil-rights
workers, many Southerners heard it as a dog whistle.) A Southern accent,
once thought quaint or even backward, became an emblem of American
authenticity, a political trump card. It was a truism that no Democrat
could win the White House unless he spoke with a drawl. Now the South is
becoming isolated again.”
“Every demographic and political trend that
helped to reelect Barack Obama runs counter to the region’s
self-definition: the emergence of a younger, more diverse, more secular
electorate, with a libertarian bias on social issues and immigration;
the decline of the exurban life style, following the housing bust; the
class politics, anathema to pro-business Southerners, that rose with the
recession; the end of America’s protracted wars, with cuts in military
spending bound to come. The Solid South speaks less and less for America
and more and more for itself alone.”
