Also on Huffpo.
Great insight into the politics of resentment, combined with the fact that the folks who need the safety net tend to not vote. And since these people tend to move often or not drive, repug voter ID laws are designed to make sure they can't vote.
I'm in a fairly blue state (PA) yet I hear this crap all the time--"I work hard and here's people sitting on their cans getting food stamps"--I just don't feel like arguing with them that the majority of food stamp recipients are WORKING at jobs that don't pay well enough to afford food and rent.

Traditional Dems have been indoctrinated by the flood of money spent by the repub's out of state masters and their super pacs to vote based on wedge issues, i.e., gay marriage, guns, and race. The influence of religion and money in politics is destroying our democracy. It is disturbing how many candidates hasten to mention that they are Christian in their ads, as if nothing more need be said. A party that openly opposes programs for the "have nots" while allowing the top of the economic pyramid to accumulate more and more wealth could not be representative of the man who gave the sermon on the mount. Yet being a repub and claiming to be Christian is all that some voters need to hear. And whether you agree with Pres Obama or not, there is no doubt in my mind that many middle and lower class voters will blame the black president for everything that is wrong in this country.

What drives me crazy is how today's Democratic Party ignores the South, writing it off as dumb rednecks. The Democratic Party can win over not just southern minorities and youth, but even southern whites. Let's not forget that the South voted for FDR, Truman, Carter, Clinton, and even part of it voted for Obama.

The idea that the South simply shifted to the GOP after 1964 ignores the following decades of Democratic rule in the South. It wasn't until 1995 that most Southern congressmen were Republicans (by a slim majority) and it wasn't until 2003 that most Southern governors were Republican. It wasn't until 2003 that Georgia had its first Republican Governor since Reconstruction. And it wasn't until 2010's shellacking that Democrats lost most southern state legislatures.

The reason why even after 1964 so many Southerners kept voting Democratic was because the Democratic Party was more diverse ideologically, and because it never kowtowed to Wall Street and big business the way the GOP has. Furthermore, the Democratic Party has always taken a more proactive approach to helping those in need. George Wallace and Orval Faubus were monsters, but they were fiscal liberals, modernizing Georgia's healthcare system and Arkansas' education system respectively. Take out social issues, they would easily fit in among progressives today.

Republicans have done a horrible job serving their constituents. They campaign on three bullshit issues: God, gays, and guns. They don't lift a finger for economic revival. But for many people in the South, you have a party that ignores you (Democrats) and a party that only pays attention to you for bullshit issues (Republicans) and many choose the GOP for that reason. Democrats need to retake the South by focusing less on identity politics, getting out of the urban, northern bubbles, and focusing on taking a proactive approach to serving the people. That's the Democratic Party principles that kept the South Democratic for years to come.