The big idea in Democratic circles is the 50 state strategy, attributed to Howard Dean and a few others. This is the idea espoused by Dean during the 2004 Democratic primaries, in characteristic bluster, that he wanted to appeal to the southern guy in the pickup truck with the confederate flag. This idea, running counter to the seemingly patent loss of the South, has been picked up by online liberal bloggers (who use the word “netroots” to refer to their activism) who provide their version of the 50 state strategy, along with the reasoning behind their prescription.

I believe that as in most such things, the reasoning behind these two positions is not contradictory. Here is Thomas Schaller, from AlterNet on winning without the South:

How Democrats Can Win Without the South

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Whatever the magnitude of the coming changes, two things are certain: The Democrats are going to gain seats in the 2006 midterms, and those gains will come from outside the South.

[...]

Republicans won every southern state in the past two presidential elections and now have 18 of the region’s 22 senators and two-thirds of its House seats. In 2004, despite Bush’s two-and-a-half-point defeat of John Kerry, outside the South the Democrats actually gained congressional seats in both chambers. That’s right: If the five House seats produced by the re-redistricting of Texas orchestrated by former majority leader Tom DeLay and the five Senate pickups made possible by those southern Democratic retirements are held aside, the Democrats won the 2004 congressional elections.

Rather than a 50-state strategy, he suggests we whistle past Dixie with this approach:

To forge a House majority, the Democrats will need to convert the purple Midwest states to blue, make the blue states of the Northeast bluer, and snag the odd seat here and there in the interior West. The Washington Post’s Dan Balz and David Broder confirm that top Republican strategists, speaking off-the-record about their party’s prospects, are predicting doom: “Republicans face potential losses in every section of the country, but the area that concerns strategists most is the arc of states running from the Northeast across the Midwest.”

The netroots bloggers justify their approach by pointing out that it is the 50-state strategy that yields unexpected pick-up opportunities, such as the seat vacated by congressperson Mark Foley. While that may be true, we cannot premise our planning (and use of limited resources) on the unexpected, nor can we hope for the monumental level of blunders (to put it mildly) perpetrated by the Bush administration before the South starts questioning its faith-based loyalty. They are at best foul-weather friends as Schaller’s data suggest. The netroots are right in forging a message that is national and putting up candidates in all regions at all levels, where possible. However, Democrats interested in winning control of Congress and the White House (short of righting the undemocratic electoral system — a bigger pipe dream) are better off ignoring the South in their arithmetic.