For Politics in South, Race Divide Is Defining - In Miss., Dems ponder the prospect of becoming the permanent minority party - in both senses of word.

From The New York Times:

In few places are the current woes of Democrats in the South in such clear relief as they are in Mississippi. It is here that a possibility long considered may soon become a reality, as Democrats ponder the prospect of becoming, definitively, the minority party — in both senses of the word.

There are still such things as white Democratic strongholds in the South, believe it or not. They are run by the often long-serving sheriffs, circuit clerks and other county officials who have remained Democrats out of habit, family tradition, allegiance to the party behind the New Deal or a strategic aim to attract black voters.

These old-line Democrats persist in areas that are largely white, rural and conservative, but have mostly been untouched by the racial politics seen elsewhere in the South.

[V]ictories by attrition, combined with suburban growth and hostility to the Obama administration, continue to wring the Democratic Party of white support.

“I would say that with a very concerted effort and a little money, it is still salvageable,” Marty Wiseman, the director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University and a Democrat. “But you give it 10 or 12 more years, even those who are hanging in there now are going to say that it is not worth it.”

At that point, Professor Wiseman said, party identification will simply boil down to race. Republicans will have unchallenged statewide control, he added, but even the most innocuous of political debates will carry racial overtones, an unwelcome prospect for everyone.

Merle Black, an expert on politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said that point is arguably already here. In 2008 exit polls, he pointed out, 96 percent of self-identified Republicans in Mississippi were white. Nearly 75 percent of self-identified Democrats were black.