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Thirty to thirty-five years ago Lee Atwater and other Republican strategists figured the Republican Party had a symbiotic interest with Southern black Democrats. The regular redistricting mandated by the United States Supreme Court and the federal Voting Rights Act had come around once again. It was, Atwater figured, in the interest of both conservative, white Republicans and liberal, black Democrats to create districts so prohibitively black in population that it would be virtually impossible for a white Democrat to win. If the African-American populations of the various Southern states could be concentrated into super majority black legislative and state senatorial districts, then the number of African-Americans elected to these positions would increase significantly and the number of Democrats elected to these offices would shrink dramatically.

White Democrats would suffer due to the lose of reliable, black voting populations in their districts, if the white population was too small or the black population too large. The thinking then was a Southern Democrat needed about twenty-five to thirty five percent of his or her district to be black in order to win against a Republican in the general election. If the black population was any greater than thirty-five percent then the white Democrat risked losing to a black in the primary. The thinking was, of course, the black winning a primary in a minority black district would be easy for a Republican to beat in the general election because whites would not vote for him.

By concentrating African-American populations into black majority districts, black populations in surrounding white majority districts were reduced to fifteen or less percent. This tended to make a district unwinnable for any Democrat, black or white.

Even though this strategy meant an almost inevitable takeover of legislatures by Republican majorities, blacks were eager for the opportunity to represent themselves instead of through a white representative or senator.

Further, since the combination of Republicans serving in the various legislatures and elected African-American Democrats constituted a majority of House and Senate members in many legislatures, the black Democrats and the white Republicans had the votes to get this done.

It took two censuses to accomplish this in most of the Southern states but, for the most part, it worked.

I say it took two censuses because every ten years all legislatures have to redistrict based upon the population as reflected in the most recent census. This means, starting around two years from now, every state is going to begin the redistricting process all over again.

For several reasons, I think this time around offers an opportunity to swing things back around. However, none of these reasons are automatic. To succeed, Democrats will have to work as a real political party, something that rarely ever happens. Also, the current trend within the Republican Party, where increased pressure is coming to bear upon the unholy coalition forged in the Reagan years between the social conservative Republicans, the country club Republicans and the libertarian Republicans, will have to continue.

The reasons I believe there is such a huge opportunity for Democrats are: 1) the new census will show surprising growth of Hispanics within the core Southern states, what was once called the “cotton South.” 2) The very conservative members of the right are denouncing the census and urging conservatives to under report themselves, skew the data by misrepresenting their circumstances demographically, economically and socially. 3) Republicans are splintering, making contested primaries between the various philosophical factions of the Party increasingly probable. 4) The accelerating separation between rich and poor, due, at least in part, to the massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy class via the federal financial system bailout, will make a populist appeal to “Reagan Democrats” viable.

The first of these reasons is demographic. The population of minorities is growing at a faster rate than the white population. This has been going on for some time. The white population of the South is being out bred and out paced by in migration. It is unlikely anything will happen to change this trend in the next ten years or so.

Even if many in the expanded Hispanic population are not registered to vote or registerable, their presence is important. Redistricting will be based, in large part, upon the relative size of various demographic populations. Due to the continued importance of the Voting Rights Act, and its pre-clearance requirement, the ethnic characteristics of populations within a community will have great importance.

Likewise, in the region as a whole, African-American populations are also growing, in percentage terms, compared with the white populations. White immigration has been comprised of a larger percentage of older, retirement-aged persons. In the past, this has tended to offset the larger over all growth rates of minorities because these older people are more prone to vote.

The massive wave of retiring baby boomers and their parents has largely been absorbed. As this age group of white people migrating into the region slacks off, the advantage the white population has held due to this age group’s greater rate of voting will also decline.

The second reason is cultural. There is an element of the right wing in the United States that mistrusts everything government does. This means that the people most likely to shirk the responsibility to accurately report the census information are people of conservative orientation and Hispanics who generally fear government. This will result in both Hispanics and middle and lower income whites being underreported. Underreporting of Hispanics is more or less traditional and expected. The demographers have means to test for this and will adjust numbers within the Hispanic community to reflect this anomaly. The underreporting within the white community is less a cultural statement than a political one. As such, correcting for this underreporting is much more problematic and could result in significant underreporting.

The third reason may be the most critical one relating to hopes for Democrats to affect changes to district lines that will be favorable to them. Because Republican leaders have to worry at least as much about challenges from some other philosophical wing within the Republican Party as they do challenges from the Democrats in a general election, not only will those leaders have to be sure to include the proper demographics, white people, within their districts, they will have to be the right kind of white people.

Republicans who have served the nation, their state and their party for decades are, all of a sudden, being attacked as Republicans in name only (RINO). Often these attacks are over the most trivial of issues but take on such significance because they indicate an individual’s allegiance to one right-wing philosophy or another. As often as not, in such cases, issues of critical state-wide importance are rendered unimportant. Often such issues are about style as much as they are of substance. Style perceptions, once established, are very difficult to changes.

This is why, so called RINOs, who often hold the positions within the legislature of most power due to seniority, will have to have their districts drawn with great care to exclude certain Republican voters and include certain others. Economic and educational level tests will be increasingly important to many of these Republican leaders. For this reason it may prove less difficult to break up natural Republican strongholds as long-time Republican officials design safe districts for themselves.

The final change is economic. As more and more white, conservative voters are forced out of the middle class by the great wealth transfer, they will be less and less concerned with typical Republican issues of lower taxes and national defense. If Democrats do a half-way competent job, not something that can be assumed, traditional Republican hostility to social services will come to be less of an attractive draw to these white voters.  This will prove particularly true as these people see the rich continue to get richer and the poor poorer.

Of course, there is no certainty that the Democratic progressives will exploit this economic unrest. Indeed, it could well be that populist Republicans, shouting about immigration, Obama socialism and who knows what all will capture this vote before it leaves the fold. However, since the populist rhetoric required to reach and hold this group will be in tension with corporate values and ambitions, this group is definitely in play.

Now is the time to begin working on this. It requires a five-step process. First, some progressive organization has to develop the capacity to do the legal and demographic work required to produce qualified plans that result in progressive majorities. This group needs to then create the technical and political staff required to accomplish the required work.

The second step will require developing a good profile of who the progressive voters in a given state are and where do they live. Included in this is identification of exactly what the progressive issues are within a given state.

The third step requires a good working relationship with progressive/Democratic members of the various legislatures who can guide the redistricting process from the inside. This will require political savvy and the ability to anticipate the needs of the Republican leadership and create redistricting plans that meet legal tests and satisfy their needs while creating more winnable progressive districts.

Fourth, someone has to handle the required PR needed to frame the subject in terms favorable to progressive interests. Someone has to make it as easy as possible for members of the various legislatures to vote for a progressive-friendly plan. This PR program should begin as soon as the voters and issues have been identified and should continue throughout the redistricting process.

Fifth, whatever redistricting plan is adopted has to withstand a rigorous legal test before the US Justice Department and, perhaps, in the federal courts. Someone has to develop and deploy the legal expertise to defend any favorable redistricting plan and attack any unfavorable one.

Executing these five steps will take every minute of the two years left to accomplish it. It will be interesting to see if anybody attempts it.

Owing to a misspent youth, I have been tangentially involved with two legislative redistricting efforts and closely observed a third one. I have never noticed any meaningful progressive effort to assist and/or defend progressive interests in any of the three.

This year things have never looked better for progressives making serious improvements to this process. Political, demographic and cultural elements are coming together to make such change probable if the effort is made.