It's not just the Civil War or the civil rights movement. The South has maintained a neo-feudal political economic system that still has vestiges today. Unions were feared because they might bring Black and White workers together and White workers bought the nonsense about them being communist. As long as people lack a base for questioning the status quo on a mass basis, economic populism will have limited impact, unless it's tinged with racisit or anti-immigrant appeals. I've lived in Nashville and Atlanta and would have more hope for Tennessee for the Dems than Georgia, simply because Tennessee has a more moderate history. The "New South" often has attracted conservatives rather than liberals from the North and, until fairly recently, one could say this about Northern Virginia.

Schaller's position here is interesting because he's previously taken a more nuanced view of Democratic chances in the Old South. In the short run, there's maore payoff in working the Midwesetern swing tstaes and continuing to build the base in the West. The South has been heavily dependent on subsidies from the rest of the country. A Congress based on anything but the South will go a long way toward redressing this and making the inherent economic weaknesses of much of the South (few natural resources, uneven to poor educational infrastructure) more obvious and more in need of change.

Dewey was a Democratic Socialist. He supported Norman Thomas over FDR. He opposed eugenics and genetic approaches to understanding intelligence. He was an early advocate of participatory democracy. Dewey was more left than most contemporary liberals. He was a champion of the non-Communist Left and easily its most widely respected public intellectual from WWI (which he supported all too easily) to WWII (which he initially opposed). He stood up for what he believed, but he didn't get drawn into petty catfights, although some of his competitors like Rheinhold Niebuhr (the last great Evangelical lefty) tried their best. Dewey influenced the fields of philosophy (his work on pragmatism represents the last truly comprehensive school of philosophy), psychology (he helped organize the American Psychological Association) , and education (his semi-inscrutible progressive education, which many of his own followers misunderstand, and his advocacy for teacher's unions). Lind has a point, but he also needs to know his history. In matters of belief and temperament, Dewey is someone we (liberals) should know more about.

Despite its "radical reputation" community organizing is about the "possible" and the pragmatic, along with building viable coalitions. Saul Alinsky was sponsored by the nominally liberal Chicago Archdiocese, worked with often anti-semetic, conservative Catholic clergy and neighborhood people, and achieved radical ends in Back of the Yards. This is the mileu from which Obama came. He is trying to build a working coalition. He didn't think Lieberman was worth the trouble (and he may be right). It's also important to note, there isn't much of a real left left, beyond a lot of single issue groups and some grassroots organized that has been energized by the blogosphere. the experienced people will, of course, have ties to the Clinton administration. Much of the Left has been ineffectual and inward looking---NARAL, NOW, the Sierra Club, and many others have failed to build real constituencies beyond the Beltway and places like Cleveland Heights, Oak Park, and Santa Monica. HRC has failed miserably in delivering even to its core constituency. I would like to see Obama move left and perhaps he will, but I think we (liberals, progressives, whatever) have to both push him in that direction and figure out how to multiple the effects of our advocacy among people who aren't "pristine" liberals. That means getting beyond colleg boy environmentalism, women's movements that ignore blue collar women who may no be militantly pro-choice, et al. It means reconnecting with Labor and working people. For Obama to listen to us, we have to look beyond simple whining and I'm not so sure we're any better at that than a lot of wingnuts.

Martin Luther King III's uninspiring speech (the weakest one of the whole show) is emblematic of how the Civil Rights movement empowered an uninspiring elite rather than fulfilling its grassroots origins. The Kings are widely seen as contributing to the lackluster character of the King Center and the business friendly political machine of Maynard Jackson made many contributions to the unlivability of Atlanta. Obama is part of a generation of people who lack direct ties to the Civil Rights movement and approach politics more pragmatically andoften with the experience of having been part of white, mainstream institutions. This is a generation that includes total sellouts like Harold Ford as well as more original politicians like Obama. A successful Obama presidency will do for race relations what the brief but soaring/martyred Kennedy administration for the status of Catholics in the US. Until the 60s, anti-Catholic feeling was a "respectable" prejudice regardless of whether you were a fundie or an Episcopalian. JFK (as wellas Vactican II) helped change that. Obama, like JFK, is a "crossover" figure and that is part of what elected him. Obama comes from a mixed race background and has an eleited education; he violates many common stereotypes about African-Americans. JFK was barely a cultural Catholic and his famous Dallas speech to the Baptists marked him as someone who was no "Papist". The Kennedy era did not eradicate anti-Catholic prejudice, but it put a huge dent in it. One rarely hears the kinds of comments that were common 50 years ago, outside the South and small town areas of the Midwest.

Obama faces high expectations, in part because Bush wrecked so much havoc with the country. The Bush presidency is a good caution about dynasties, but probably not the last one. After all, the New York Senate contest appears to be between a Kennedy and a Cuomo. Still, a break with the past like this is what we need to moves us forward.