Local Texas wipeouts emblematic of Democratic Party's long-term challenges in the rural South

The depth of Democrats' despair in the rural South, in the wake of last month's elections, is brought home by R.G. Ratcliffe, statehouse reporter for the Houston Chronicle. His story starts not with a state legislative race or even a countywide race, but an election for one the most basic of community offices in a county (Wikipedia map) in the heart of "Little Dixie," the most culturally Southern part of Texas:

Angelina County Justice of the Peace R.G. Bowers easily won each of his elections since 1988 as a Democrat and expected to do the same this year against his game warden Republican opponent.

After all, game wardens "are not well accepted in rural East Texas." But voter frustration with President Barack Obama, the national Democratic Party and a Republican push for straight-ticket voting did in Bowers.

"They were so anti-Obama that they just pushed one button. I said they couldn't spell R.G., so they just spelled R," Bowers said.

Similar patterns were seen in Western Kentucky, which has voted Republican in most recent federal elections, and we suspect much the same happened in Arkansas and Tennessee, other states in the "McCain Belt," counties from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma where 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain did better than George W. Bush did as an incumbent president in 2004. In Georgia, a seventh House Democrat, the newly elected minority leader, has switched to the GOP, Blake Aued of the Athens Banner-Herald reports.

Ratcliffe's story is a template not just for regional stories, but local ones. "The media focus has been on Republican gains in Congress and the Legislature," he writes, but local results bode long-term ill for the Democratic Party. "The training ground for Democrats, particularly in rural areas, is dwindling fast." (Read more)