The white Southern Democrat - endangered since the 1960s civil
rights era - is sliding nearer to extinction. After last week's
elections, the Democratic Party barely holds a presence in the
region outside of majority-black urban areas such as Atlanta and
Memphis. The carnage for the party was particularly brutal in
the Deep South, where just one white Democrat survived across
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. The
Republicans' effort to win over the South, rooted decades ago in
a strategy of capitalizing on white voters' resentment of
desegregation, is all but complete. "Right now in most of Dixie
it is culturally unacceptable to be a Democrat. It's a damn
shame, but that's the way it is," said Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, a
campaign strategist for conservative Democrats such as Jim Webb
of Virginia, one of the few remaining Southern Democratic
senators. The losses were particularly disappointing for the
party after the baby steps it made in the South in 2006 and
2008, when it picked up a