No, really, fellow Democrats, we should give up on the south

And a lot of the seats Democrats hold are majority-minority seats, which are of course safe. But that means the districts surrounding them, which are mostly white and Republican, are safe, too. Now tell me: How are Democrats going to win back those legislatures so that they can start drawing congressional district lines?

The answer is that they’re not, but okay, I’m willing to pretend for a couple of paragraphs that it might be possible. Were it possible, the effort would require many, many millions of dollars over many years. It’s a 30-year project, easy. Now, if some rich Southern liberals want to finance and coordinate such an effort, great. Good luck to them. But if you’re telling me that the national Democratic Party should invest its finite resources into so long-shot a project as flipping the Louisiana state legislature so that it can pick up at best two House seats, I say that’s not corn silk in that pipe of yours.

And this brings us to the dilution of brand issue. Even if Democrats were to attempt to win back these kinds of seats, what sorts of candidates would they be putting up for office? On virtually every important issue, they will run against their national party. They’ll attack Obamacare. They’ll oppose or at best contort on same-sex marriage. They’ll “talk tough” on immigrants and oppose “amnesty.” They’ll be against gun background checks. They’ll strain to reassure the Southern white voter at every turn that they aren’t Pelosi Democrats or Obama Democrats or what have you.