As I discussed here, I’ve been reading Black and Black’s The Rise of Southern Republicans, which is described by one blurb writer (Dick Fenno, I think) as the intellectual successor of V.O. Key, Jr.’s legendary Southern Politics in State and Nation. The Rise of Southern Republicans is both a descriptive account of, and an explanation for, what the Blacks term a “semi-realignment” wherein conservative southern whites largely realigned (permanently changed their party preferences) from the Democrats to Republicans, while moderate whites were dealigned from the Democrats (became more independent “swing” voters).

Suffice it to say that the Blacks’ book is generally quite excellent, and—like their other books—a must-read for anyone who wants to understand contemporary southern and American politics. That being said, there are a few noteworthy weaknesses:

• The book almost exclusively focuses on elections to federal office (the House and Senate); there is little discussion of the continued persistence of majorities of Democrats in many southern state legislatures, despite realignment at the federal level, nor are gubernatorial politics discussed. Then again, the book is bulky enough as-is.
• On occasion, I felt like I was being subjected to a “stat dump”: a long series of statistics from survey evidence about the attitudes and behavior of various subgroups of the electorate. This information would perhaps have been better presented graphically or in tabular form (Black and Black do make extensive use of figures to illustrate their points throughout; why these items weren’t presented that way as well is something of a mysery).
• While some chapters discuss senatorial politics while others discuss elections to the House, the chamber being discussed isn’t clearly identified by the chapter names—as a result, you sometimes start reading a chapter and immediately think “hmm, isn’t this the same thing they were discussing in the last chapter?”

Still, these are all nitpicks. It’s definitely a worthwhile read, and—unlike most books by political scientists—it’s accessible to general readers.

Robert Prather approvingly notes Radley Balko’s praise of Tennessee representative Harold Ford Jr. as one of his Libertarian Heroes of 2003. Quoth Balko:

Ford makes this list more for his rhetoric and his potential than his actual voting record. Ambitious and eloquent, he’s a fast-rising star in the Democratic Party. Ford has shown an admirable reluctance to wade into the partisan muck and mire. He’s a free thinker. His talking points aren’t dictated to him by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. He has flirted with support for school choice. He’s generally supportive of tax cuts. And there are rumors around Washington that he may eventually support one of several plans to give Americans ownership of their Social Security taxes. Ford is likely bound for the U.S. Senate, if not higher office. If his voting record ever aligns with his rhetoric, he could emerge as an important voice of reason in a party too consumed with class warfare and entitlement culture.

Ford is in the relatively unique position of being one of the first of the “new generation” of African-American political leaders—and the only Democrat among them to have learned the lesson of the previous generation, which is that amassing a left-wing record in the House in a majority-minority district will guarantee you a permanent seat, and maybe even some committee positions of note, but it absolutely kills any prospect of attaining higher office. Ford, instead, has built on his father’s organizational and constituency service strengths, but adopted a more moderate voting record than his fellow black caucus members—which not only has improved the security of his seat against potential Republican challengers, but also has positioned him to potentially gain broad support among moderate white voters in future statewide contests for either the senate or the governorship.

That isn’t to say that Ford has strong libertarian credentials—he certainly doesn’t—but rather that he’s become one of the south’s first black “yellow dog” Democrats who effectively combines liberal social positions with moderate-to-conservative economic policy views. In other words, he’s the sort of candidate the Democrats need to remain competitive in the south in the face of a relative decline of the black population that means Democrats will have to broaden their appeal beyond the rump group of whites that still identify with the party for economic reasons.

Also of note: Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution critiques Balko’s list for its exclusive attention to politicians.

Update: AlphaPatriot has more on this theme (thanks to Mike Hollihan of Half-Bakered for pointing the post out in an email).

I’ve been trying to make the transition to Mozilla Thunderbird as my primary email client. One annoyance: there didn’t seem to be any way to associate multiple email addresses with a single incoming email account. However, a quick Google search turned up the solution.