Twenty years ago, after two presidential elections in which George W. Bush won every electoral vote in the former Confederate states, there was a noisy debate among Democrats over the idea that the party should give up on the South altogether. The thinking, promoted most avidly by political scientist Tom Schaller in his book Whistling Past Dixie, was that the South was a hopeless proposition for any progressive party and that pursuing the chimera of southern comfort would inevitably mean kowtowing to the region’s militarism and atavistic cultural views. Indeed, wrote Schaller, Democrats should run against the South in the rest of the country.

Two years later, Barack Obama broke the GOP electoral-vote lock on the South by carrying Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. And by 2020, Georgia was electing two Democratic senators (one Black, the other Jewish) with views difficult to distinguish from those of their party colleagues elsewhere. Yes, Republicans have generally maintained a strong hold on the region. But no one can credibly argue that competing there would compromise the party elsewhere, aside from adding to demands for dollars.

There are very good reasons for Democrats to aggressively engage in the South right now. For one thing, the region is rising in population and will accordingly gain clout after the next decennial Census. The Brennan Center predicts that after 2030, Florida and Texas may each obtain four more U.S. House seats,........

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