To save the South: disenfranchise rural white conservative voters?

I was at a dinner party in Atlanta recently hosted by someone I’d never met before, someone with very high-falutin’ (sp?) connections in Democratic politics. In discussing my work to flip state houses in the south, he asked me what I thought would be the fastest way to save the region from 40 years of iron-fisted Republican destruction. Other than demographic changes and the restoration of the VRA, which are not fast, it’s this: stop white, rural conservatives from voting.

No one likes this answer— including me. It feels both unDemocratic and undemocratic; and, of course, it is both of those things. But if you want the simple reality, that’s it, and it’s based in two facts:

• in Southern counties where slavery was most concentrated pre-Civil War, white voters — who outnumber Black voters in every state — today identify as Republican at higher rates and score higher on racial resentment (and are therefore less likely to EVER vote for a Democrat, who they associate with Black voters, even as the GOP lets them down)

• we’ve tried to do something like it before.