Tom Schaller at DCDL

On Thursday, Oct 25, the DC Chapter of Drinking Liberally is pleased to host Tom Schaller, author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, and co-author of Devolution and Black State Legislators: Challenges and Choices in the Twenty-First Century.

We’ll be in our usual spot in the back room of Timberlake’s, 1726 Connecticut Ave NW (Dupont Circle Metro). Just for this evening, we’ll have a slight adjustment in our usual speaker night schedule:

6:30-8 Happy Hour.
8- 8:45 Talk, Q&A.
8:45-? People hang out.

To whet your appetite, here’s a recent Paul Krugman column quoting Prof. Schaller: (NYT)

And yes, Southern white exceptionalism is about race, much more than it is about moral values, religion, support for the military or other explanations sometimes offered. There’s a large statistical literature on the subject, whose conclusion is summed up by the political scientist Thomas F. Schaller in his book ‘’Whistling Past Dixie'’: ‘’Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters to depict American conservatism as a nonracial phenomenon, the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past.'’

Republican politicians, who understand quite well that the G.O.P.’s national success since the 1970s owes everything to the partisan switch of Southern whites, have tacitly acknowledged this reality. Since the days of Gerald Ford, just about every Republican presidential campaign has included some symbolic gesture of approval for good old-fashioned racism.

More on Tom Schaller:

Dr. Thomas F. Schaller is associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, and co-author of Devolution and Black State Legislators: Challenges and Choices in the Twenty-First Century. A bi-weekly political columnist for the Baltimore Sun, Schaller has published commentaries in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The New York Daily News, Salon, and The American Prospect, and has appeared on ABC News, The Colbert Report, MSNBC, National Public Radio, The Tavis Smiley Show, and C-SPANs Washington Journal. Schaller has given lectures on American politics in India, Italy, Nepal and Turkey on behalf of the U.S. State Department, and is a member of the Sandy
Hillman Award-winning blogging team at TAPPED, the group blog of The American Prospect magazine.