Tonight’s results are huge vindication for Zell Miller.

Democrat Fritz Hollings’ seat goes Republican.
Democrat John Edwards’ seat goes Republican.
Louisiana’s Senate seat looks like it will go Republican.
Kerry failed to secure the South.

Miller wrote in his book, A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat:

National Democratic leaders know nothing about the modern South. They still see it as a land of magnolias and mint juleps, with the pointy-headed KKK lurking in the background, waiting to burn a cross or lynch blacks and Jews.

They are like Shreve McCannon, the Canadian in William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!” who asks the Southerner Quentin Compson: “Tell me about the South. What’s it like there? What do they do there? Why do they live there? Why do they live at all?”

The modern South and rural America are as foreign to our Democratic leaders as some place in Asia or Africa. In fact, more so. I’m sure each could explain the culture and economy of Pakistan, Taiwan or Kenya better than that of the American South.

After they get over their depression, Dem leaders would do well to read Miller’s book and learn from this devastating rebuke.

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