Kerry's candidacy was catastrophic for Democratic Party

Randy Black writes:  The Kerry-Edwards ticket was a catastrophe for Democratic Party across the South.  Here is ab  edited synopsis of a longer story available at: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-south15dec15,0,6873286.story?coll=3Dla-home-headlines <3d.htm>  

According to the LA Times (12/15/04), and several research= organizations, John Kerry's performance across the 11 former states of the Old South plus Oklahoma and Kentucky, was the third worst performance by a Democrat since the Great Depression. As recently as the 1960s, the Old South was a Democratic stronghold. President Bush dominated the South so completely in last month's presidential election that he carried nearly 85% of all the counties across the region AD and more than 90% of counties where whites are a majority of the population.  President Bush carried 1,154 counties in this group of states where whites are a majority of the population. Kerry just 90. In contrast, eight years ago, Bill Clinton carried 510 white majority counties and Vice President Gore won 294 white majority counties in 2000.

Among counties with a majority white population, Bush carried 90% of the counties. Kerry won only three counties of the region where whites were a majority of the population but won 126 counties of the South where racial minorities, blacks and Latinos, are majorities.  "We are out of business in the South," said J.W. Brannen, the Democratic Party chairman in Russell County, Ala., the only white-majority county in the state that Kerry carried. (The two Texas counties were along the Mexican= border in WAISer Jaqui White region.)           

Politically, the South includes 13 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Together they cast 168 Electoral College votes, more than three-fifths of the 270 required for election. Also contributing to the debacle was Kerry's decision to essentially write off the region, except Florida, after Labor Day. Although he bought television advertising early on in Louisiana, Arkansas, Virginia and North Carolina, and picked Sen John Edwards from that state as his running mate,Kerry pulled his ad buys from all of them by early September.
 
Final note: Recent media stories have stated that more than twice as many= registered Democrats crossed party lines and voted for Bush, as compared to= registered Republicans who voted for Kerry.