Tom Schaller's non-Southern strategy gets graded a 'B' in terms of accuracy as a 'predictive model'. He ended up better than the 'PUMAs' or 'Bradley effecters', but not nearly as good as Nate Silver or the Emerging Democratic Majority writers. However, Schaller was not merely predictive, but suggestive of a strategy.
Schaller himself rationalizes what happened in the Democratic wins in the southern races, but doesn't really acknowledge that it took a strategy including southern states to get those wins.
Here are a few of his reasons:
Wrong on NC, right on GA, and "had Team Obama not bailed on Ga. in favor of N.C. it might have won neither" I understand there are tradeoffs, but GA-Sen is going to a runoff, and the overall focus was definitely useful in both states. Schaller wasn't proposing a NC vs. GA tradeoff, but a NM vs NC tradeoff.
New south victory: "It was not a rural Southern victory." This is probably where I think Schaller missed the boat worst, mostly because this is where I fit in. I don't live in the RTP area, but work in high-tech. I switched my voter registration just so that I would be able to vote for Obama in the primary. Schaller may have be taking these 'new South' voters for granted (probably less so now), and working to win their votes in 2006 & 2008 can only help in the future. Also, is there any difference between a rural and 'urban' vote? There seems to be a focus on number of counties won, when in NC 38% of voters are in the 7 largest counties.
"The Democrats have a coalition unlike one they have ever built in their history." This is one of the more important facts. As he then follows up about the Republicans, it is a terrible idea to solely rely on your old coalition. Republicans have backed themselves in a corner. It will be harder to campaign outside of 'real' America, and even there things are changing.
And remember: This cycle was a perfect storm for Democrats in terms of environmental factors and candidate effects, including running against a non-Southern Republican nominee. Meanwhile, as I forecast, the GOP is becoming an increasingly Southern party (44 percent of its U.S. House delegation, for example), a party relegated to dominating that region but little else -- a worry we are hearing more frequently from people like George Will.
One thing I agree with Schaller about is that Democrats should not pander to the most conservative blocks of Southern voters, but Obama showed that you can win elections in Southern states without compromising your message. Some Republicans seemed to campaign on 'anger at liberals', which is definitely a targeting of the most conservative voters. At least in 3 elections in NC (Obama, Kissel & Hagan), this proved to be an unsuccessful strategy today, and will prove to be even more unsuccessful in the future.