Dean, yesterday, again, said Democrats need to appeal to people in the South with Democratic economic interests, but who have been divided by generations of Republican rhetoric on the Confederacy and civil rights. Let's get something straight here, folks. Most people who have Confederate flags on their trucks will, when asked, say they are not racist. Some of them are lying. But some genuinely buy the spiel that "It's part of our tradition, and it's not about slavery." I don't agree with this, but living in the South, I've definitely run into them. There are Southerners who literally do not know history. Southern schools tend to be very careful about how they teach "The War Between the States" even today. There are many Southerners who will argue 24/7 that the Civil War wasn't about slavery.
My point is, These People Gave The Republicans Mississippi. Barbour's campaign focused on the Confederate flag. It's also how we lost a Senate seat in Georgia last year.
Dean is right. We have to win these people over. We need them to take the Confederate flags off their trucks and we need them to stop listening when the GOP tells them the Democrats are going to take their history away. As long as we just ignore them, we're going to keep letting the Republicans divide us by race, and we're going to keep losing elections.