Should Dems ignore the Southerns?

That's the debate going on over at Salon (you don't need to register to view the stories, but you do need to wait through a short commercial, which will give you a one-day access pass to the site).

Essentially, the two sides are arguing over whether the Democratic Party should focus energies on keeping the Southern Democrat base within the party or whether party officials should just ignore the South.

In the second piece, I found this quote quite good:

Sure, the overall trend has been toward the GOP, but that's hard to avoid,
since the starting point was a one-party Democratic region.