Even when national Democrats weren’t led by revanchist racists, the South was left to the warlords for the same reason territories are often left to warlords: it served the interests of those in power. National Democrats cared about passing the New Deal, about winning presidential elections, about building infrastructure projects. Given the choice between working with a southern Democratic Party that could provide them crucial votes or challenging a southern Democratic Party that could defect and doom the Democratic Party’s national agenda, they chose accommodation.
