There's no better symbol of the Southern Strategy than the George Wallace demagoguery of the late '60s (and those who know Wallaces story know that it was more marketing tool than anything; before and after that period he got along fine with the black community. ) The bottom line is the same as it's always been: We need to emphasize true CIVIL rights, and I don't really care which party does it. Until we do it will always be easy for the elite power brokers to play all the disenfranchised groups off against each other, convince each of them that they do without and remain ignored because of the others, because the wealthiest and most powerful nation in history doesn't have room at the table for everyone. The Us and Them mentality is entirely a product of those benefiting from it, but anyone who works for a living is part of the same "us" as everyone who works for a living. Not that those who have the luxury of success through simply managing the money they already have are automatically the enemy of the rest, but some of them undeniably make themselves so, see everyone who wants as big a share of the pie as they contribute as a threat, and as long as they can keep the rest of the country fighting over crumbs they can keep the whole pie for themselves.

It's not nearly as impossible to empower the whole nation as some would have us believe, but anyone offering effortless solutions, be it a workers paradise where no one works or the freedom of jungle law is just peddling snake oil for their own gain. That's the difference between real populists like William Jennings Bryan and FDR vs. mere demagogues like Huey Long and Wallace. Anyone who thinks their primary exploiter is the government isn't paying attention; even where the government does exploit us it does so on behalf of one private entity or another. Government doesn't do anything it's not told to do; the problem is who's calling the shots for our government, because it's long been doing a fine job of empowering already powerful multinationals and huge corporate interests, which means the consumer, the laborer and the small business get trampled for the sake of those who own the government. So the solution isn't repealing the government, but reclaiming it.