ENDANGERED SPECIES OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH. (cover story)

EDWARDS, John, 1953-; PRESIDENTIAL candidates; POLITICAL campaigns; DEMOCRATIC Party (S.C.); REPUBLICAN Party (S.C.); POLITICAL candidates; BUSH, George W. (George Walker), 1946-; CLINTON, Bill, 1946-; GORE, Albert, 1948-; DEAN, Howard, 1948-; KERRY, John, 1943-; CLARK, Wesley K., 1944-; JOHNSON, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973; THURMOND, Strom, 1902-2003; MCCAIN, John, 1936-; GOLDWATER, Barry M. (Barry Morris), 1909-1998; JACKSON, Jesse, 1941-; SHARPTON, Al, 1954-; DEMOCRATIC Party (U.S.); REPUBLICAN Party (U.S. : 1854- ); RELIGION & politics; COUNTERTERRORISM; TEXTILE industry; SOUTHERN States -- Politics & government -- 1951-; SOUTHERN States

The author reports from Seneca, South Carolina, the hometown of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, on the decline of the Democratic Party in the South. These days, Republicans don't just carry the national elections in places like South Carolina; over the past two decades, they've started to take over everything from the state legislature to the coroner's office, and it just keeps getting tougher to find loyal Democrats who are willing to campaign as sure losers. But the main order of this morning's business is next February's presidential primary, a high-profile event that is supposed to lift the sagging spirits of South Carolina Democrats. So far, the plan looks like a bust. Six months before voting day, none of the candidates have caught the fancy of Democrats here, or anywhere else in the South. Even in a rural county with just 67,000 souls, the candidates and their flacks have become a regular fixture. And more often than not, they tend to say things that show they don't understand the South a whole lot better than the national Democratic Party. Not even Edwards, who seems to carry the South deep in his bones, has figured out a message that might carry a state in Dixie -- this year, or any year in the foreseeable future."He's much too moderate for 2004," says Don Aiesi, who teaches and studies politics at Greenville's Furman University. Edwards is in a mess of trouble, and his campaign's quandary goes straight to the heart of what's killing off the Democratic Party throughout the South--and just might kill off any hope the party has of unseating Bush next year. Can they galvanize their own Southern base--or, perhaps more accurately, rebuild it? The formula is far from complicated: Invigorate black voters sick of the same old rhetoric and same old promises.