Plenty of Southerners register as Democrats, of course. We North Carolinians should know this better than others, since Democrats continue to hold most of the state?s most high-profile public offices.

But a Jay Cost article in the latest National Review explains that these Democrats are not the Southern Democrats of old.

As for the Senate there has been a noticeable leftward shift thanks to the election in 2008 of new Democratic senators. ? [Profs. Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal] estimate that Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor or Arkansas are in the middle of the upper chamber this year ? and historically these two have earned fairly liberal scores from the DW-Nominate system [Poole and Rosenthal?s metric, which is used commonly to track the ideology of members of Congress].

The liberalism of Southern Democrats like Landrieu and Pryor illustrates another feature of the 111th Congress: Conservative Democrats from Dixie are in short supply. The tenure of Rep. Heath Shuler (D., N.C.) is a case in point. Shuler ? who represents Asheville and the western part of the Tar Heel State ? has gotten flak from his party for bucking Speaker Pelosi on a series of important votes. ? Yet 50 years ago, his politics would have been about those of an average Southern Democrat. Republicans once aligned with such members to defeat the programs of the Democratic left wing. Nowadays, there are simply not enough Heath Shulers to form such a coalition.

For more on Shuler?s response to his Democratic colleagues? priorities, click here, here, or here.