The South Has Already Changed

COLUMBIA, S.C.—This was the speech Jaime Harrison didn’t want to give. He rocked back and forth on the small outdoor stage. “We proved that a new South is rising. Tonight only slowed us down,” he told the small crowd of aides and supporters standing on the grass in front of him last night. “But a new South with leaders who reflect the community and serve the interests of everyone will be here soon enough.”

Moral victories have no place in the zero-sum game of electoral politics. But Harrison needed an upside to his Senate-race loss, and he found it in the shifting perception of the South, which was already visible in his candidacy. Harrison’s race was not unlike the 2018 campaigns of Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida. He raised tens of millions of dollars in his bid to unseat Senator Lindsey Graham, and, despite a defeat, the national buzz he earned illustrated the changing scope of what Americans believe is politically possible in the South over the