Early South Carolina stop pulls democrats to center.

SOUTH Carolina Democrats are a plucky lot. It's hard not to admire their fortitude in the face of overwhelming odds--the way you might be touched by the plight of a Red Sox fan trapped in Yankee Stadium or a Baptist let loose in the Vatican.

When Joe Erwin, newly elected chairman of the state Democratic Party, gave his inaugural speech to the party convention last year, he took the podium and growled: "I want Republicans to fear you."

Not much chance of that, at least not yet. When it comes to presidential elections--or statewide elections, for that matter--few places are as reliably Republican as South Carolina. Even so, over the next week every Democratic presidential candidate who survives the New Hampshire primary will have been here, soliciting votes, eating collard greens and using words like "Mama."

Eight states will hold primaries or caucuses Feb. 3: anyone who's seen Howard Dean's famous Iowa tirade can probably recite them by heart ("And Arizona! And New Mexico! And Delaware!")

But it's to South Carolina that the all-seeing eyes of pundits are turning. This can only be good news for South Carolina Democrats--and maybe for Democrats elsewhere, too.

Harpootlian's revenge

The first and last time the state party hosted a presidential primary was in 1992, when it fell too late in the schedule to have much impact on choosing the Democratic nominee. The primary this year is the bright idea of Richard Harpootlian, a crafty trial attorney who served as state party chairman until last year.

His motive in pushing a 2004 primary was a mix of provincial and national considerations. Bringing national candidates and political reporters into the state will energize local party activists, he says. At the same time, Harpootlian hopes the experience of campaigning in South Carolina will beguile national candidates from their fixation with what he sees as out-of-touch liberalism, which has proved fatal to presidential candidates in the South.

"Democrats need to learn the lesson that they can't win the presidency unless they learn how to campaign in the South," Harpootlian says. "Coming here grounds you in what real Americans care about. If you learn to speak the cultural language here--the language of NASCAR, guns, religion--you're going to find it easier to speak to the rest of America."

The alienation of the national Democratic Party from the South is by now an old story. Democrats haven't won the White House without a Southerner on the ticket since 1944, when Franklin Roosevelt felt enough confidence in Democratic dominance to name Missouri's Harry Truman, as his vice president. But when Truman ran for president himself four years later, he made sure to add a Southerner, Sen. Albert Barkley of Kentucky, to his ticket for insurance.

It wasn't enough to help in South Carolina. That year the state voted 72 percent for its native son, Strom Thurmond, who ran for president as a segregationist "Dixiecrat." It was the first crack in the state's Democratic loyalty, and within 30 years the party was a shambles. South Carolina last voted Democratic in a presidential contest in 1976, for Jimmy Carter from next-door Georgia.

South Carolina most likely will remain beyond the grasp of a Democrat in 2004. But Harpootlian's right: there's a wholesome effect in forcing national Democrats to speak Southern.

Veterans, churchgoers

As home to several military installations, South Carolina has a large population of veterans, and regular church attendance, among Democrats and Republicans alike, is higher than the national average.

Even the African-American vote, which on primary day may amount to as much as 45 percent of the turnout, is more ideologically varied than candidates might encounter elsewhere.

"They're more pro-life than pro-choice," says John Moylan, director of John Edwards' South Carolina campaign, "and less interested in gun control or gay marriage or some of the other socially liberal issues."

Moylan, of course, hopes the ultimate beneficiary of a Southern primary will be his man Edwards, who was born in a small town in the state's northwestern corner and now represents neighboring North Carolina in the Senate.

Edwards has visited South Carolina 19 times in the last six months--far more than any other top candidate--and a pair of television commercials filmed at the tumbledown three-room house where he lived as a boy now saturate the airwaves.

Native son Edwards remains a long shot for the nomination, but a win in South Carolina would establish his bona fides as a vice presidential candidate--the Alben Barkley of 2004. Which would suit Harpootlian just fine.

"If you're going to win the White House, you need to win some Southern states," he says. "And if you're going to win some Southern states, you need to start with South Carolina. Edwards gets it. Maybe pretty soon, the others will, too."

Andrew Ferguson is a columnist with Bloomberg News.