I am a Northern leftover. There, I freely embrace the term, and to tell you the truth, am proud to say it. (I suppose that makes me prejudiced against myself, according to your definition). I believe in the old saying that a TRUE fan supports the home team even when it is down. I believe that when things that you support or treasure fall apart or hit hard times, and most people run away, that you roll up your sleeves and go to work to put them back together. I also think that sometimes you have to take a hard look at what you believe in or the strategies and tactics you're using to achieve them and engage in some honest self refelection and constructive criticism. True friends of the Democratic party and its historic goals have been and are doing that now more than ever. Hey, when I was working at the caucuses for Larry Saturday, all I heard from people was 1. They would vote for whomever they thought was best able to beat Bush 2. They truly felt frustrated by the media resources that average Americans rely on in putting together the data they need for that decision. They found the corporate media either a captive of the Republicans, or shallow and sensationalistic. None of the people expressing this opinion felt quite secure in their choice. I think that this also was why Kerry was helped; the nominating schedule, and the media's compulsion to declare a front-runner created a lemming march to a Kerry nomination. The tradition of treating politics as a sporting event instead of an intellectual exercise in civic duty is a media given. I have stated before that the primary schedule should begin in states where the party is weakest, not strongest.
     Obviously, there are more "leftovers" outside of the South than in it. Most political observers say that the South is now almost all Republican. Does speaking this fact make them prejudiced? When Kennedy considered MLK's requests, he told his people that granting them would require extreme political caution and skill. Did that make him prejudiced? When LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, he turned to his aides and said "there goes the South". Did this mean that he was prejudiced? No, it just meant that he was as pragmatic a political observer as he was idealistic about civil rights. Please be careful whom you call a bigot. Leadership does not always consist of preaching to the converted; it often involves listening to people who think differently from you and then trying to bring them around to your point of view by persuasion. And why do advertisers hire likeable spokesman like sports heroes or individuals similar to people in their target market?
     Your point on women and minority candidates is a good one. I believe that history and experience have shown that on the local or state level, women and minority candidates are either no different as to electablity, and occasionally a better choice than a white male, in certain situations. But I also believe that there is something unique about the U.S. presidency. Besides the regioanl/racial anxieties we've talked about,the solitary national office of U.S. president unfortunately involves a psychological element of supreme warlord or Caesar or big daddy/grandfather/protector. Women as heads of nations have to deal with different dynamics than femal regional governors or legislators. Look at female national leaders overseas or in history: Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Catherine the Great, Indira Gandhi, Margeret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto - all tyrants or even nastier than the men around them. As for an African-American President, I would say look at Colin Powell. He'd have to be a kind of black Eisenhower. He'd probably have to be a Republican, an above-partisan kind of guy with military credentials, moderate views, likeable personality. I think that the reason why Powell never ran is because he knew that the Republicans have not merely adapted Nixon's Southern Strategy, but have remade themselves with it to the point that there is little left of their party and themselves but it. This is their party's element of self-destructive irrationallity. In 1976, polls showed that the only vice-presidential choice who could have saved Jerry Ford would have been Massachusetts Senator Edward W. Brooke. Ford took Dole, and lost.