Yesterday, we got word that Artur Davis, the former Democratic representative from Alabama’s majority-black Seventh Congressional District and failed 2010 gubernatorial candidate, jumped from the Democratic party to the Republican party. What to make of this?

A few years ago, when Alabama Democrat Parker Griffith made a similar switch, I took it as a notable marker in the transition of Southern politics toward the GOP. Griffith represented one of the last Democratic holdouts in the South, at least on the congressional level, the old Jacksonians in the Appalachian region. I thought it was illustrative that he did not feel as though the Democratic label was a good vehicle for his political ambitions.