The year 2014 saw the death of a tradition that had lasted longer than it had had any right to persist. That was the election in which the last of the moderate Southern Democratic senators lost their seats and the region became a wasteland for Democratic candidates in statewide federal races. In addition to North Carolina’s Kay Hagan, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu and Arkansas’s Mark Pryor went down to defeat by right-wing Republicans. Landrieu and Pryor had survived even the 2002 pro-Bush wave, but the exhaustion of their political model caught up with them, and their states completed the long trends that culminated in Blue Dog Democrats’ extinction.

Failing to learn their lesson, Democrats revived the Blue Dog model in North Carolina’s 2020 Senate race. Closing the door on progressives like Deborah Ross and Eric Mansfield, the D.S.C.C. threw its weight behind Cal Cunningham, a cookie-cutter replica of the vapid white moderates Democrats had fielded in the South for the last generation. Cunningham’s astonishing personal recklessness cost him the election, but in any event he represented a model that is not fit for sustainable success. Then something happened in Georgia.

Beginning in 2018 with the extraordinary campaign of Stacey Abrams, Georgia Democrats resolved to nominate a new kind of candidate. Like their North Carolina counterparts, Peach-State Democrats had seen moderate whites lose in federal races over the last 20 years. Not since Zell Miller, a de facto Republican, had the state elected a moderate white Democrat. Michelle Nunn’s campaign landed with a dud. So instead of searching ever deeper in the wilderness of central-casting candidates, they set out to nominate fresh, fiery candidates who excited Democrats who had not been voting.

That was Raphael Warnock. To say that Warnock, pastor of Martin Luther King, jr,’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church, did not fit the mold of previous Southern Democrats would be an understatement. African American and an unabashed progressive, he rejected the defensive crouch that had been the default stance of Southern Democrats in recent times. He appealed to Black voters and party liberals without coming across as too radical for suburban moderates. His opponent, Kelly Loeffler, tried to paint him as a literal Marxist, but swing voters yawned and the Democratic base just got more motivated to vote for Warnock.

Warnock defeated Loeffler, running ahead of fellow Democrat (and white centrist) Jon Ossoff. In fact, the strong turnout that Warnock inspired was likely responsible for delivering Ossoff’s own victory. What happened in Georgia is instructive for the future of Southern Democrats. Rather than tapping a depleted well, they should find diverse candidates who change the face of the electorate. As Abrams recognized, traditionalist whites are far gone for Democrats. In North Carolina, Kay Hagan and Bev Perdue were likely the last Democratic candidates who will ever carry broad swathes of the conservative-leaning white constituency. To win, Democrats will need to play demographic offense.

What does this mean for North Carolina in 2022? To say that a moderate white candidate should lead the ticket will be a hard sell to many rank-and-file Dems as well as the most insightful strategists. If such a candidate wins the nomination, they should be able to prove that they can inspire higher turnout among underrepresented constituencies, definitely including people of color and perhaps young people. A better bet for the party would be to nominate a Black candidate with a formidable resume and the ability to reach both base voters and suburban moderates. Fortunately, there are multiple politicians with that profile waiting in the wings.