As the new year arrives, South Dakota Democrats face an old problem — they stand no chance in presidential campaign

2024 arrived cold but without snow. The winter of 2023-24 is half over — if you consider November through February winter — and we have yet to feel the pain a South Dakota snow season can inflict.

So, that’s a plus. Politics will soon heat up here, as the 2024 legislative session opens soon and candidates for local, state and the single national race on the ballot line up and prepare to run.

As the year moves forward, it’s worth taking a gander at the political calendar. How are things shaping up for Democrats and Republicans? It’s a presidential election year, so that will be the lead in any political discussion.

South Dakota will vote for the Republican nominee. That is far from news. The last time a Democrat carried the state was 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Sen. Barry Goldwater here. LBJ won in one of the biggest landslides in American history, 43,129,040 to 27,175,754, even claiming Republican states like South Dakota. The Electoral College was even more lopsided, as the Democratic candidate won 486-52.

Aside from 1964, South Dakota only supported the Democratic candidate in three other elections. Franklin Delano Roosevelt carried the state in 1932 and 1936, with the Great Depression turning Republican voters against their party in an act of desperation. Nebraska orator William Jennings Bryan won here in 1896 when he was the candidate of both the Democratic Party and the Populist Party. Bryan was nominated by the Democrats again in 1900 and 1908, but South Dakota joined the majority of states in rejecting him in those races.

The 1912 election is an outlier, as South Dakota voted for a third-party candidate. Kinda, anyway.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt — “Don’t call me Teddy,” a nickname he despised despite what Gov. Kristi Noem thinks — carried the state. He had sought the Republican nomination and was clearly the favorite of most party members, but President William Howard Taft, his former friend and protégé, and GOP insiders denied him the nomination.

TR ran as the Progressive Party nominee, although Republicans in South Dakota and California, outraged by the blatant political machinations, placed him on their ballots as the Republican candidate. He won both states, along with Minnesota,Michigan and Washington, and finished second in the Electoral College. The Republican schism handed the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

But that was an aberration driven by an outsize personality like Roosevelt. Such an event will almost surely never happen again.

Maybe the secret’s in the name. Baines, Delano and Jennings — maybe the Democrats need to nominate a candidate known by three names to win here? Quick, place President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.’s name on the ballot.

But Biden’s middle name won’t make a difference in bright-red South Dakota. He almost assuredly won’t campaign here, since national Democrats see the state as a lost cause.

The only close race for a Democratic candidate since LBJ’s win was in 1976, when President Gerald Ford edged former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter 50.39% to 48.91%. I was 18 that year and recall Democrats thinking they had a chance to win, and they came close.

President Bill Clinton topped 40% in 1996 and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois did in 2008. Both those races might have been winnable in South Dakota with a break or two and some more investment from Democrats, but those days are long past.

Former President Donald J. Trump, who seems assured of the 2024 Republican nomination despite his many criminal trials and his racist and fascist rhetoric, carried the state with ease in both 2016 and 2020. South Dakotans embraced the loathsome Trump (seen above arriving at Joe Foss Field in Sioux Falls in a 2018 public domain photo posted on wikimedia commons), giving him more than 61% of the vote both times.

The failed casino owner, businessman and disgraced and twice-impeached president has a surprising history in our state. He held a campaign rally at Mount Rushmore on July 3, 2020, with Gov. Kristi Noem at his side, causing some to wonder if he was considering dumping Vice President Mike Pence and adding Noem to the ticket.

Noem, who said she was shocked, just shocked by such speculation, went as far as to request Trump loyalists pay for a statue of Mount Rushmore, a story I told for a worldwide audience in 2021.

She has remained a Trump loyalist while Sens. John Thune and Mike Rounds and Rep. Dusty Johnson have slowly, cautiously tried to distance themselves from him.

When Trump returned to the Black Hills in September for a rally, all three said they were just too darn busy to make it.

So, what is the point of even trying to mount a campaign for a Democrat in South Dakota this year? Trump, or Nikki Haley or any other Republican who tops the ticket will win here.

Biden may claim a second term, as the economy continues to improve and Trump’s legal woes mount up. Moderate voters, who generally control the outcome in presidential elections, are surely not impressed with his recent hateful comments, which just add to a disgusting record of political rhetoric unheard among major party candidates.

But in South Dakota, the biggest single factor in almost all elections is the R behind the name. South Dakota Republican voters, who outnumber Democrats more than two-to-one, only care about the label. They’re not interested in the ingredients.

So, Democrats need to accept that, and most do. There are always some who get their hopes up, but reality has a way of convincing them about August or September when they see the polls.

Democrats need to try to make a dent in the congressional race, after giving Dusty a free pass in 2020 and 2022? Can they find someone credible to take him on? SDDP Chairman Shane Merrill told me they hope to field a candidate.

“That’s our goal,” he told me in December.

They also need to field candidates in as many of the 105 legislative districts as possible in an effort to add more votes and strengthen their voice in Pierre. They have been outnumbered 94-11 in recent years, and that has to change for them to have a greater impact.

They also should recruit candidates for county commissions, city councils, school boards, township boards and all other elected positions. The party needs to be rebuilt from the ground up and it’s going to take a while to do that.

So that needs to be their focus in 2024 and beyond. Maybe someday down the road, they can think about a Democratic presidential candidate contending here.

But not this year.

Tom Lawrence has written for several newspapers and websites in South Dakota and other states and contributed to The New York Times, NPR, The  Telegraph, The Daily Beast and other media outlets.