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Southern Democrats who lost key races this election cycle

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

New Orleans (CNN) -- The 2014 elections seemed like the final reckoning for Southern Democrats, the culmination of a political metamorphosis that began in the Civil Rights era and concluded under the nation's first black President.

Wiped out in governors' races, clobbered in Senate contests, irrelevant in many House districts and boxed out of state legislatures, Democrats in the South today look like a rump party consigned to a lifetime of indignity.

"I can't remember it being any gloomier for Democrats in the South than it is today," said Curtis Wilkie, the longtime journalist and observer of Southern life who lectures at the University of Mississippi. "The party has been demonized by Republicans. It's very bleak. I just don't see anything good for them on the horizon."

Democrats are looking everywhere for solutions to their Southern problem. They hope population changes will make states such as Georgia and North Carolina more hospitable. They want more financial help from the national party. Some are even clinging to the dim hope that Hillary Clinton might help make inroads with white working class voters in Arkansas in 2016.

Success here is crucial for the party. There's virtually no way for Democrats to win back a majority in the Senate -- much less the House -- without finding a way to compete more effectively in the South. But the truth is there are no easy answers for a party so deep in the hole.

White voters have abandoned Democrats for decades, and the flight has only hastened under President Barack Obama. The migration has created a troublesome math problem: Democrats across the region now depend on African-American voters and not much else.

It's a disastrous formula in low-turnout midterms dominated by white voters. In Louisiana on Saturday, deep south Democrats bid farewell to their last remaining Democratic senator, Mary Landrieu, who won the African-American vote but failed to secure enough white support in her race against Republican Bill Cassidy. Landrieu won just 18 percent of white voters on Election Day in November, and she failed to expand that margin in the runoff, resulting in another knife-twisting loss for Democrats hoping to put the devastating 2014 midterms behind them.

With Landrieu's loss, there are now just three Democrats senators hailing from the Old Confederacy: Mark Warner and Tim Kaine in Virginia, and Bill Nelson in Florida. But both of those states have diverse populations and thriving economies that have pushed them away, culturally and politically, from their southern neighbors.

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The plight of the Southern Democrat