Well, by Reagan that strategy had already been set in stone for 12 years before Reagan, and although I agree that the repealing of the Fairness Doctrine wasn't a good thing, it would have in no way stopped the birth of corporate media (Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, all basic cable channels) with its corporate biases and shortcomings. However, yes, the combination of these things has been destructive for race relations, letting religiosity bleed into politics, and the advancement of the Far Right ideology.
I think what you've said above is the key, defining distinction between the two major groups of the Democratic party (exemplified by the candidates who rose to the top). That being said, I simply don't agree with you on this point. I believed this firmly in early 2008, when I switched from a Libertarian to a Democrat and campaigned for Barrack Obama. And then I watched as my generation and other progressives promoted Barrack Obama against long odds to become the Democratic nominee, I campaigned and contributed to him to win the presidency in 2008, I voted for him and for the wholly Democratic congress, the crushing win he had over John McCain, the promotion of "good progressive" Democrats (including Hillary) into high-level positions, we switched the House and the Senate over to the Democrats with a nearly veto-proof majority. And in return, we got the weakest form of healthcare reform you could imagine, we got the weakest form regulations on Wall Street that could still be called regulations, and Wall Street got a huge, huge bailout. And I watched as a Democrat-controlled House and Senate fought against all of the things that the they allegedly stood for. My generations prospects got worse, the economic policies explicitly were written in a way that absolutely devastated the poor and middle-class, the entire country has slipped further and further into debt (individually, not nationally, the national debt is, as you probably know, more or less irrelevant) the only jobs that were created were jobs that created more underemployment and were underpaid, and so on and so on --and that's not even getting into foreign policy.
And all of the deregulating laws that created the financial collapse by either removing regulations or never creating them in the first place? All of the laws that set our fiscal and monetary policies policies? All of the laws that regulate the financial industry and corporations? All the laws that help the interest of workers, like trade deals and labor laws? For forty long years, the issues that lie in the interests of the middle-class and especially the poor all have been undermined whether there was a Democratic president in office with a Republican congress, and vice versa, whether there was a Republican in office with a Republican congress, and yes, whether there was a Democrat in office with a Democratic congress. If you were looking for a great defeat of Republicans, you couldn't have done much better than 2008, and we have the history of how that turned out. Needless to say, for me, the idea that "all that needs to happen is for the Republicans to lose big" was bombastically falsified.
(We can ask, "Well why is that?" and that's another long subject, but I think the highlights are: Corporate/Wall Street money in politics, the elitist bubble in Washington, and corporate media. So when you talk about Fairness Doctrine, the Southern Strategy, and so on, but I'd definitely add Buckley v Valeo to that list to things that went tits up in before Reagan hit the Oval Office.)
