Why did Little River County, AR swung so hard to the Republicans in 2008?

[darklordoftech]

John Kerry was more socially liberal than Obama

How?

[darklordoftech]

John Kerry was more socially liberal than Obama

How?

He supported gay marijuana before Obama did.

gay marijuana?

[darklordoftech]

John Kerry was more socially liberal than Obama

How?

He supported gay marijuana before Obama did.

gay marijuana?

Gay marriage, stupid autocorrect

Makes sense. When did Kerry come out in support of gay marriage?

[darklordoftech]

Racism + more yellow dogs dying off + Hillary supporters angry that she lost the primary would be my guess.

Mostly this

Now, I don’t think racism is a such big factor, it’s more a cultural thing, Kerry was fairly liberal but he was also a veteran

Ah yes, conservative Southern whites have deep respect for soldiers, veterans, and decorated war heroes, including John Kerry /s.

Yeah, it's why dems tend to nominate veterans in tough southern/appalachian districts (Conor Lamb, Amy McBath, Dan McCready, Spanberger, Ojeda)

Maybe it helps, but Republicans have no qualms about smearing veterans, including Kerry, McCain, and Spanberger, so who knows. Amoral, authoritarian animals, FTW! 

Trump wasn’t even the first to smear McCain in that regard. Bush II had someone speaking at his South Carolina rallies who said, “McCain grew tired of the veterens.”

[darklordoftech]

Remember also that the reasonable Yankee mindset you are holding up some kind of historical paragons of virtue were leading the drive to exterminate Native Americans, discriminating against the Irish and opposing further immigration and trying to ban booze and Christmas as Roman Catholic corruption of the pure Calvinist soul.

I made a very long post about this a few months ago, but there is this desire on the left to latch onto Yankees, white wash their checkered past and hold them up as the good guys compared to the evil, backwards Southerners.

Now lets look at the dirty laundry.  

Part I: Immigrants and Religion:

These supposed egalitarian Yankees, were aghast by Catholicism, their opposition to the Church of England was because it was "too Catholic" in its trappings as much as anger at hierarchical control and they disdained such influences. So what happens when a bunch of Irish Catholics start arriving by the boatload in Boston. 1) You discriminate like crap against them and 2) you move to Michigan/Illinois/Oregon.

 For the ones that remain, you try to use compulsory public education to teach them the King James Bible and then you try to keep them from voting (And you thought the South were the only ones who believed in restricted voting rights). Early Federalists and Whigs (which yes included Plantation Owners in the South as well) were very much against expanded voting favoring land and wealth requirements, because it would mean ceding power and control to those low class and later largely Catholic immigrants. Once the immigrants started to be exclusively Catholic, then the class divide among Yankees evaporated and both joined forces in a political alignment defined by religious identity. Later on they would use rivalries for jobs and political influence among more recent immigrant groups as a wedge against the Irish political machines.

This dynamic lasted for over 100 years until the Great Depression and the Greatest Generation swamped out the WASP-Yankee led political machines in the cities of the North and even whole states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Anti-Ethnic politics also helped to galvanize support for Prohibition as well, which united Calvinists both North and South in support in the 1920's. Just as the same two groups (Northern Yankees and Southern Plantation Society) locked arms to pass the Immigration laws in the 1920's, as well.

Abolitionism: Yankee culture has one redeeming quality that sustains it about most everything else and it is the reason why modern day Progressives will engage in any amount of historical revisionism to latch onto the group while shirking off any traces of their other antecedents (Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson say hello). Groups that supported abolitionism did so for many different reasons over the course of the period leading up to the Civil War, but it should be noted that it was not because of widespread egalitarianism, it was for most of them, again because of theology. Some believed that slavery ran contrary to God's will, for others it was simply more practical, slavery was an impediment to spreading the gospel to the enslaved peoples. Contained within this was extreme levels of 19th century cultural Imperialism and white supremacy that would make most on the left sick. But history is full of good things being done by a mixed group of people, some of whom are doing so for the wrong reasons.

But please go on about how Yankee Republicans of Lincoln's era were so much different than the Southern Republicans of today.

However, I think most would agree that prohibition isn’t comparable to slavery, and most people today see compulsory education as a good thing. Prohibition is often seen as well-intentioned uptightness while slavery is universally seen as evil.

[darklordoftech]

If you’re looking for racist counties, I would look for Gore-Kerry-McCain-Romney-Hillary counties.

[darklordoftech]

Bell actually lost what would become West Virginia to Breckenridge.

Likely because of voter suppression.

[darklordoftech]

I wonder if Bush 41 did better in 1992 than in 1988 in any of the same areas where McCain did better than Bush 43.

[darklordoftech]

I wonder if Bush 41 did better in 1992 than in 1988 in any of the same areas where McCain did better than Bush 43.

Without looking at a map, I doubt it. The vast majority of Kerry-McCain swings came in regions in the south where Clinton ran strongest compared to Dukakis, like Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and a lot of Appalachia.

Interesting. I wonder if there’s any 1988-1992 swing maps.

[darklordoftech]

I wonder if Bush 41 did better in 1992 than in 1988 in any of the same areas where McCain did better than Bush 43.

I think there is one county in Iowa that swung R.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke_County,_Iowa#Politics

Funnily, it trended D in 2004 and 2012.

This pattern isn't uncommon; mostly WWC areas in the Midwest where Kerry overperformed, Obama did mediocre in 2008 but where voters were turned off by Romney's personality.

There are plenty of relevant discussions to be had about Trump's stoking of racial tensions ... that should be obvious.  However, it is also quite obvious that Democrats will defend whoever their voters are as moral people, and they'll trash them when they're gone.  All of these snot-nosed teenagers who got fired up in 2016 and joined Atlas to tell everyone how smart they are probably don't remember this, but those "WWC" Midwestern areas were described on this very board as QUITE literally not racist/Southern enough to vote for the GOP back in 2012.  They were "Yankee," as posters would put it.  They were too Northern, and they were treated like the current "WWC" voters in Western Massachusetts and Vermont were - simply too enlightened to fall for the GOP's tricks.  A place like Orange County?  Practically Southern, fairly evangelical, QUITE intolerant, not nearly as enlightened as these places.  Once those WWC Midwestern areas ditched them, the narrative quite literally became they are just simply too racist for the Democratic Party.

A partisan believes his party upholds morals against an immoral opposition, and he will do mental gymnastics all day long to justify why those voting for him are doing so out of a moral cause.  The utter hypocrisy and 180 degree way this forum has done the Midwest dirty since 2016 should honestly shed most of the credibility that your average 2020 board or Presidential Elections Trend board poster has.

It could quite possibly be true that literally every single racist and undesirable votes Republican now, and there are ZERO immoral people left in the Democratic Party, haha ... but they treated it as if this were the case back in 2012 ... and 2008 ... and 2004.  Becomes hard to take the claim seriously when it always gets *worse*.  I'll just wait until 2024 to listen to this shlt, haha.

People seem to forget the narratives from before the last election. People always think there’s a “permanent (whichever party holds the Presidency) majority” and that regions are perpetually trending however they voted in the last election. In 2004, there was a “permanent Republican majority”, in 2012 there was a “permanent Democratic majority”, now there’s a “permanently Republican midwest”, etc.