Palin/Armey vs Obama/Biden

[The Chairman]

Im not really sure even Palin would win Alaska.

Id see it happen more like this:

[The Chairman]

Im not really sure even Palin would win Alaska.

Id see it happen more like this:

Yeah, that seems about right.  Obama could win Montana too, though. Kentucky would be a bit of a stretch, I think.  And I don't think many white people in Arkansas or Louisiania are ready to vote for a black man, but other than that the map is pretty good.

The south isn't as biggoted as you seem to think; or more accurately those who vote in the south are not as biggoted as you think.

It depends, I don't say all whites were bigots, but I suspect there are at least quite a few.  A large number of southern counties shifted solidly into the Republican collum during an overall 9% shift to the Democrats nationwide.  Pretty odd, don't you think?  Even though white votes in genral voted for the Republican, the case was much more extreame in the South.  McCain got 80%+ of the white vote in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiania.  And most of the other states he got around 70% or so of white voters.  In many other states, Republicans get in the 50% or low 60% range, which, in comarison to the numbers in several southern states, is much smaller. 

What those numbers say is that a large majority of southern whites are conservative, not racist.  You are right, there are some who are racist but they are a minority.  The number of racists that vote is an even more miniscule number.  Generally, and yes this is a blanket statement, racists are uneducated white trash uninterested in politics when it goes beyond parroting Rush Limbaugh to actually getting off the couch/out of the trailer and voting.

Alright,  but voting differences of that magnitude seems at least somewhat odd during a very Democratic year.

It's a symptom of the increasing polarization of American politics.  I predict we will see it even more in 2012.

I suspect that interstate polarization peaked in 2008. Barack Obama's campaign strategy targeted states that he thought he had a good chance of winning, and his campaign completely ignored those that he seemed unable to turn fast enough. So he spent lots of time in Indiana and his campaign flooded the media with ads; contrast Tennessee.Is Tennessee that much more conservative than Indiana? That's how the opportunities appeared.

Southern whites thought that as a black man from Chicago that he would be another Jesse Jackson -- a rabble-rousing ghetto fighter more likely to see social causes (oppression and poverty) to crime than personal vice. Southern whites are also more deferential to the military than others, and John McCain was a legitimate war hero.

Recent polls suggest that President Obama has been gaining in some of the Southern states (notably Kentucky, South Carolina, and Tennessee) where he lost by margins in excess of 8%. It could be that President Obama has not realized the fears of Southern whites. Southern whites hate crime -- but President Obama has proved anything but soft on crime. He has also gone after economic corruption  by Wall Street shysters who have never garnered sympathy in the South.  The South is about as much populist as it is conservative, and if Obama gets populist results without the fiery rhetoric typical of a populist, then Obama does far better in the South in 2012 than in 2008. Barack Obama did not run as a populist in 2008 and probably couldn't have gotten away with doing so.


Southern whites will probably give him more of a break in 2012 if he shows that even if he is a black man he isn't the black man that they feared.  He's no Uncle Tom, but he is no rabble-rousing demagogue, either.

His rising numbers in the south is why i gave him a few southern states. But i still have trouble imagining South Carolina moving towards the Democrats. The bible Belt has been as  Republican as it can get my whole life. But with Populist and conservative forces fighting it out, I can imagine the conservatives drowning Populist feelings out by continual playing of the "holier than though/god card".