2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
       |           

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
March 28, 2024, 04:43:26 PM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  Presidential Elections - Analysis and Discussion
  Presidential Election Trends (Moderator: 15 Down, 35 To Go)
  2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South
« previous next »
Pages: 1 [2]
Author Topic: 2008 Legacy: Marginalization of the South  (Read 9298 times)
Matt Damon™
donut4mccain
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 2,466
Palestinian Territory, Occupied


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #25 on: December 05, 2008, 05:16:47 PM »

The dems should give up on interior dixie/appalachia and instead chase yankee transplants and the latin vote in texas/the coast from virginia to florida.
Logged
??????????
StatesRights
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 31,126
Political Matrix
E: 7.61, S: 0.00

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #26 on: December 05, 2008, 06:43:57 PM »

The dems should give up on interior dixie/appalachia and instead chase yankee transplants and the latin vote in texas/the coast from virginia to florida.

The Yankee transplants are largely conservative, especially people my age. They didn't all leave because the weather was sh*tty up there you know.
Logged
Matt Damon™
donut4mccain
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 2,466
Palestinian Territory, Occupied


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #27 on: December 05, 2008, 07:29:58 PM »

The dems should give up on interior dixie/appalachia and instead chase yankee transplants and the latin vote in texas/the coast from virginia to florida.

The Yankee transplants are largely conservative, especially people my age. They didn't all leave because the weather was sh*tty up there you know.

Conservative by NY or Massachusetts standards is moderate or liberal by most of the south's standards, States. Tongue
Logged
??????????
StatesRights
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 31,126
Political Matrix
E: 7.61, S: 0.00

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #28 on: December 05, 2008, 08:35:03 PM »

The dems should give up on interior dixie/appalachia and instead chase yankee transplants and the latin vote in texas/the coast from virginia to florida.

The Yankee transplants are largely conservative, especially people my age. They didn't all leave because the weather was sh*tty up there you know.

Conservative by NY or Massachusetts standards is moderate or liberal by most of the south's standards, States. Tongue

Socially perhaps.
Logged
Kaine for Senate '18
benconstine
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 30,329
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #29 on: December 07, 2008, 04:00:51 PM »

Ahh the South... Not a good place for new England liberal people in a normal election (2004)
So I've heard...

Then we should stop nominating New England liberals.
Logged
pbrower2a
Atlas Star
*****
Posts: 26,842
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #30 on: April 25, 2009, 09:44:51 AM »
« Edited: April 25, 2009, 09:55:50 AM by pbrower2a »

The author of this article reeks on anti-southern sentiment. I hate it when fools like him write about how the south is full of dumb racists who refuse to embrace "change." I'm sure no one talked about the south breaking the shackles of the confederacy when they voted Republican for the first time in 1972 after being solidly Democrat since the Civil War.

I'm not so sure that the opinion writer is so anti-Southern (VA, NC, and NC went for Obama, and GA was one of the few close-misses) as you think. It seems that this time the GOP won the poor whites who went not so long ago for either Clinton ('96, '92) or Carter ('76). Are poor whites that different from poor blacks and Hispanics who went for Obama?

Obama, I believe, wrote off the South early as places of likely victory. Virginia is no longer particularly Southern; Florida has long been so full of non-Southerners (the American North,  Latin America) that it can't be considered truly Southern; North Carolina has been getting an influx of Northerners that its Southern heritage. North Carolina was something of a surprise, and Obama wrote off Georgia only when McCain started to show a chance of winning a couple of states (MI, PA) that Obama absolutely had to win.

It is possible that the South is more supportive of the military than are other regions, so it was more likely to vote heavily for a war hero who had made huge sacrifices for his country. It is also possible that much of the South is more xenophobic than the rest of America. Obama is definitely not a Southerner, and even if he is a black man, he is not the sort of black man with whom Southerners have much familiarity. Give Tennessee some credit for having come close to voting for Harold Ford, a black man who at the least has an unambiguously  Southern heritage, in a political climate similar to that of 2008 (2006).

Kerry may have lost the South when exposures came out that his father had been born in Austria with the name Kohn. Joseph Lieberman was obviously no political asset in any Southern state. The South firmly rejected Mike Dukakis. I question whether a candidate with the surname like Kowalski, Hansen, Antonelli, or Takahashi  from Michigan, Minnesota,  Pennsylvania, or California could have done much better than Obama did in the core and upper South this time. McCain is the sort of Scots-Irish surname that one might expect to find in a telephone book in Greenwood, Mississippi -- in part because John McCain's grandfather was from there.

Unlike much of the rest of the country, the South attracted few European immigrants in the sixty or so years after the Civil War. The South had no obvious attractions for people who saw freehold farming, industrial labor, small-business formation, or education as paths to family success. Abysmal education, starvation pay, a feudal social structure, land under control of planters who were unwilling to sell, hidebound tradition, and no good markets for start-up merchants all signified what European immigrants were trying to avoid because they knew much the same in those parts of Europe that they were from. The South has since changed, but not quite not enough to become indistinguishable from New England or Pennsylvania. 

Harold Ford demonstrates that the issue isn't race. Obama's campaign was tailor-made for the realities of an urban America (and Suburbia has become far more urban than rural) even in the logistics of campaigning. The South is still far more rural than any region in America except for the Upper Plains, and Obama found campaigning in Richmond VA, Charlotte NC, or Orlando FL far easier and more productive than campaigning in Enterprise AL, Brookhaven MS, or Malvern AR. He would have won Georgia if it were more urban, and his 2008 electoral campaign is still premature for Texas (even if Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and El Paso are ready for him). 

Obama could campaign effectively in small-town America -- as shown in Iowa -- when he was campaigning exclusively in Iowa during the Iowa primary. But once the campaign went national, where did one expect Obama to campaign -- where he could get large crowds and meet lots of voters in a State considered a "swing" state (like Dayton OH) or in some place where the rewards for his efforts were slight at best (Dayton TN)? Obama won an election as much on time management as he did on issues. Harold Ford could campaign in rural Tennessee; Obama couldn't.

Obama has not yet written off the South in 2012. It is possible that he will run the government in a way that serves poor people -- including poor whites in the South. Obama would love to improve the lot of poor southern blacks who voted for him in huge proportions, but he can't do so without also helping poor whites whom the Hard Right has done practically no discernible good. Should Obama reach poor Southern whites as did Carter (in 1976) and Clinton, he wins a  landslide re-election.   

I don't see Obama as a vindictive person toward people who "voted wrong". He just might need the votes of Southern whites to win re-election in 2012 if a bunch of things go wrong between now and 2012.            
Logged
pbrower2a
Atlas Star
*****
Posts: 26,842
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #31 on: April 25, 2009, 10:07:07 AM »

The South contains the following The second and fourth(TX and FL) largest states in the nation and possibly 2nd and 3rd in a another 5 years. The largest swing state(FL). Five of the fastest growing states in the nation(TX, FL, NC, GA, and VA). Yet still has states with serious growth potential like MS and LA(set back by Katrina) and SC.  Really unimportant. Name a region with all those characteristics and I will concede the point.


The West of course has California and fast-growing Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho. I can't be sure that New Mexico and Nevada are true swing states -- but Colorado apparently is.

I could make the case that Texas is as much Western as it is Southern. Texas will be a legitimate swing state, as it isn't more Republican than is Pennsylvania. I think that had Obama been in the same position in October 2008 as was John McCain, then Obama would have made a late-season attempt to win Texas votes. 
Logged
Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 57,964
United States


Political Matrix
E: -7.87, S: -3.83

P P
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #32 on: April 25, 2009, 11:44:48 AM »

Democats don't more need the South. Obama could have lost the election by 1,7 point and still get more EV than McCain, without any southern one.
Logged
HAnnA MArin County
semocrat08
YaBB God
*****
Posts: 4,037
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #33 on: April 29, 2009, 09:18:32 PM »

The author of this article reeks on anti-southern sentiment. I hate it when fools like him write about how the south is full of dumb racists who refuse to embrace "change." I'm sure no one talked about the south breaking the shackles of the confederacy when they voted Republican for the first time in 1972 after being solidly Democrat since the Civil War.

Isn't this after the realignment of the Solid South in 1964 when the national Democratic Party, led by Lyndon Johnson, embraced civil rights for African Americans, advocated desegregation and integration of public schools, and became the "liberal" party? Let us not forget the conservative Republican Barry Goldwater. The South is still the Confederacy in terms of ideology; the ideologies of the national parties just flipped because of the issue of civil rights. This is still pretty evident in the South where, unfortunately, the Republican Party is the white people's party and the Democratic Party is the black people's party. Which leads me into the topic of this thread...

Democrats cannot and must not give up on the South. The 50-State Strategy has worked very well for the Democrats. Because of it, we have gone to places where Democrats were thought to never win (Idaho-Walt Minnick, Wyoming-Dave Freudenthal, Utah-Jim Matheson) and have succeeded. I think over time we'll see the South crack; it has started already with Virginia slowly but surely become a slightly blue state and North Carolina is quickly turning into a battleground state. Georgia was also really close due to the large black turnout in 2008, and given the demographic changes in the state I would argue that it could turn into a battleground state if Atlanta continues increasing. Florida will always be a true swing state regardless that it's located in the South; it's not as Dixieish as southern Georgia and Alabama. I argue that Democrats can reclaim the South. Take Mississippi for example: Kentucky voted more for McCain in 2008 than it did (but, not that surprising given that Mississippi has the largest black population of any state in the country). We know from Bill Clinton that Democrats CAN win the Appalachian states of Kentucky and Tennessee and West Virginia, as well as the Deep South states like Arkansas and Louisiana. That leaves Alabama, which may be quite a stretch for Democrats to win, but I think it can be accomplished. Oh, and South Carolina with its large African American population can also easily go Democratic.

On a side note, I do think the South would be easier to win than say for that swath of Great Plains states from North Dakota all the way down to Texas. I, personally, consider this region of the country more Republican than the South.

I think what 2008 taught us was that the West has gone from a Republican stronghold to a true battleground where Democrats are becoming increasingly more successful. Save for the GOP bastions of Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, at the federal level I would argue that Democrats can and will win all the Western states of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Montana in a presidential election (possibly even 2012).
Logged
Pages: 1 [2]  
« previous next »
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.043 seconds with 12 queries.