It’s a shame that Mississippi is still so racially polarized. I don’t think, however, that we should blame that on the candidates running for office.
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Or at least not blame it on all of them.
I am so freaking bored. I keep hitting refresh in the comments at my own blog, but nobody’s around. I do have stuff to do–working on overheads for tonight’s class–but that’s more bearable if I can fit in some light visiting and chit-chat in between doing actual work.
yeah well, what canya do? At least Obama won.
My kid is visiting until 3/22, so I’m not paying as much attention as I could be. My four year old is infinitely more entertaining than Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, even when they do their ping-pong ball trick.
A shame, but not terribly surprising. Maybe we could shave off a chunk of Atlanta and send it over, even things up a bit. Georgia seems to be the Deep South contest we’ve got the best shot at in November.
Here’s something to bring the absurdity of the modern surveilance state home…
The United States Government will be searching in the online universe of “World of Warcraft” for terrorists.
I can’t even make it up. But I sure hope they don’t find my ALF sleeper cell in Second Life…
Yep. Gotta agree with you. It really was too much to expect a 50/50 Obama-Clinton split from the white Dems. Personally, I was hoping for him to break 1/3 of the white vote, but if you looked at other deep South states with comparable demographics, it just wasn’t in the cards. Maybe someday. And as far as the candidates, I mostly agree with you, but I’m not willing to cut Clinton quite that much slack yet. Ferraro just happening to emerge from obscurity shortly before a primary that was known to be this racially sensitive just seems a little calculatingly suspect–but I’m biased.
(Actually, I think hearing some of what I’ve heard today here, the long-running “Muslim” issue DID muddy the water, too. Elective ignorance is not our friend.)
Another point: I talked to people who basically confirm the Republicans-for-Clinton crossover thing. I just glanced at some numbers and it looked like thousands and thousands. I don’t know if the so-called Limbaugh factor was in play here, but if you look at the “how (not) satisfied would you be with [in this case] Clinton in November” exit data, it looked kind of high compared to Obama’s. Other people are better suited to running all that down than I am, but I’m kind of concerned about it. Still, that aside, not enough white Dems voted for Obama–period.
In the end, the white rascists here couldn’t deny Obama the primary win, and that’s what matters–he got the most delegates. NOW I’m wondering about those white Dems in PA that Rendell mentioned–will they be able to, at least in part, help deny Obama Pennsylvania? The polling doesn’t look good, but then, If I recall, the Obama campaign long ago factored a PA loss into its plans.
And so on we go.
Interesting. And with all that he still got the 61%. The people of Mississippi may have indeed sent an even stronger message last night that we thought.
There are few unusual developments that make the demographics look worse than they are;
24% of Clinton’s support in Mississippi came from Republicans — call this the Limbaugh effect. This was just reported on Hardball, and a number of us here have already reported on this ‘party-raiding.’ Even without the Limbaugh effect’s contribution to the polarization of the Mississippi results, there still was ample polarization. But much like the big state fallacy, intra-party contests tend to obscure the level of potential support in the general election, when the party heuristic is the dominant effect.
Still, I don’t discount the effects of race on electoral politics, especially in the South. It’s not as if there isn’t a substantial element of racism in the electorate — both overt and latent. I both agree and disagree with Booman on the issue of culpability, but I’ll save my comments on the subject for another day.
A good way of understanding this subject is through an examination of the perspective of many white males — surprisingly. And whether you agree with this perspective is not important, the fact that it exists and must be addressed is. Amongst many blue collar white males, there is an attitude that the Democratic Party is a coalition of special interests, i.e., minority groups, and that everyone except white males are the beneficiary of government policies. The following Time article on the subject explains this perspective:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1670184,00.html?xid=rss-nation
“-the subject of a new book by David Paul Kuhn, The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma. Kuhn accurately links the Republican dominance of the past 40 years to the loss of the Haggard vote. The percentage of white males identifying themselves as Democrats has declined from 47% in 1952 to about 25% in 2004. Much of that decline was an unavoidable consequence of two honorable positions the party took in the 1960s: in favor of civil rights and against the war in Vietnam. But civil rights slid into special preferences (for everyone, it seemed, but white men),. ..”
Because issues of class are taboo in our corporate media, the idea that lower class white males might not be particularly advantaged tends to be unconsidered. But another aspect of the problem relates to the culture wars rather than economics, which might be related to changing male roles. The following excerpt gives us a glimpse of the perspective.
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=68225069-3048-5C12-00FA02842EFBC1AA
“-“Democratic primaries and conventions often rocked with the language of rebuke,” McPherson wrote in a 1972 memoir. “Very like, it has occurred to me, the language many wives use in speaking to their husbands, particularly toward the end of marriages. You never think of the children, or of my mother, or of me; only of yourself. Substitute the ignored disadvantaged, the homeless, people trapped downtown. The reaction among husbands, for whom read `white male voters,’ is what is normally provoked by attempts to burden people with a sense of guilt.”
“-As portrayed by the new breed of liberalism, the white man held all the cards, and everyone else’s bad deal was his fault. The problem was that the bulk of white men did not feel like dealers or players. They felt like pieces on someone else’s table, and their livelihood, their family’s very stability, was in richer men’s hands, as well. Increasingly, as Reagan assumed the presidency, many white men, particularly those in industrial trades, found their lives marked by instability. This was true in the home, as cultural changes refashioned the role of women and the place of sex in popular culture. And it was especially true in the workplace, as many once-secure union jobs disappeared.”
Viewing the flight of the Reagan Democrats from the Democratic coalition solely or even primarily in terms of race would be a mistake. Moreover, the presumption of a zero-sum political game in which one group must be appeased at the cost of the support of another is also mistaken. Reaching these voters is essential, and labeling them racist only interferes with attempts to establish communication.