I don’t want to pick a fight with white southerners, but we do have to deal with certain facts:
The problem for Republicans is that the Democratic weakness appears confined to the white South. Even though some analysts suggested that Mr. Obama was historically weak among white voters more generally, he fared better than recent Democratic nominees among white voters outside of the South. That’s how he won battleground states like Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin and New Hampshire. Whatever is causing Republicans to excel in the South, whether religion or race, just isn’t helping them elsewhere.
Southern whites have decided that the Democratic Party is a party for black people, which comes as a surprise to the rest of white America. I think religion does play a big part in this, too, but the result is that the Democrats will have a hard time winning control of the House of Representatives while the Republicans will have a harder time winning the presidency.
Part of the problem for Republicans is that there are other racial minorities besides blacks, so they’re losing badly among Latinos and Asians and non-Christians in state after state.
Maximizing their advantage with southern whites is helping the Republicans maintain control of states like Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina that have sizable black populations, but it is actually hurting their chances nationally.
It’s also polarizing our politics along racial and regional lines in a familiar but very unhealthy way.
I think the question should be, ‘Why do white southerners keep picking a fight with the Union?’.
This really ought to be framed and hung on the wall, Booman. It’s more important even than age or gender. It dooms the GOP as a national party.
Not the fact that blacks vote for Obama — nearly as many voted for Clinton. But the fact that a LOT of whites, not to mention Hispanics, Asians, etc., etc., DO vote for Obama.
In terms of ALL voters in 2012, Obama won 39% of all white voters. Doesn’t sound too good … until you realize that this is exactly the same percentage as in Clinton’s 1992 victory, and significantly HIGHER than for losing Democratic candidates in 1972 (Nixon v. McGovern, 32%), 1980 (Reagan v. Carter, Reagan v. Mondale, 36%) and 1984 (35%).
In terms of those who did vote for Obama in 2012,56 percent, let me repeat that, fifty-six per cent, were white, 24 percent black, 14 percent Latino, 4 percent Asian, and 2 percent other.
But how are “liberals” or “progressives” supposed to understand this when they continue to think of Obama the same way the Republicans do, as “whites don’t vote for Obama because he’s the black president”.
Correction. SOUTHERN whites.
also see:
http://themonkeycage.org/2012/10/28/does-obama-have-white-voter-problem/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021784304
so true.
they really should break it down into regions.
What were the % of Midwestern Whites, East Coast Whites, West Coast Whites that voted for President Obama.
I wanna see the numbers.
Here, try this. (I apologize that it’s is a white racist site, but it has lots of interesting data … )
http://www.amren.com/features/2012/11/race-and-the-2012-election/
Note that in 29 out of 51 states (including DC) the white vote for Obama equaled or surpassed the national average of 39%, whereas in 12 of them over 50% of whites voted for Obama. Those were:
Connecticut 51%
Iowa 51%
New Hampshire 51%
Washington 53%
Delaware 53*%
Oregon 54%
Massachusetts 57%
Maine 57%
Rhode Island 58*&
Vermont 66%
Hawaii 70*%
District of Columbia 86*%
My own state of NY came in at 49%.
* The votes were not yet completely tallied, so these are estimates.
There is a lot of other interesting information there if you continue scrolling down.
I phonebanked a woman in Maine who assured me she was voting for ‘that young buck.’
A seriously underestimated voter preference is for younger rather than older. An appearance of vigor over tired and worn out looking. (Mitt walks like a really old man.)
Some people claiming to be the “real Murkins” may not like to admit it, but the northeastern USA is in fact “the birthplace of our nation”. I mean, even PA was 42% and NJ 43%.
Vermont is where I saw the Obama hq “manned” by elderly white ladies. It was in NH where I worked on GOTV, I met an elderly white couple who told me they had been counting the days to go vote for Obama. part of this is the Bush effect, of course, but these ppl weren’t grudgingly voting for “not Bush”
This story just goes to point how deeply the GOP has turned into a regional southern party.
When they lose even one or two of the big southern states, it’s over.
Oh, and thanks for spotlighting this crucial point, which Nate Cohen buries in his 13th paragraph when it should have been the lede.
Black folks are not voting against their own economic self-interest.
White working class have to bring up all sorts of issues that ain’t got shyt to do with their economic self-interest in order to justify them voting GOP.
Then again, the White working class has always voted for whomever would stick it to the Nigra.
As I say, they cling to the Whiteness.
They’re clinging to the white supremacy. Even Chait sees the doom that entails.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/the-rising-democratic-majority-doomed.html
see, I will forever believe that the stat, post Election, that shocked the shyt out of ‘ The Village’, wasn’t the stats for Black people voting for Barack Obama..
It was the stats of EVERYONE WHO ISN’T WHITE, voting for Barack Obama.
That Asians – that ‘Model Minority’- voted for Barack Obama at even higher percentages than Latinos.
See, they were gonna, if Willard had won, turned around and said, ‘ oh, you Black people, stop whining’.
But, when ALL THE NON-WHITES IN THE COUNTRY have made a decisive choice….
they couldn’t open their mofo’ing mouths.
There are openings–Asians can be hostile to Affirmative Action, historical issues between blacks and hispanics–that can be used to divide but the GOP is so coated in racism they can’t even take advantage of divide and conquer anymore.
Yeah but. These openings are tiny in relation to the GOP negatives.
The outright hostility to immigrants COMBINED with the racism makes the party radioactive for any non-white.
Then you ladle on a heaping portion of Christian Dominionism to further alienate non-Christians (and many Asian immigrants aren’t Christian) and the toxic GOP cake is full baked.
The racialist side of politics is very important no doubt in understanding the republican party.
But I think something important is sometimes overlooked in these analyses. The Republicans have brilliantly adopted a strategy of faux-populism. Within their crapped and cult-like ideology, they are the ones fighting the oppressors, the elites, the powerful. It doesn’t matter if their targets are cartoonish phantoms like climate scientists or the gay agenda or gun grabbers. They are very careful to give their audience the perception that they are fighting against powerful and harmful interests. And the Democrats have largely abandoned the field of populism. Downtrodden whites are, especially after the economic pain of the recession, looking for a party that will attack the “powerful” and faceless “elites” who are responsible for their poor standing. Obviously such whites are also quite vulnerable to dog-whistling. But I think when you focus only on the fact that the dog-whistling allows resentful whites to feel superior to one group, you might overlook the fact that Republican rhetoric also describes a powerful elite who the resentful whites can hate.
I think the failure of the Democrats to articulate a compelling populism of their own is a major factor in the vulnerability of (southern) whites to Republican rhetoric.
I’ve been saying the same thing for years, in the context of running in the South not as a Blue Dog.
I’m very much a populist, so how come I understand that the GOP’s populist appeals are nothing but bullshyt, and they haven’t been on the side of the working person -EVER.
NOT one fucking policy for the working person.
So, explain to me…how come I don’t fall for their populist nonsense, because I know it isn’t genuine.
Because you’re not in a position to buy into one their favorite ‘cartoonish phantoms’, Lazy Blacks Taking What Rightfully Belongs to Good, White Working People.
I’m not sure that it’s the message per se – and that the GOP have one and the Democrats don’t. The thing that Republicans are really good at is message coordination.
Its really clear that there is a very organized top down system so that when the have a piece of crap they want to peddle, there is an army of writers and talkers who relentlessly push the line. And they repeat repeat repeat. Look at Benghazi, its truly astonishing they are still selling that old meat. It’s the shear persistence that pays off; how else could you get people to buy the old meat the way they do?
And with Hillary running, you know what? We’re going to start hearing about how she ordered Vince Foster’s assassination, for the 100,000th time.
They could sell refrigerators to Eskimos.
Too bad we don’t have any organizations in this country like, oh…. national news media outlets, that can sift through the “pieces of crap” that are peddled by the right, identify them as complete bullshit and publicly repeat repeat repeat this fact to the general public. The dictionary calls this “Journalism”. I hear we used to have people in our national media who practiced this very strange form of labor. I can’t seem to find the last reported sighting of one of these creatures, though. My guess is that must be extinct.
Cliven Bundy exercising his 1st Amendment rights under the Constitution of the government that he doesn’t recognize — from the NYTimes Adam Nagourney via WAPO
Just another good ole Mormon boy.
Was it the case that he was born in Arizona and moved in 1948 to the ancestral home that “the gubmint took”?
Apparently not. There were several diary/blog reports that Cliven had been born in AZ – but absent documentation, weren’t good enough for inclusion in my Bundys of Bunkerville diary. Las Vegas Review-Journal has now nailed this down:
His father bought the Bundy Ranch in 1948 and listed Bundyville, AZ (Bundyville = Mt. Trumbull) as the family’s prior residence on the Clark County property records at the time of purchase.
Thanks.
As a white southerner by birth, I don’t think you’re picking a fight with white southerners, Boo.
I think you’re picking a fight with white Republicans.
Go get ’em!
All of this will end when the Civil War ends. I give it another hundred years, max.
Maybe one-fifty.
I think it’s going to be interesting to see how the GOP handles Georgia turning into a pale blue state, which is not too far in the future. Virginia’s pretty much there and North Carolina’s maybe a step or so behind Virginia. I think the day is approaching when gerrymandering isn’t going to be enough to keep the House in the GOP’s corrupt, ignorant, racist buffoon hands.
At that point, watch for the GOP to drop the ignorant, racist, and buffoon, and like the establishment Democrats keep the corrupt.
Interesting movement going on of blacks re-registering as Republicans in Southern states. Enough of that and close personality-conflict primary struggles will hinge on black vote. I am surprised by the number of my black friends and neighbors who have recently confessed to being registered Republican but “disappointed with that party”.
The white Southerners in question are from the same demographics as the militant Dixiecrats. In the 1930s, the Democratic Party failed them when they actually wanted unions. In the 1970s and 1980s, the state Democratic Party failed them when the factories they depended on for work went away one after the other. And how many Democrats running as challengers in the South are giving them a choice for any change in their economic prospects? A few more this year that the last three cycles.
I would say now that the race to watch is the 2nd District Democratic primary to face Renee Ellmers. The NC Democratic Party establishment has put up a former NC Secretary of Commerce (and bribes) in the Perdue administration to try to stop Gay Clay Aiken from getting the nomination. Progressive endorsements are swinging toward Aiken, and his primary opponent is 70 years old–how more “Democrats are out of steam” can you be.
And Southerners never have answered polls honestly, which is how the poor showing for Carter and Gore came as a slap, considering they were favorite sons when they were elected statewide to national office. There is a lot of faux-poll litmus/loyalty testing in Southern political campaigns. Tests that has local social interaction consequences for folks suspected of disloyalty.
Finally, you can use this poll you cite as a pre-Obamacare impact baseline for comparison as the election draws nearer.
A lot of conservative folks in the South are not going to go down the Cliven Bundy “return to slavery” nonsense. And those conservatives are likely to be more affluent and more influential in how the party moves.
My sense is more ferment and flux. The NC Legislative Session does not begin until May 14 (and with it the Moral Monday protests). There are similar Moral Monday movements now in South Carolina and Georgia that include lots of white folk.
The lock-down from this poll is not yet complete and does not necessarily speak of further rightward movement or stagnation in the status quo.
Does CLay actually get ‘ the issues’?
if he does, why not put him up?