NY Times: For South, a Waning Hold on National Politics

For South, a Waning Hold on National Politics

By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: November 10, 2008


VERNON, Ala. — Fear of the politician with the unusual name and look did not end with last Tuesday’s vote in this rural red swatch where buck heads and rifles hang on the wall. This corner of the Deep South still resonates with negative feelings about the race of President-elect Barack Obama.

What may have ended on Election Day, though, is the centrality of the South to national politics. By voting so emphatically for Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama — supporting him in some areas in even greater numbers than they did President Bush — voters from Texas to South Carolina and Kentucky may have marginalized their region for some time to come, political experts say.

The region’s absence from Mr. Obama’s winning formula means it “is becoming distinctly less important,” said Wayne Parent, a political scientist at Louisiana State University. “The South has moved from being the center of the political universe to being an outside player in presidential politics.”

One reason for that is that the South is no longer a solid voting bloc. Along the Atlantic Coast, parts of the “suburban South,” notably Virginia and North Carolina, made history last week in breaking from their Confederate past and supporting Mr. Obama. Those states have experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in recent years, pointing them in a different political direction than states farther west, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

....(snip)...

Race was a strong subtext in post-election conversations across the socioeconomic spectrum here in Vernon, the small, struggling seat of Lamar County on the Mississippi border.

One white woman said she feared that blacks would now become more “aggressive,” while another volunteered that she was bothered by the idea of a black man “over me” in the White House.

Mr. McCain won 76 percent of the county’s vote, about five percentage points more than Mr. Bush did, because “a lot more people came out, hoping to keep Obama out,” Joey Franks, a construction worker, said in the parking lot of the Shop and Save. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/us/politics/11south.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=politics

national politics, the better. I cannot tell you how many, "He's a Moslem!" and "He's a terrorist!" and "His preacher cussed GOD!" "No he didn't, Bobo, he cussed Amurka!" "Goddam! Thats worst!" It has made me sick! It is frightening how much venom and pure hatred there is down here for the President-Elect. It is dangerous...

than Republican, yet they vote their fears and prejudices rather than pragmatically.

"Instead of "futile pandering to the nation's most conservative voters," in the South, Democrats should build a non-Southern majority to regain dominance, argues Schaller, a University of Maryland political scientist, in this focused, tactical account."

http://www.amazon.com/Whistling-Past-Dixie-Democrats-Without/dp/0743290151

Some pundits are saying this election proved that we are now post-racial. These people haven't been paying attention. If there were a white candidate as obviously qualified as Obama, with a 'normal' name, he would've won 70-30 in the popular vote.

...these stupid motherf*ckers deserve to be left in the dust.