So there I am... peacefully drinking coffee...

[Bigmack]

after dinner. Ms Bigmack started screaming obscenities about what she was reading (not an unusual ocurance). She started reading to me and we soon had a real high-decibel bonding experience going.

"In Alabama, where Obama spent virtually no time or resources, he lost whites making under $50,000 by 87 to 11 percent and non-college whites by 90 to 9 percent. Even in North Carolina, a Southern state he visited frequently and in which he invested enormous resources, he lost non-college whites by 67 to 33 percent and whites under $50,000 by 57 to 42 percent. And in Virginia, where Obama both began and ended his election campaign, he lost non-college whites by 66 to 32 percent and whites earning less than $50,000 by the same 57 to 42 percent as he did in North Carolina."

By contrast... "In Wisconsin, whose urban and rural districts were more pro-Obama than any of the states outside New England, Obama won non-college whites by 52 to 47 percent and whites earning under $50,000 by 60 to 39 percent."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22156

This is not a South-bashing thread, but shit, folks.... WTF? What are white, non-college people in a generally depressed area doing even considering voting for a Republican? Any Republican! Non-college doesn't mean stupid. Working people aren't stupid. Southerners aren't stupid.

Is it simply racism? That's too facile an answer.

Ms. Bigmack's solution ... "not one more dime of my tax money going to those bastards...those southern states just suck money from the government they say they hate."

Mine... I dunno.... Help me out. What is going to bring the (mostly Southern) working and non-college voters back to the Democrats, where they belong?

[RB TexLa]

1. I think you are making far too much of an assumption about the stupid part

Never overestimate the ignorant of America. Yes they are all over the country but there are documented pockets of them in certain areas.

[143tbone]

3. Uh oh. n/t

[Kahuna]

14. Have some...

:popcorn: :popcorn:

[thunder rising]

11. Agreed! Southern racism is still strong and they will eat their children before they change

[Kalyke]

34. Wow... a bigot calling others racist.

Bigotry, as you know, is stereotyping a group of people by color, or sex or REGION and painting them with a broad brush.


FWIW, I'm Southern and white and I voted for Obama. So did my entire Southern white family (including some in Alabama).

[Beausoleil]

36. I thought the statement was about Southern racists

not Southerners. I am a Southerner also, but not as touchy.

[LanternWaste]

40. judging by the response

judging by the response, you may be right...

[Fumesucker]

2. Realistically, what have the Dems done for working people lately?

I'm non-college, white, middle aged and live in the deep South, I voted Dem because I'm a life long liberal and as such I refuse to vote Repub but I have few illusions the Dems will actually do anything much for me.

[lonestarnot]

7. I hope you are wrong! But those bluedogdicks!

:banghead:

[Bigmack]

22. Can't argue - yell back- much

at what you wrote...except to note that the Dems have done a wee bit more than "those other ones" have - minimum wage....teeny little safety net bits....modest support for women and abortion rights and some other less than revolutionary stuff. They're still the lesser of two evils....maybe not even intrinsically evil, but.... Ms Bigmack

[acmavm]

30. And there ladies and gentlemen, you have the answer. And Fumesucker

is right. What has the democratic party done for anyone not making under a million dollars an hour lately. Pretty much nothing. So, what does anyone expect?

Dems talk big. They talk about healthcare and wages and the price of food or utilities or gasoline. But what the fuck have they really done? When have they EVER delivered? Other than NAFTA/CAFTA of course. And welfare reform. And corrupt bankruptcy laws.

They've continually voted to fund a war, they've caved to repubics on every social issue that has come before them, they voted to give billions to people who gamed the system and put us all out of work while we handed every last damn dime over to them so they don't get hurt in the economic turmoil THEY CAUSED. What else? Oh well. it doesn't matter. My point being that if the dems don't have anything else to offer, and since they have continually voted along with and supported repubic policies, what the fuck credibility would anyone expect them to have?

Oh shit, they didn't just do that in the south, did they? That's pretty much how they act in general, don't they?

Want credibility? Get rid of Reid and Pelosi. Keeping them as head of the House and Senate is doing nothing more than rewarding collaborators and allies of the most criminal administration ever seen in this country.

[Kansas Wyatt]

37. If Democrats would actually start representing the working class again

Instead of just talking about it and/or trying to figure out a way to make that work in the current Reaganomic Policy Model, they would actually be SHOCKED to find out that they wouldn't have to campaign all the time and lick up campaign donations, because they would always win elections.

But no, let's continue to just talk about helping working people, like republicans talk about banning abortions. That way they can focus their time and resources on their 'chic' special interests.

[Pavulon]

4. Look for correlation to religion and single issues

where abortion is murder and second amendment was roasted by urban dems to lazy to fix root cause. We do have some racists here, but they are dying out. Social conservatives tend to vote for conservatives, even against their own personal good.

[Thirtieschild]

24. You got it.

Until we retired to the Southwest six years ago, we lived in the South all our adult lives. I was thinking the same thing - the votes there are mostly about religion and conservatism. The Plains states are pretty much Anglo (as we describe whites in NM) and vote just as conservatively as the South, in some cases more so.

[GrantDem]

5. I am reminded of a scene in Mississippi Burning...

In the movie Mississippi there is a scene in which Gene Hackman's character tells a story about his father and he says "With an old man so filled with hate, he didn't realize that it was being poor that was killing him."

[lonestarnot]

9. Great line, but what if one realizes both those factors?

Because I hate bushitlers, and financially poor too. But my kind of rich makes up for both of those other problems. :D So I guess in combination with my genetic make-up, I will live for a while. :shrug:

[Tangerine LaBamba]

6. It's not facile,

it's accurate.

Never underestimate the power of racism in this country.

[blue neen]

8. I live in western Pennsylvania. The county where I live went for McCain by about the same margins.

The mantra I heard from the McCain supporters over and over? "That Obama guy is gonna' take away our guns." They really have been drilled that line here by the NRA...and it also was an excuse to cover up racism for some of them.

[demodonkey]

26. I think I live in the same county. And I heard the more rascist shit during the campaign...

...than I could believe. One night I was in a McDonalds and a woman there said that if Obama wins blacks will "take over" and "they come into this restaurant and knock you and me off these stools and there won't be a thing we can do about it." WTF???

She then went on to say that she knows a minister who says that it is in the book of Revelations that "a black Muslim will become President of the United States and bring on the end of the world." I pointed out to her that Revelations was written about 700 years before Mohammed was born, but she didn't care. The preacher said it so it's true. WTF WTF??

This is about 20 miles east of Pittsburgh, in the suburbs, not in some mountain hick village 50 miles from nowhere!

Then, a few days before the election I was called by one of the Faux news creepballs' national producers (they found me through my work online) and was asked to denounce John Murtha's "Western PA racist" statement on their show. Of course I wouldn't do it. And I told the producer that Murtha's remark has a lot of truth to it.

What's The Matter With Pennsylvania?

[baldguy]

10. Chickens voting for Col Sanders.

[Alcibiades]

12. It's not that Obama is/was black

that cost him votes of working class, non-college educated folks here in NC. It's the fact that he's a Democrat. Kerry's numbers looked similar, but there is hope: 1. the numbers of these folks are decreasing as a % of the population 2. the young voters in these categories went a little more Democratic than their parents did, even here in NC.

There has been a massive campaign to convince white working class folks that all Democrats are bad: given the extent to which this propaganda has been catapulted, what's amazing is that many of these folks DO see though the bullshit and vote Democratic anyway. :dem:

[Captain Hilts]

19. That's right. They haven't voted for many Dems. nt

[DS1]

13. Guns and God

[Goblinmonger]

15. We're just that damn cool here in Wisconsin.

I offer exhibit A: your article.
exhibit B: Feingold.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

20. C.

Cheese??!!

[Iwillnevergiveup]

16. Won't make a prediction about 2012

but let's see what happens to the numbers in the deep South states Barack didn't win this time. If he does reasonably well in the next 4 years, particularly with regard to jobs and the economy, might not we see at least Georgia turn blue? And if his numbers accelerate across the South four years from now, will not that persuade us that racism was indeed a substantive factor this year?

[MsTryska]

29. Not if talk radio

keeps screaming in everyone's pickup trucks here.


They won't have the cognitive opportunity to put 2 + 2 together and realize it's a Dem making their life better.

[Kalyke]

35. Amen!

The problem with the South is that they only know what a Democrat is through the filter of Republican talk radio. Which means they don't know what a Democrat is.

[MsTryska]

43. That's the thing that kills me....

My BF is one of those guys in his truck with the radio going all day long.

If we discuss topics (de-regulation, healthcare, housing bubble, etc), without it being a "political" discussion, he's a populist, and a liberal from tiem to time. If i make some political statement, he slips right into talk-radio talking points. I don't think he even realizes he's parroting the radio verbatim.

I haven't brought it up yet, not quite sure how to bring up the talk radio as mind control conversation.

[Edweird]

17. oops.. wrong one.

[Captain Hilts]

18. Obama spent a ton of money in WI during the primaries. He outspent Clinton more than 5-1...

There was no similar campaign in Alabama to raise his profile.

[cali]

25. He spent virtually no money here in Vermont

Vermont is almost entirely white. He won Vermont by over 30 points. There goes your argument.

[Captain Hilts]

41. Not at all. It's not about race. Vermont is a dark blue state all the time. nt

[Ilsa]

21. Southerners and Texans are taught to hate unions and democrats.

We had an anti-union LTTE in our local rag today.

They seem to think they the GOP has some greater moral standing compared to democrats, probably mostly because of the abortion issue. They say they don't approve of premarital or extra-marital sex, but they are into it as much as any group, maybe more. The divorce rates are pretty bad in the south, IIRC.

Alot of them are freakish about central government or any decisions being made by anyone not local.

[mrcheerful]

23. You also got to take into account that these nit wits also think they get tax cuts along with the

wealthy. Here in Michigan I run into that a lot, the democrats are going to tax us to death never mind that the nit wits saying it make well under $100,000 a year, heck the majority make less then $75,000. Btw, these same nit wits also think they have to pay a death tax, estate tax, never mind the majority of them haven't a clue as to where the line is drawn for estate taxes they know farmers that lost family farms due to the estate tax, though in reality after some researching the family farms were lost due to loans that were unpaid at the time of death.

The last governer Engler, told the nit wits that by cutting single folks without kids of the welfare rolls would save the state billions and it would mean citizens of the state would have lower taxes. Yet after people were cut off the welfare rolls not only did the state taxes not get lowered, they went up, yet not a word about it from nit wits. Then the following year Engler raised the sales tax by 2 cents with the same promise of lower taxes to the home owner yet again no taxes were lowered.

You can't fix the stupidity of nit wits and you never will for the main fact that nit wits really don't care how much they pay, nit wits are only concerned about someone else getting something instead of the nit wits getting it. They are that mean and stupid, really, medicaid pays for birth control, one of the nit wits biggest bitches is to many poor folks having kids, yet because their medical insurance doesn't pay for BC they want medicaid to stop providing BC.

[Ilsa]

28. I hear you! I remember a LTTE from years ago where a family

member bemoaned the loss of a family-built business after the owner died. The letter didn't mention loans, but blamed the estate tax. I kept wondering how a business as large as that would go through decades of commerce without any tax planning by the CPA or other professional accountant working for them. And I also wonder if maybe the business really just owed alot in back taxes.

[bertman]

27. This non-college grad, North Carolina white boy voted for Obama--proudly.

It's sad but true that many southerners are still locked into the race and religion mindset of so-called conservative thinking. But it is changing. Slowly.

Mostly because of all the damn Yankees, I think.

Down south, when Yankees come here to visit we refer to them as Yankees. When they come here to live we call them damn Yankees. And there are now a lot of them in the areas that helped turn the Tarheel state blue in November. Bless their little Yankee hearts.

[Odin2005]

31. The answer is quit simple: God, Gays, and Guns. n/t

In their minds voting for Dems will send them to Hell because we are all "baby killers" and "pervert enablers" and similar BS.

More proof that Religion is an evil force.

[Cleita]

32. We lost them when segregation ended.

I guess they are racist. I don't know how you are going to be able to change that.

[onetiredmom]

33. Living in the South all my life...

I would say part of it is that Southern people (in general) are more conservative socially and Democrats don't fit that description. I don't think they would have voted for any Democrat, no matter the race.

[K Gardner]

38. Born and Raised in TN. It is bigotry, stupidity and ignorance. I hate it.

[benEzra]

39. Stay the HELL out of our gun safes, for one.

The DLC keeps returning to new gun bans, ammo bans, ad nauseaum like a moth to a flame, in an attempt to look "tough on crime" to right-leaning authoritarians. That particular 1990's Third Way stupidity may work in D.C. or NYC, but it is radioactive in a lot of western, midwestern, and southern states.

And the gun issue is NOT about hunting guns, contrary to DLC cluelessness on the issue; only 1 in 5 U.S. gun owners hunts. It's primarily about modern-looking carbines and post-1860's magazine capacities---which the repubs at the Brady Campaign have dubbed "assault weapons" and want to outlaw.

For those who don't see why we need to alienate tens of millions of people for no good reason:

Dems and the Gun Issue - Now What? (written in '04, largely vindicated in '06, IMO)

Alienated Rural Democrat

[Bigmack]

42. I have 9....

weapons for hunting and defense. I have heard the Dems talking about guns for years, yet I have never been concerned about anybody taking my weapons.

There's probably 250 million unregistered guns in the US. The sheer magnitude of any gun confiscation program makes it highly unlikely.. strike that... impossible. The VC and Iraqis and Afghans have shown US gun owners the way. If they come for our guns, they won't pry it from my cold, dead hands... they won't even be able to find the fuckers.

Besides, we can't afford to fix the goddam roads, what makes you think the govt is flush enough - or squared away enough - to organize a gun take-back?

Controlling weapons by permitting? Or Ammo control by the same? Yeah... sure... that'll work. Nobody is able to get any drugs into this country, either.

Gotta quit worrying about guns and start worrying about survival, and whatever the Repubs do is counter-survival.