2008 Re: Mississippi Democrats are Awesome, but W. Virginia’s are Racist.
posted by on May 14 at 12:40 PM
Wait a minute, Josh.
As Charles has pointed out, the difference between the outcome in West Virginia last night and the outcome in Mississippi last night may have far less to do with white voters than with black voters—meaning, the relative presence or absence of black voters in a given state.
In West Virginia, the number of black voters was so negligible that the exit polls didn’t even have a big enough sample of black voters to allow for a projection of which way blacks had voted. In Mississippi, black turnout was high and black voters seem to have helped the Democratic congressional challenger win his surprising victory.
So the lesson here is not to be found in comparing the white demographics of West Virginia with the white demographics of Mississippi, finding that they’re similar, and then trying to call liberals out on some sort of hypocrisy for liking the result in Mississippi and not liking the result in West Virginia.
The lesson is to be found in comparing the black demographics of each state. Blacks make up about 40 percent of the population in Mississippi. They make up just over 3 percent of the population in West Virginia. It’s a telling difference.
It suggests that a major difference between the working-class white Democrats in West Virginia and the working-class white Democrats in Mississippi is that one group has had far more day-to-day interaction with non-whites and is therefore much less apt to be scared by campaign messages playing to fears of an “other” and casting Obama as out of step with American values (as happened in both the Mississippi contest, in which Republicans tried unsuccessfully to sink the Democrat by tying him to Obama, and the West Virginia contest, in which many white voters had clearly been reached by messages telling them Obama was a Muslim, unpatriotic, etc).
And Josh is a poopy-head!
I don't think you linked to Feit's post enough.
Who is Josh again?
I'm from North Dakota. About 5 percent of the state is Native American. Asians, blacks, and Hispanics make up less than 5 percent. The rest of us are whiter than a Saltine factory - and we went for Obama heavily.
Why isn't there anything in here about the demographics of Appalachia? Obama simply does bad there among the white working class democrats — thus the losses in Penn, Ohio, WV, etc...
Haven't you read TPM's account of that yet? Or Sullivan's?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/194870.php
And then Clarkj scrolled further down SLOG. Pwnt.
The lesson is, SOME whites won't vote for a black man, but blacks will vote for a white man. It blows away Clinton's "they won't vote for me because I'm white" theory.
Clarkj: North Dakota is full of working-class people, Democratic-NPL or otherwise, and he won here. I don't buy the "black people are scary" idea or the "Obama doesn't do well with white working-class people" idea. Sure, he lost Ohio and Pennsylvania, but he won Iowa and Nebraska. There's got to be a better explanation.
#3: A poopy-head!
Game Over, John Edwards is going to endorse Obama tonight.
Of course Mississippi's population is over 37% African-American.
And of course every Congressional District in Mississippi has the exact same prop... oh, wait.
Stranger needs to stop engaging these inbred, barefoot, illiterate scribblers.
There is something different about the way the virtually all-white culture of Appalachia responds to a black candidate than the virtually all white Democratic electorate of North Dakota or Iowa or Vermont or Idaho responds to a black candidate. The two differences that come to mind are level and quality of education, along with the related issue of economic prosperity.
Those non-Appalachian white states generally have good public education systems - their students score among the highest in the nation on standardized tests- whereas in Appalachia, the schools are severely underfunded and awful. In the non-Appalachian states, huge proportions of high school seniors go on to college. In the Appalachian states almost no one goes to college. As hard a life as farming can be, average Iowans or Vermonters are much wealthier than average West Virginians or Ohio Valley dwellers.
The difference is that whites in North Dakota or Idaho are secure in their station in life. They might not know many blacks, but they're also not threatened by a black person or other minority surpassing them economically. Economically insecure Appalachians are quite threatened by blacks and other minorities getting ahead of them. See, George Packer's reporting on this from Kentucky (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2008/04/the-race-in-eas.html).
Obama will probably have to write-off WV and KY. But, there are enough non-Appalachian Democratic votes in PA and OH that he can still win them. Especially, if he picks OH governor Ted Strickland as his running mate.
All I know is more women voters back Obama than Hils.
Shut up, Will.
Good analysis, Bill LaBorde.
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