Whither, Southern Politics?

Reflecting on the election results, Mark Schmitt gives Thomas Schaller’s Whistling Past Dixie thesis a B:
Obama easily collected enough electoral votes to win without any Southern states. But that Senate seat in North Carolina sure is useful for the new president to have, and those Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida victories certainly reduce the sense [...]

Read Full Post »

A Few Election Reflections

1. When in doubt, blame the South. A Daily Kos commenter did some quick number crunching and found that when you take out the former Confederate states plus Kentucky and Oklahoma, Barack Obama and John McCain evenly split the white vote. McCain won the white vote on the whole only because of his 68 to [...]

Read Full Post »

2008 Electoral College Vote Predictions

Alabama: McCain. Large (27%) black population, but the white population is simply too conservative to make this a viable possibility for Obama.
Alaska: McCain.
Arizona: McCain, but closer than he’d like.
Arkansas: McCain. Smaller (16%) black population than Alabama and similar problem with conservative whites makes it a difficult state for Obama. One place where Hillary Clinton might [...]

Read Full Post »

Are the Pennsylvania Polls Wrong?

This is the polling trend for Pennsylvania.
Yet this is what people are saying about the race there: “I don’t believe there’s a double-digit lead.” “The history of the presidential elections here is different.” “The polls don’t necessarily reflect what will happen on Election Day. We’re not a state that’s accustomed to huge blowouts.” And so [...]

Read Full Post »

Putting the Election in Historical Context

“This is 1964 territory,” Andrew Sullivan writes. Except…it isn’t. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson received about 16 million more total votes than Barry Goldwater did, relegating Goldwater to a mere 52 electoral college votes (collected solely from the Deep South and his native Arizona). Barack Obama is not going to beat John McCain so dramatically. It’s [...]

Read Full Post »

Great Moments on Canvassing History

So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!”
Woman turns back [...]

Read Full Post »

Thoughts on the Third Debate

I. Ta-Nehisi Coates made a very good point during his liveblog:
You just heard why John McCain will lose. He pivoted from an attack on ACORN and Ayers to his campaign getting the economy back on track. Worst segue ever. The two don’t line up. Ayers and ACORN don’t take you to a larger campaign theme. [...]

Read Full Post »

Great Moments in Focus Group History

“Well, I don’t know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I’m sick of paying for health insurance at work and that’s why I’m supporting Barack.”
“I’m gonna hate [Barack Obama] the minute I vote for him. He’s gonna be a bad president. But I won’t ever vote [...]

Read Full Post »

The Failure of the Second Debate

The second presidential debate was pretty much awful. The format was awkward and seemed almost specifically designed to avoid substantive responses to the questions. By contrast, the first debate seems light years above and beyond. That one was perhaps the best debate in recent times. Jim Lehrer did an excellent job and the format actually [...]

Read Full Post »

“Hey, I Think She Just Winked at Me.”

Rich Lowry is — rightfully so — getting a lot of disdain for his weird, vaguely sexual ode to the “starbursts” Sarah Palin sends into living rooms across America. In the spirit of fairness though, Ezra Klein did once refer to Barack Obama as “not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over [...]

Read Full Post »