Really interesting political analysis of Pennsylvania. The writer uses actual census data and interviews real people rather than relying on his memory or political clichés about the state:
On June 30, 2011, an enthusiastic Mitt Romney arrived here in the heart of the Lehigh Valley determined to make Pennsylvania a presidential battleground state.
A key assumption underpinned Romney’s appearance in Allentown — that theworking class whites who once dominated this great industrial center would back the Republican nominee.
Both the Obama and Romney campaigns made significant investments in advertising in Pennsylvania. The pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, and two conservative PACs, Crossroads GPS and Americans For Prosperity, have together spent a total of $9.7 million; the Obama campaign and its allied super PAC, Priorities USA Action, have spent $8 million.
By the end of August, however, ad buying stopped. The Romney campaign effectively conceded the state.
From 1998 to 2011, the number of registered Republicans in Lehigh County fell from 75,099 to 73,857, while Democrats shot up from 78,002 to 107,594.
From 2000 to 2010, Lehigh County went from 83.2 percent non-Hispanic white to 70.7; from 3.6 percent African American to 7.7 percent; and, most significantly, from 10.2 percent Hispanic to 19.5 percent. The political consequences of recent population trends have been dramatic.
He sees brown people. They’re included!
And then there’s this:
The reason Romney has a strong, 13-point edge among all white working class voters, according to the P.R.R.I. findings, is that in the South his margin is huge. In the rest of the country, the white working class is much more closely divided.
Among southern working class whites, Romney leads by 40 points, 62-22, an extraordinary gap.
The story in the rest of the country is different. In the West, where Colorado and Nevada are battleground states, Romney leads by a modest 5 points, 46-41. In the Northeast, which Obama is expected to sweep, except perhaps for New Hampshire, Romney holds a 4-point advantage among working class whites, 42-38. In the Midwest, where Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin are in play, Obama actually leads among working class whites by 8 points (44-36).
There are huge regional differences among white working class voters. Who knew?
Napoleon
Heck, here in Ohio alone there are, I bet, huge regional differences (maybe not as big between the South and rest of the country, but there all the same).
Lurking Canadian
There must be something about Romney that makes him uniquely attractive to white southerners. I can’t imagine what that might be. His hair, maybe? The broad shoulders thing? Maybe it’s his scathing contempt for them?
None of those sound right, but there’s got to be something.
Balconesfault
The Southern Strategy is working!
Since that seems to be the only thing working for Romney – I’d suggest they do a lot more of it between now and November.
BGinCHI
Great post, Kay.
That number breakout regionally for white, working class voters is amazing. I’ve been shaking my head at the numbers for a while in terms of the midwest as I could not believe Romney was up that far around this region. It’s helpful to see that he’s not. It’s also been interesting to see that IN is not considered a swing state and no one has it in play for Obama. We’ll see if that holds true.
Working class people are pissed, and many are going to take it out on the man Fox has their finger on. But the others who think for themselves and do any actual looking into facts are going to come to a different conclusion.
BGinCHI
@Lurking Canadian: His Baptist values?
Wait, no, it’s not that.
Kay
@Napoleon:
There are. The Ohio newspaper poll breakdown was really interesting. Romney is trailing everywhere but in the southeast part of the state.
BGinCHI
@Kay: Is that coal country crap really working, you think?
Talk about the opposite of progressive…..
Kay
@BGinCHI:
This is my obsession, but I really do think one has to go to the county level to understand what’s happening. Broad national punditry is misleading (although EASY, which may be why we get so much of it).
It’s a big, diverse country.
Linda Featheringill
The working class whites, the salt of the earth . . .
OTOH, what was it I saw last night about Obama being ahead among Nascar fans?
Villago Delenda Est
Amazing. Rmoney has the racist white cracker vote in the south.
It’s just shocking that he’s managed to somehow get a majority of the descendants of the cannon fodder for the slaveholder elite of the Confederacy.
Just shocking. Color me surprised!
BGinCHI
@Kay: Agree. Illinois is like that and so are IN and WI. The midwest has old divisions and some new ones, but the micro-regions are fascinating.
As soon as the suburbs start getting more diverse the GOP is in big trouble.
FlipYrWhig
Would Southern, white, working-class voters ever swing towards any Democrat anymore? My feeling is that they’re just diehard Republicans, and they would even vote for Romney over native son Bill Clinton. If that’s true, then in an odd way I have more hope for the future: it wouldn’t be that the group en masse is flaming retrograde racists, but that the great majority are unshakeable Republicans grasping at whatever the anti-Democratic argument/slur du jour happens to be. Republicans voting Republican doesn’t require a ton of explanation.
Comrade Mary
I — I have to sit down.
EconWatcher
I didn’t know this, and it’s really important to push back. Obama does not have a problem with the white working class. He has a problem with crackers. Wonder why? It really takes a lot of the sting out of this supposed “working class” problem.
Edit: I see Villago beat me to it
Villago Delenda Est
Kay, I’m sure you’ve seen the county-by-county comparison of blue and red from ’04 and ’08, in which counties in the “Scots-Irish” counties of the Appalachians and Ozarks were redder in ’08 than in ’04.
Like Lurking Canadian up above, I can’t begin to imagine what might account for that. Nope, it’s really got me puzzled.
PeakVT
And Romney is losing one of those two outside the MoE.
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: What are the reasons for that deep seated racism, you think?
True story, one of my friends, originally from Missouri, belongs to this demographic, he refused to come visit us when we lived outside DC, reason, DC has too many black people. I thought he was joking, may be he was serious. This dude is married to an Indian (from India) woman no less.
I don’t get it.
ETA: I think it stems from fear, they know how poorly they treated black people and are afraid of getting their just desserts if black people gain a real political upper hand.
catclub
“There are huge regional differences among white working class voters. Who knew?”
Well, it helps explain why we are not ruled by the Wobblies.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est: It obviously has to do with the elephant in the room, but it also has to do with class.
The poorer white working class competes more directly with minorities. A party who wants to gin up resentment instead of “raising all boats” can easily do that, especially in rural areas where fighting over shrinking slices of the economic pie is getting fiercer and fiercer.
Not discounting race. Just pointing out that race + class is a potent mix.
EconWatcher
I’m pretty sure that, to have a governable country, we have to take the House back.
I say “pretty sure” because a good amount of the Republican obstruction has been aimed at keeping the economy bad enough for Obama to lose. Once that has failed, I could imagine it might possibly get dialed down a tad, especially if the margin in the House is closer. Boehner might have a little more room to cut the no-brainer deals, for example.
Kay
@PeakVT:
The writer talks about how Ohio shares some demographics with Pennsylvania, which everyone knew, but I think it stands to reason that if Pennsylvania shifts ten points away from Romney then Ohio shifts a smaller amount in that direction, too.
nougatmachine
The “I’ve got mine, fuck everyone else” attitude is now apparently civics-minded.
cmorenc
I live in a predominately, though not exclusively Republican neighborhood, and a handful of Romney yard signs have begun popping up in a few of my neighbor’s yards along my street. I’m ok with my neighbor diagonally across the street’s simple “Romney/Ryan” yard sign. I’m MUCH less ok with that of two other neighbors further down the street which say: “ROMNEY Believe in America”, the clear implication of which is that Obama and his supporters are “others” who don’t “believe” in America. And yet, if I put up a sarcastic faux-Romney yard sign saying “Billionaires for $omney”, they’d think I was being a personally insulting asshole.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@BGinCHI: Of course it works. It’s their livelihood, something that seems to get forgotten by folks who can afford to vote their values instead of their immediate needs.
Start hiring folks in coal country to do something different, and better paying, than digging coal. That’s the only way you can stop that “coal country crap” from working.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@EconWatcher:
__
I don’t think the obstruction, sabotage and sedition will be dialed back until the Dems win a midterm election. The Republicans have a strategy that up til now appears to work at least every-other election, and given that they have nothing else to run on, I think it unlikely they’ll give it up until it becomes a guaranteed loser every time.
Having said that, if the Dems can hold the WH and Senate and keep it close in the House I’m reasonably confident about the economy the next 4 years. The best weapon of economic sabotage the GOP’s had the last 4 years has been shrinking govt spending at the state and local level, and the thing about that is that you can’t keep going back to that same well again and again. After you’ve laid off all the public sector workers you can get away with, what comes after that? The Republicans are losing their economic leverage, and beyond a certain point private sector growth will overwhelm what little they can dredge up in the way of new job cutbacks, and eventually the growing private sector will demand an expansion of goverment services, because there’s money to be made in construction, etc. The Republicans are playing a losing hand and running out of cards. Stirring up another war in the Middle East is really the only thing they’ve got left.
Mark S.
@cmorenc:
Then they’re pretty thin-skinned (and how do they know you’re not a billionaire). Now if you put up “Racists for Romney”.
cmorenc
@EconWatcher:
PROBLEM for Boehner with this potential change in tactics is that the House has now gone into recess, presumably until after the election. Even if he tried to bring it back briefly into session in October to cut some “no-brainer” deals, at this point it would be seen by any potential voters it might be intended to influence as the cynical, meaningless maneuver it is. ANOTHER problem is that the hard-right tea party faction in the house has repeatedly shown its capacity to loudly, publicly sabotage even the most no-brainer deals Boehner has attempted to engineer over the last two years. The GOP-majority house has made its bed, and now must lie in it. They may still retain a much smaller post-November majority due to red states/gerrymandered red districts, but there’s nothing they can do to rescue the contemptible view the electorate overwhelmingly has for the house’s performance these past two years
FlipYrWhig
@BGinCHI: Is it real competition, though? I’m less sure of that. I feel like a lot of the people I’ve known with more noxious racial attitudes don’t actually interact with black people (or Spanish-speaking people). They just assume that they’re somewhere out there getting a free ride, fattening up on perks that everyday white folks never get to share. IOW, the attitude isn’t the product of day-to-day experience of rivalry; it’s all a learned fantasy based on the assumption that their lives are tougher than they need to be while Hypothetical Black Person gets coddling and sympathy.
General Stuck
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s not true. They were racists and xenophobes when they belonged to and voted for democrats. . The white ones like Lester, George, and the rest of the white sheet brigades, whatever party they hanged their hats with.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
The thing is, there are not that many blacks in those getting redder counties. Poor whites, in permanently economically depressed areas, living hardscrabble existences. They have to look down on someone.
As BGinCHI points out, class + race is a potent combination. Divide and rule is the oldest trick in the book, and the Southern Bourbons are masters of it. Sometimes, the poor whites almost have enough perception to see that the blacks are actually their allies, but then they fall back into the old “at least I’m not the lowest on the totem poll” habits and the Bourbons win, again.
Dunno what you can do to break the cycle, it’s been in solidly in place for centuries, dating back well into the colonial period. The irony is, “indentured servants” were once little better than outright slaves themselves, and they came from Britain and Ireland. They weren’t as good in the fields (malaria resistance, the sickle cell gene) so they were cast aside for black slaves to do the work, and they were then shunted off to marginal lands to eek out a marginal existence. They blamed the blacks for their situation, because they displaced them. Easier than blaming the 1% of the time who, oh where have we seen this before, pray tell, they aspire to join.
Napoleon
@Kay:
I am surprised it is not in the south western part. It must be the non-white vote in that part of the state, which is all but non-existant in the south east (I would guess)that keeps him above water.
BGinCHI
@Forum Transmitted Disease: So because it’s their livelihood it’s in their best interest to vote for the GOP?
Please explain.
You might start by defining how, once “immediate needs” become divorced from “values” you become vulnerable to the kind of exploitation folks in coal country have been dealing with for a couple centuries.
Litlebritdifrnt
Sully has an interesting piece which links to a longer piece about why Obama’s lead matters – early voting has started already.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/one-reason-obamas-lead-matters.html
I am wondering if the Romney campaign is at all aware of early voting laws in all the States that allow it? If they are holding their powder for an ad blitz in October to one in three voters it will be a waste of time and money, they have already made up their minds.
BGinCHI
@Mark S.: How about:
Romney — Believe in Moroni
redshirt
@BGinCHI: Don’t know if Academia approves of this formulation, but I see racism as a subset of Classism. That is, racism is a tool used in order to keep lower classes of all races marginalized.
Before the founding of America, racism did not exist in any recognizable form as it does today. Sure, folks hated other folks, but it used to be more tribal/national.
It wasn’t until poor whites and poor blacks revolted against their colonial masters in Virginia did the racism we know today emerge.
Randy P
Thank you, Kay. Every time I see a poll that says Romney leads among whites or among males, I’ve been wondering what the hell is wrong with my gender/race. (My ethnic identity is somewhat muddled and “non-black” would be more accurate than “white”. For purposes of polling, I’m a white male.)
Especially since here in th Philly suburbs, I don’t run into any admitted Romney voters on an average day. Even among some former military types.
BGinCHI
@redshirt: We might argue some about paras 2 & 3, but your first para is spot on.
Racism has to be socially produced, and when it has an economic motive it grows fast.
burnspbesq
Kay, you’ll find this interesting: a potential ground for obtaining injunctions to stop voter-suppression shenanigans.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2012/09/constitutional-implications-of-true-vote.html
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
There are huge regional differences among white working class voters. Who knew?
You mean there are REAL white working class voters (Republican, conservative evangelicals) and 47% moochers white working class voters.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@cmorenc:
If your objective is to convert people rather than telling them what you think of them, you’ve got to give them a way of edging away from the current GOP while preserving their sense of self-respect and dignity based on their past positions, becuase very few people have the guts to say “I was wrong”. Our esteemed host JC is an exception to that rule. In face-to-face conversation I’ve been emphasizing the “this isn’t your father’s Republican party, it’s been hijacked by nutcases” line, and making unfavorable comparisons between the party today and the so-called glory days under St. Ronnie, and I think that is to an increasing degree every year having an effect on center-right folks who are persuadable. For the fold who aren’t persuadable, let them be the abrasive and unresaonable assholes in every conversation, because chances are that somebody who is persuadable may be listening in and silently forming judgments based on what they hear.
PeakVT
@cmorenc: Put up a RYAN/romney sign and see if they get it.
General Stuck
@Villago Delenda Est:
As old as Methuselah/Aristocrats pitting one group of paupers against another. Using primal fears like race, as a tool of governance to keep themselves fat and happy.
Cassidy
@schrodinger’s cat: Fear has nothing to do with it. The South is a working class environment without a lot of working class industry. We have a lot of working class jobs that don’t offer the stability of northern manufacturing, etc. So, the South lives with a certain temporary mentality, a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle. So, with everyone in the same boat, Southerners still need a pecking order and that’s where the racism comes from; we’re all the same roughly, but certain people need to know they are better than someone else.
Secondly, Southern towns and cities aren’t “quaint”. They tend to be fairly large plots of land making it easy to self-segregate.
But no matter how bad it gets, we ain’t as bad as that large shithole just past Louisiana.
LittlePig
@Lurking Canadian: There must be something about Romney that makes him uniquely attractive to white southerners.
I get really disgusted listening to the talking heads, “Will this bring up Romney’s poll numbers? Will that bring them down?”.
Either clueless or (as the irreplaceable Charlie Pierce notes) you CANNOT talk about racism. Down here in the South, it’s easy. Every time I hear a news commenter wonder if Mitt’s number will change, I just check how Mitt looks today. If he’s still white, nothing is going to change it.
It’s just like that here. These people are still violently pissed off about Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, and the Northern naivete about this basic fact of reality blows my mind.
ETA: typos
scav
Interesting to do a compare and contrast between Obama’s photo with the puppy food workers (lined up for shaking hands) and Romney’s backdrop of miners (repeated use thereof). Ok, single minutes of a variety of events and interactions but look at the faces too. Telling side by side.
Villago Delenda Est
I think that one way the cycle is broken is military service in an integrated armed forces. Where you’re working day in day out, side by side with people from all over the country, in a common cause, under the most stressful of conditions.
This alters your thinking about a great many things. There is some class conflict (officers and enlisted) but the two classes actually need each other to get the mission accomplished, and the fact that some white enlisted guy likely is under the orders of a black or Hispanic non-com or officer turns the world upside down for the white enlisted guy from Appalachia.
This is enough of a change to trigger other changes. Look at Cole, and his background. He’s tossed into the middle east in an “oreo” outfit (three black guys, one white guy, in each tank) and this is something totally at odds with the demographic patterns of his childhood. Suddenly you discover that black guys are just, you know, guys. This opens the door for a lot of changes in a lot of attitudes.
BGinCHI
@FlipYrWhig: Good question. I’m tempted to say that whites isolated in white-only areas (little interaction with people of color) are susceptible to seeing things along racial lines, but then again the south has whites and blacks living in proximity. It matters then how these groups interact, or not, their history as antagonists, and so on. I’m scratching the surface here and don’t have an easy answer. I’d just want to keep race and class linked as I think about this stuff.
Napoleon
@Litlebritdifrnt:
You basically supply the reason that it is not a waste of money for them not to worry about the advertising not getting to the early voters. Those people likely are the ones that knew a year ago who they were voting for. I bet the true undecideds are the type that fill the forms out late or show up at the polls.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@EconWatcher: This won’t happen. The only thing that today’s Republicans know how to do is double down on utter stupidity. Since this is what they’re good at, this is what they’ll do.
And speaking of which, I was visiting my father this weekend – he’s a lifelong Republican in his late sixties – and he called the behavior of the House Republicans since 2008 “treason”. He meant it. I was stunned. Doesn’t mean he’ll be voting Obama, in fact I’m positive he will not, but he’s kinda done with the party for now.
This election is going to hurt the GOP for years. They had their Carter – W. Like the post-Carter era, it will take a while to get the old guard out of the party and completely change direction. Took us 12 years. The GOP won’t go away, but they will have to do something they don’t do well – change.
OGLiberal
@FlipYrWhig: At the presidential level, they probably won’t. But they still vote for Dems at the state level and even for House and Senate. I don’t necessarily consider West Virginia the South but remember that video from 2008 where numerous white West Virginians said they were Democrats, were always Democrats, would never vote for a Republican, etc. But when asked if they were going to vote for Obama they all said, “no”. Same in the Deep South, although the GOP is a bit stronger there at the state level than they are in WV.
Obviously, Obama’s race has something to do with it but it’s also the perception that Dem presidents – any Dem president – takes everybody’s money and gives it to the lazy browns. Here’s a question – Clinton won Louisiana in both ’92 and ’96….would he win it today?
scav
@scav: Wish the photo wasn’t from 2009 though. Still, all’s fair . . .
LD50
@Lurking Canadian: Probably the Mormonism.
Schlemizel
BUTBUTBUT – The fine folks from ‘ol Dixie keep telling us theys jus like everyone else & its us Yankee bigots that paints em as different.
Once again science and math have failed us and we must accept truthiness as fact!
Schlemizel
BUTBUTBUT – The fine folks from ‘ol Dixie keep telling us theys jus like everyone else & its us Yankee bigots that paints em as different.
Once again science and math have failed us and we must accept truthiness as fact!
ericblair
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Picking winners and losers! Soshulism! Government interference! Bailouts! Solyndra! Magic of the Free Market!
That would require a deliberate national industrial planning effort, which we can’t do because all of the above. Besides “bailing out cronies”, which is the GOP’s main planning technique, the only acceptable industrial planning is the defense industry. Get the gooper’s death grip off of Congress and maybe we’ll be able to have an intelligent discussion about it.
OGLiberal
@Villago Delenda Est: Oldest trick in the book is right. Read American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund S. Morgan. The biggest fear of the powerful back in Colonial Virginia was that they white indentured servants, the recently arrived Africans (many of whom were also indentured servants – this was before slavery was institutionalized), and the Indians would team realize that they were all getting screwed by the man and join forces against him. So you scare the whites by saying that the injuns are going to rape you wife and daughter unless we kill them and that the blacks are going to take your jobs and land unless we enslave them. It worked…like a charm. Still works today, although without the slavery and genocide.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I wonder if this white-white difference (aside from the obvious racial component) has to do with union membership or at least the presence of unions. Places like OH and PA with (relatively) strong union presence/membership and then the Neo-Confederacy where unions are treated/viewed in pretty much the same way the KKK looked at those black folks over yonder.
slag
Excellent job to Edsall! Seriously. And thanks for pointing this article out, Kay! I was starting to worry that there was going to be no getting away from sweeping, unsupported cliches this election season since they’ve been increasingly invading even this here very blog. As always, your sardonic scalpel is much appreciated!
And this:
made me laugh out loud.
beltane
Southern working class whites seem to vote their emotional self-interest over their economic self-interest. Nothing new, they’ve been doing it since before the Civil War, but they appear to be a very unusual ethnicity in this respect. The underlying causes of this behavior lie more in the realm of anthropology than political science.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@BGinCHI: What do we have to offer that is better, that will get them fed NOW, make their rent NOW, get their kids educated NOW?
They have jobs. They’ve been told and have every reason to believe (because it’s true) that Dems want coal shut down. I certainly want it shut down, preferably today. What do we have to offer RIGHT NOW that’s better for them?
Until we have that better job offer in hand, ready to offer them on the spot, they will continue to vote for people who are not campaigning on the merits of removing their livelihoods, in spite of the undeniable fact that the same people are ruthlessly exploiting them and making it easier for their employers to kill them for profits. If you’re dirt poor, a life insurance payout to your surviving family is better for them than you being unemployed. Cruel logic.
I’m not saying this is a good thing, in case I’m misunderstood. It’s just how it is when you’re poor.
catclub
@beltane: something about the Scots and Irish blend in Appalachia. I think there have been books written about it.
catclub
@OGLiberal: Yep, sure makes reading “The Peoples history of the United States” depressing.
Schlemizel
I swear I only hit submit once!
Ben Franklin
@FlipYrWhig:
Republicans voting Republican doesn’t require a ton of explanation
I dunno. ‘Hard hats’, Reagan Democrats, require some explanation. Voting against your own interests is what, patriotic, and unselfish?
OGLiberal
@catclub: Most notably, Albion’s Seed by David Hackett Fischer. Can only speak to this via hearsay – it’s been sitting on my bookshelf for 2-years now. Haven’t cracked it open yet – it’s a long one.
Dork
Why is New Hampshire such an outlier? What’s unique about the Granite State that produces so many dumbasses?
BenA
@FlipYrWhig:
Sure they would. Look at West Virginia and Arkansas. Those are states with strong Democratic voting bases… I think at the very least West Virginia would have been in play if Hillary had won the primary in 2008.
WV actually based purely on voter registration has a huge Dem edge and actually on paper looks an awful lot like PA.
Arkansas has a 10pt registration advantage too.
A Bill Clinton-type politician demographically speaking would mean gigantic wins for the Dems on a national level.
BGinCHI
@Forum Transmitted Disease: I completely take your point, but it’s obviously such a dead end. Grew up poor, most of my life, poor. I understand. But these communities are going to get exploited until they face the ideology that drives their reality.
Yutsano
@Dork: This is part of it. There is also a reputation for individual ruggedness in the state.
Villago Delenda Est
@Dork:
A bunch of libertarian types moved to New Hampshire in an attempt to flood the market with selfish assholes in an attempt to prove that a society of selfish assholes can function and prosper.
Moronic shit about free markets and moochers work well on such rabble.
beltane
@Dork: The lack of a sales tax and state income tax, combined with the Live Free or Die state motto, has made New Hampshire a magnet for New England wingnut refugees, especially those from Massachusetts.
rikyrah
dare I say it… those Southern White working class people are clinging to their Whiteness
Suffern ACE
@cmorenc: When you look at the polls at just how unpopular Congress is (what is it, like 11%, 9%) you wonder how much longer this whole congress thing is going to be around. It has always been the least favorite of the branches – at least it has in my lifetime. But I have never seen polls with approval THAT low. If you took our current set of representatives and replaced them with actual circus clowns, that step might improve its ratings.
beltane
@Yutsano: The funny thing is that New Hampshire is significantly more suburban and genteel than its hippie/commie neighbor to the west, where you can easily drive from one end of the state to the other on nothing but dirt roads.
LD50
@FlipYrWhig: I think being Republican is now hardwired as part of Southern white culture, like Christianity. It’s inextricably snarled up with their interpretation of Jesus, plus it’s a way to differentiate oneself from Southern blacks, who are the majority of the Democratic voters in the Deep South. And as we know, when white Southerners acquire a new cultural marker, they tend to hang onto it for a looooong time.
Villago Delenda Est
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Union membership is like military service in that way, you join together with your fellow workers, regardless of ethnicity, and collectively do something. This changes attitudes, which is one of the reasons that unions are so hated in the South…it’s one of those things where you put aside skin color and work together against the 1%, and the 1% no likey that, at all. So make it difficult if not impossible to form a union, and simultaneously keep the working masses divided against themselves. If they form a union, it starts to percolate that skin color isn’t that important, economic status is, and suddenly divide and rule is weakened as a strategy for the 1%.
ThresherK
\@Forum Transmitted Disease: And the the most predictable part is they’ll still be voting Massey when Massey is done for them. Mountaintop removal is the mining of the future, yet it employs fewer WVians than any of us think, and certainly that won’t change the narrative on the Bidness Page.
(I heard on some podcast that more people work shipping, distributing and selling in the floral trade in WV than in MTR coal mining. No cite, sorry.)
Patricia Kayden
@Litlebritdifrnt: Yes and hopefully millions will exercise their right to early vote. That will make all the $$$ wasted on Romneybot’s ads even sweeter. That will also put to rest all this hysteria that somehow The Bot’s amazing performance during the first debate will clinch the election for him.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Suffern ACE: It’s sad that I read this and thought “that’s actually a really good idea, it would sure work better than what we have now.”
Patricia Kayden
@BenA: So WV and Arkansas Democrats will only vote for a White Democrat? What use is that?
mak
@cmorenc:
Then I would suggest a “Republicans for Romney” sign (or, depending on your locale, perhaps a “Rednecks for Romney” sign). Might be more likely to spark a useful conversation.
Spike
@Villago Delenda Est: This. Also note the 2008 splits in my ancestral homeland of eastern Kentucky, where several counties voted for Mongiardo over McConnell in the Senate race and McCain over Obama.
Joe Buck
In the midwest, I suspect that most working-class whites are now aware that Mitt published an op-ed called “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”. The best jobs available to folks without a college degree in the midwest are connected to the auto industry. That’s it right there.
Cacti
@LittlePig:
Fix’t.
Seanly
We need a shorter name for this meme than “White people drive like this…”
You know how you reach even the whitest of whites? By being open & honest about one’s own views. When I lived in Columbia, SC, I had an older co-worker. Definitely a good ole boy. I got him to open his eyes to seeing that we’re all in this crappy journey through life together. Last time I talked to him, he thanked me for helping him to see differently.
One problem in the South is that the rascism is very prevalent even when you can’t see or smell it. While my mother preached acceptance and love for all, I had to work hard to throw off the blanket of prejudice I picked up from my public education in Little Rock, AR.
I actually went to college (Lehigh!) in the Bethlehem/Allentown area. It’s not as rock-ribbed blue-collar white as it used to be. Lots of recent immigrants, biggest employers in the area are the area colleges (led by Lehigh University) and insurance, healthcare & banking companies. The old steel mill is a 5-mile scar on the riverside now although the coke oven was still in operation.
hueyplong
Cacti, living most of my life in one former Confederate state or another, I believe that the racists around here are much more upset about losing in the 1960s than they are about losing in the 1860s. The Civil War was a clash of arms, they won most of the battles, and they get to claim that they were simply overpowered by the North’s industrial might and manpower advantage.
They lost in the 1960s to a bunch of hippies and uppity Negroes, many of whom are arrogantly with us still.
I’m not really joking all that much when I say this.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Patricia Kayden: Might be pretty damn useful if Hillary runs in 2016. I hope she does. Republicans obviously need a two-decade timeout.
ruemara
You mean white people are people and not a hegemonic monster? Do the white people know?
FormerSwingVoter
I’ll just leave this here:
http://www.fuckthesouth.com
WereBear
Physically, perhaps. At work or school. But mentally, it is still worlds away.
For people my own age, especially. I moved Up North in the early 1980’s, and it was the first time I had actual black friends. In the South, it just didn’t happen because of societal barriers and fear on both sides.
aimai
@OGLiberal:
Absolutely a fantastic book. I recommend it to everyone. Its long in terms of page numbers but its divided into “four folkways” and so each sub section is quite short. Its so readable and gripping that you can hardly put it down. It really helped me understand how the “same” words have a completely different valance from north to south–for instance individual, freedom, god, country, manhood, childhood, time, credit, debt, honor etc…etc…etc…
He has interesting maps for local traits and words and dialect which show how and why pockets of immigration determined the spread of certain ideas through the country–so that you get a appalachian/southern viewpoint quite far from its homeland.
It really breaks down the “north/south” dichotomy which assumes that the Civil War and slavery were the great divide. In reality the divide starts back in the mother country with settlements ruled by different cultures that were different even in England.
aimai
Hob
@catclub: This is nitpicking maybe, but “Scotch-Irish” doesn’t mean a mix of some people from Ireland and some people from Scotland; it refers to people from a specific region of Northern Ireland (Ulster) who were Presbyterian or otherwise non-Anglican & non-Catholic.
Bostondreams
@Hob:
I believe those were the folks brought into Ireland from Scotland after the English did a little bit of relocation service on the island…..
SaltyDawg
@Lurking Canadian:
It’s Romney’s most evident characteristic: he’s white. The President isn’t.
Hob
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: “…where unions are treated/viewed in pretty much the same way the KKK looked at those black folks over yonder”
There’s no “pretty much” about it; the Klan has been heavily involved in anti-union violence since the 1930s. Some of it was ideological– to them, organized labor was both a Communist plot and a racial integration plot– and some of it was just cynical politics, as employers found it useful to stoke racial tensions and encourage Klan activity in order to stop unionization.
RSA
@LD50:
And even more so. There’s been a strong strain of thought among evangelical Protestants that Mormonism isn’t a branch of Christianity. That’s yet another thing that’s surprised me. If a few years ago someone had told me about a Presidential candidate who’s arguably a non-Christian, who graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law, who used to live in France, who was the governor of Massachusetts, and so forth… I’d have said, “That Democrat is going to have a hard time getting any white votes in the South.”
catclub
@Hob: I did not know that.
I do know that I wrote: “something about the Scots and Irish blend in Appalachia”
I am pretty sure that the preferred way to refer to people from Scotland is Scots. not Scotch, I think that is a beverage.
gene108
@OGLiberal:
At the state level the 00’s saw Dems get crushed at the state level in the South.
Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee etc. had some statewide offices held by Democrats in the 1990’s.
Democrats got crushed 10 years ago and still haven’t recovered.
North Carolina Democrats held on for a bit longer, but it will be dominated by Republicans in the near future at the state and local level.
State level Democrats got a reputation for being a good old boys club, with the associated perks and corruption and the GOP/GOP-backers are throwing money into local races, so no one forgets about it.
In short, the GOP has a one-party-level of dominance in the South.
Another Halocene Human
@BGinCHI: I would have thought that Obama would be more vulnerable on the left flank when it comes to coal, but here again comes the “Obama only Republicans can see.”
Fracking, also, too, even though we KNOW the GOP would be worse. (Very cynical of them to use the drop in NG prices to slam Obama.)
Jado
“There are huge regional differences among white working class voters. Who knew?”
Who knew? Any white working-class citizen from any region other than the South who has spent any time with a Southern white working class citizen.
They still have segregated proms down there. It’s a different world.
Another Halocene Human
@Linda Featheringill: There are plenty of African-American NASCAR fans.
I also don’t find them to be super-religious types. The church-goers tend to vote GOP over “social issues”. NASCAR fans tend to be laid back or avid partiers, in my experience.
Another Halocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: You missed the bit where they had the lowest “likely voter” percentage.
Those whites were lured years ago by the age-old siren song, the same one trotted out by the Blackshirts in the 1930’s–white laborers, you can improve your wages by getting ridding of the non-white competition who undercuts you. “They took our jobs” is still playing, along with “using your tax money to collect welfare”. Some people still believe this! But they keep voting for Republicans since Reagan and keep getting kicked in the ass repeatedly. Ga kicked out the migrant laborers and the rubes are still poor! What happen?!
pseudonymous in nc
As someone in NYT comments points out, the Rmoney supporters turn out to be factory supervisors and managers, which is a weird way to define “working class”, unless what you mean by “working class” is “the white guy who has an office overlooking the factory floor”.
Another Halocene Human
@EconWatcher: Stop using “cracker” as a pejorative. I know plenty of crackers and only some of them are Republican dittoheads. Some of them have no use for the GOP and never have.
Also, not every white person who lives in the South is a cracker. It’s an ethnic designation, NOT a political one.
Another Halocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: Them folks need to learn how to politically organize instead of casting ballots out of spite.
Irish Catholics did it.
African-Americans did it.
They need to stop thinking they can solve their problems by appealing to the Great White Father in Washington because they are sitting on top of that sweet sweet fossil fuel and you knowhow Washington deals with indigenous populations sitting on top of energy reserves.
Cf: Oklahoma, Iraq
Another Halocene Human
@cmorenc: How about a nice, subtle “RMoney” with Romney’s Aquafresh R?
Another Halocene Human
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
The crap is where they vote for the owners in local elections and allow themselves to continue to be exploited.
Their jobs are going away because of the mountain-top removal, which guess what also screws rural people. If they banned that shit they’d keep their jobs. STOP VOTING FOR CL SANDERS!!
JoyfulA
@BGinCHI: From what I’ve seen of the South, from visiting in-laws, I am most sharply struck by the lack of interaction between races. Not the way it is here in the North.
Another Halocene Human
@LittlePig: The violent rejection of “social equality” seems to be softening on the edges. NC is trying to go Northern, and Florida has Cubans and Puerto Ricans trickling further and further north. Gainesville itself, seems to be the San Francisco of the South, with mixed race couples everywhere.
However, LA seems to be going straight to hell. So there’s that.
Another Halocene Human
@BGinCHI: What would be interesting would be to compare the hill people (appl. ozarks) which are very isolated, very white areas (no.min.al.ly), versus more integrated parts of the South. Georgia is a case in point.
Cheap Jim
There are political cliches about Pennsylvania?
Another Halocene Human
@beltane: Vermont spends its money on education, NH… doesn’t.
That’s the difference right there.
Origuy
I agree on Albion’s Seed; it’s well worth reading. The section on the Scots-Irish mentions that the people came not just from Ulster, but from Cumbria and the Scottish Borders. This area had long been a world apart from both the Gaelic Highlands and the Anglo-Saxon Midlands. It was a lawless area for centuries, dominated by powerful families who held long grudges. Look up the Border Reivers.
I have a particular interest in the topic since my ancestors include Hatfields and McCoys, though from before the famous vendetta.
Hob
@catclub: That’s true, but “Scotch-Irish” is still how the term has almost always been spelled in the US, for whatever reason. It’s not a term that’s used in either Scotland or Ireland as far as I know.
Heliopause
Not that anybody follows my comments, but I’ve been pointing this out for a long time here on BJ. Obama carried the white vote in large swathes of the country in ’08. He even carried the white male vote in eight states plus DC, was tied in three more states, and within 3% in four more states. When Juicers complain about whites and especially white males not voting correctly what they need to realize is that the problem has deep regional roots that still haven’t gone away in the 21st century.
I’m a left coaster. The deep south might as well be another planet as far as I’m concerned, yet we’re in the same country.
Argive
My wife is from Bethlehem. It’s been a while since the Lehigh Valley was solidly blue-collar white. For one thing, there’s a major Puerto Rican community in that part of the state now (and there are all sorts of horror stories about their treatment by the local police, but that’s for another day). Bethlehem Steel’s long gone. Mostly what has replaced it so far is a conglomeration of shops, restaurants, bars, concert venues and a large casino (which I think Sheldon Adelson owns at least in part). So this idea that PA is totally red outside Philly and Pittsburgh is way oversimplified. We are trending bluer day by day.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@cmorenc:
A better strategy is to put up a sign that says “Patriots for Obama”. It will still piss them off, but they are more likely to ‘get’ it.
Comrade Carter
Um, here in Wisconsin, even in a so-called Republican city like Wauwatosa (I live here) it’s GOT to be Obama by 8% or more among the male and white voters… Of whom I am one.
A) Scott Walker is from here
B) We’ve had enough of Paul Ryan, and we prefer Gwen Moore, even though our own Congressman is Sensennbrenner.
rita forsyth
@Villago Delenda Est: finally someon comments on obvious fact!!!! I worked out of my NYC office in charlotte NC for 25 years. they are still fighting the civil war, I was amazed to hear the constant lamanations about how we Yankees thought they were stupid. That really surprised me, face facts many Northerners are second generation or less amerians the Civil was was a long time ago, they are in a time warp lol
rita forsyth
@Villago Delenda Est: finally someon comments on obvious fact!!!! I worked out of my NYC office in charlotte NC for 25 years. they are still fighting the civil war, I was amazed to hear the constant lamanations about how we Yankees thought they were stupid. That really surprised me, face facts many Northerners are second generation or less amerians the Civil was was a long time ago, they are in a time warp lol
rita forsyth
@Villago Delenda Est: finally someon comments on obvious fact!!!! I worked out of my NYC office in charlotte NC for 25 years. they are still fighting the civil war, I was amazed to hear the constant lamanations about how we Yankees thought they were stupid. That really surprised me, face facts many Northerners are second generation or less amerians the Civil was was a long time ago, they are in a time warp lol
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Origuy: George McDonald Fraser’s “The Steel Bonnets,” as well as anything by the late great Joe Bageant also gives one an idea of the mentality in those parts.
TheWatcher
@Suffern ACE:
Perhaps if some strong leader could emerge, cast off the antiquated forms of the past, and lead with a free hand…
Maybe someone who conquered Gaul….
Zaftig Amazon
West Virginia is not the bastion of race supremacy that a lot of people think it is. My father, a former McDowell County resident, stated that when he was growing up, segregation existed, but people could not make a career out of hating blacks, like they did in the deep South. Since both black and whites worked in coal mines, you couldn’t afford to bring those attitudes to work. The guy working next to you might save your life.
Zaftig Amazon
@TheWatcher:
As stated above, what these people need is JOBS. West Virginia/Eastern Kentucky has long been a national sacrifice area; all that coal fed the manufacturing plants in Ohio Indiana and Michigan. These people were never given any protection from predatory business practices, and all the money was leached out to rich people and corporations. Go back 150 years ago, and West Virginians were making or growing every thing they needed, as has been documented in the Foxfire books. Their problems are akin to American Indians. We allowed corporations to dominate this state, and everybody but West Virginia benefited. The country really does have a moral obligation to step in and make these people’s lives better.