Maybe someone can find some study somewhere that can back up or disprove my theory. It seems to me that there is a particular regional component to racism in this country’s politics. By this, I do not mean that only people in region A are racist. I mean that racism is a politically decisive (or at least potentially so) factor in certain regions, and not in others. There was no obvious racial polarization in Iowa and New Hampshire. In Virginia, things got more interesting. Even while Obama was carrying 65% of the state, white Democrats gave Clinton 56% of their vote. Yet, white independents went for Obama with 66% of their vote. And in the southwestern part of Virginia, Clinton won counties with anywhere from 66% to 81% of the vote. We saw similar racial polarization in parts of southeastern Ohio, and in Oklahoma and Tennessee, where white voters seemed to reject Obama at such a stunning rate that a racial component can hardly be ignored. And this was all long before the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright emerged in the campaign.
In Georgia, Obama won decisively among white voters under 45, and lost decisively among white voters over 45. But in other Deep Southern states, Obama lost the white vote by whopping margins. In the South and along a North-South swath that rougly resembles the settlement pattern of the Scots-Irish, it appears that there is white resistance to a black candidate even among the Democratic electorate. I do not mean to suggest that every white vote for Clinton is racially motivated, but I am talking about regions where Clinton vastly outperformed state and national polls. I am talking about places like Belmont Co. in Ohio, that gave Clinton 72% of the vote, or Hawkins Co. in Tennessee, that gave Clinton 74% of the vote. I suspect that Obama will do very poorly in those counties in the general election, even among white Democrats.
In some states, like South Carolina and Mississippi, the white resistance to a black candidate is more than made up for by the even greater enthusiasm for a black candidate from the African-American community. In other states, like Oklahoma, Tennessee (and quite likely, West Virginia and Kentucky) there are not enough African-Americans to overcome white resistance.
The further we get away from Appalachia and the Deep South, the less pronounced this racial divide appears to be. It doesn’t seem to show up at all in the Plains states or the Mountain West. And in the Southwest, the Latino vote adds in an added component that complicates matters.
My theory on this is that white resistance is strongest in areas where there is a legacy of Jim Crow, where there are large black populations mixed with massive job loss, and in cities like Philadelphia, where the Republican Party doesn’t compete, and politics is traditionally conducted along racial lines. Strangely, outside of some cities like Detroit (where there is no white side to the Democratic Party) the suburbs seem to have shaken off the legacy of white flight, busing, etc., and embraced Obama.
What this means for the general election is a good question. I think it means that Obama will have a very hard time winning in the Border States, where racial polarization is very strong, but the African-American community doesn’t have the numbers to offset white resistance. So, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee are probably lost causes. On the other hand, Obama will probably do better than the average Democrat in South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi, because of enormous black turnout.
Following this logic, Obama should follow a Southwestern strategy, and try to pick up Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. He may find that he is competitive in Kansas and Montana, too. Another option would be to attack his regional weakness head-on by picking a vice-president with strong appeal in the exact demographic that seems most troublesome. Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia is a perfect choice for this purpose. As the author of Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, he knows and identifies with Appalachia more than any other sitting politician. And he could help staunch Obama’s bleeding in the southwestern corner of Virginia and hand over the state’s 13 electoral votes to the Democrats.
It’s unfortunate that racism still lingers on, but with the right strategy it is a factor that Obama can overcome.
