Republicans are crowing that the president didn’t do that great in last night’s primaries in Arkansas and Kentucky, or in the recent contest in West Virginia. I don’t think it’s good sign for the Republicans. First, because the president doesn’t need to win any of those states to be reelected, his unpopularity there has no obvious repercussions. Second, because all three states have Democratic governors, West Virginia has two Democratic senators, and Arkansas has one, the implication is that Obama is more unpopular there because of his race than the party’s policies.
Democrats have been doing great in statewide elections in West Virginia and Kentucky during Obama’s first term. Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe, a Democrat, was reelected in the Republicans’ wave election of 2010 with nearly 65% of the vote. The only drag we’ve seen in these states has been on the district level where we’ve lost some seats in the House of Representatives.
There’s no reason to believe that a white presidential candidate wouldn’t immediately compete for the electoral votes of these states. Arkansas and West Virginia are both traditionally Democratic states, while Kentucky is more of a swing-state. What last night’s results show is that the president’s problems in Appalachia stem less from any Republican strength than from his weakness there among white Democrats. Since it is unlikely that the next Democratic presidential contender will be black, it’s also unlikely that the Republicans can rely on these Appalachian states to remain solidly in their corner.
I’d also like to point out that the dissension among Appalachian Democrats isn’t as strong as people might think.
The poll of 1,002 Tennessee residents who are 18 and older found 42 percent would vote for Romney and 41 percent for Obama if the election were held now. The survey, conducted May 2-9 by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for Vanderbilt, had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
Geer cautioned that the registered voters among the poll participants favored Romney by a larger margin, with 47 percent saying they would vote for the former Massachusetts governor and 40 percent for Obama. He said that’s a more likely outcome in November.
If Obama wanted to…if he needed to, he could work to get his voters to the polls in Tennessee and make it a competitive race. That would be an irresponsible misuse of his resources, but the point remains. What the Republicans seem to think is Democratic weakness is actually a sign that racism is the only thing propping them up. That’s kind of depressing on its own, but it offers little hope for this November and even less hope later on.
