Racism to doom Obama in South?
In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, University of Maryland professor Thomas Schaller opines that Barack Obama’s strategy to turn a few red states blue is fatally flawed by bad math.
I agree with Schaller’s general premise — Obama will have a hard time wresting control of the South away from the GOP. But the reasoning behind Schaller’s argument is as fatally flawed as Obama’s campaign in the South.
For all the statistics and figures he uses, Schaller presents a point-of-view that is surprisingly shallow. Tucked beneath his math about why the South will, as he puts it, “fall again,” he seems to present the argument that Southerners vote Republican because they harbor a deep-rooted racism.
Beginning with the 2nd paragraph of his column, Schaller repeatedly throws in the word “Confederate” when referring to the South, going so far as to say that Virginia is on the verge of “seceding from the Confederacy” because of an insurgency of “upscale non-Southerners” into the D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia. Well, goshums, Ma, I guess all of us’ums Rebs down here in Gen’ral Lee country got a diff’rent mindset than them thar upscale Yanks, cause we harbor racial tendencies. What’s harbor mean, anyway, Ma?
Schaller argues that Obama cannot win Mississippi because, as his mouth shows, he would need to convince 21% of the whites there to support him. That won’t happen, he argues, because “only 14% of white voters in the state supported Mr. Kerry.” And we all know that if John Q. Caucasian didn’t support John Kerry, he sure ain’t supportin’ a black man, don’t we? Don’t we?
Schaller’s racially-tinged argument seems to be a give-away when he argues that “Passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act led to an upsurge in black voting in the South, but it also caused many white Southerners to register and vote as well — for the Republicans.” In other words, white Southerners vote Republican because Democrats support civil rights.
Well, let’s make 2 things perfectly clear: White Southerners typically vote Republican. And there will be some who will not vote for Barack Obama because of his skin color (just as there are some black Southerners who will not vote for John McCain because of his skin color . . . or to put it more aptly, those folks will vote for either candidate because of his skin color).
But let’s put aside the throwbacks to a war that happened 140 years ago and a segregation movement that ended nearly a half-century ago and examine why Southerners really vote Republican. Thomas Schaller is a product of the Washington-Baltimore-Annapolis metroplex. I’ve spent 29 years living among Southerners. I think I know what makes us tick. And I’m surprised that it even has to be pointed out that Southerners vote Republican because of — brace yourselves — religion.
This is the Bible Belt, and it is for a reason: Folks vote their conscience, and their conscience is guided by their morals, and their morals are obtained from Biblical teachings. One may feel that it’s misguided to bring social issues into politics, and that’s one’s prerogorative. I have no intent of making a too long post even longer by delving into the merits or lack thereof of placing more importance on a social agenda than on the economy, healthcare and education. I’m simply telling you that this is the way it’s been here, and has been since the Moral Majority initiative of Jerry Falwell. Folks in these parts didn’t need Rev. Falwell to tell them that they opposed abortion and gay marriage; They believed that long before and would’ve voted accordingly, but were blissfully unaware of the importance of such issues in politics until Falwell’s day.
Folks around here didn’t vote for George W. Bush because Al Gore was a former 2nd in command to the man who wore the title of “America’s First Black President” proudly on his sleeve. They voted for George W. Bush because Bush wore his Christianity and social conservatism on his sleeve. There were other reasons, too, of course — Southerners tend to own guns and more Democrats than not tend to oppose unrestricted gun rights, and there are other minor issues as well. But I would argue that social conservatism is the key persuasion of the Southern vote.
Clock back 32 years, to Jimmy Carter’s victory in the 1976 presidential election. Carter was a Democrat, just a decade removed from the civil rights legislation that Schaller contends caused Southerners to rise up in support of Republicans, and Carter swept the South, with the exception of Virginia. Why Carter? Why a Democrat in these shark infested waters of tainted by racism and Democratic disdain? Carter was a native son, of course, but the election wasn’t that simple. Carter, like George Bush 24 years later, wore his religion on his sleeve — perhaps moreso than Bush — and he offered up a platform built around evangelical leanings.
Make no mistake: White Southerners will vote for John McCain. But it will be because Barack Obama supports abortion, including partial-birth abortion, and a variety of other causes on a socially liberal platform rather than because of the color of his skin (need we point out that Jesse Jackson won the Democratic primaries in Virginia, South Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi in 1984? Or that Barack Obama faired quite well in the South this winter and spring? And that both men were opposed by white opponents in primaries that included large numbers of white voters?).
So, the final line of Schaller’s argument is a bit flawed. Obama won’t lose the South because it is, as Schaller puts it, “The country’s most racially polarized region.” Obama will lose the South because it, whether for justified reasons or not on the social issues, is the country’s most conservative region.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:12 pm
I agree. 100% right. Why then was Obama villified for saying exactly what you just said? The press made it seem like he was talking down to everyone in the South and Midwest.