In only 20 states the percentage who votes for Obama below 40% (a realistic majority to say one way or the other).  In the remaining 30 states the vote came out closer to 50/50 (including my home of Pennsylvania).  While I would love to see every state heavily blue but white men are still the bread-and-butter of the Republican Party which is why they’re attempting to stop immigration and everything else that’s threatening to their perception of society.

Though as a gun owner, who cares if they purchase more ammo or guns?  Let them, as long as they don’t attempt to start some silly misguided attack on society I could care less.  The idiots who brandish guns at police during the tea party rallies are the morons who give responsible gun owners bad names because as children nobody taught them the proper way to handle frustration. 

Anybody else noticed that the states who voted against Obama tended to be the most rural, thus the least likely to have a large minority population and any advanced urban society?  This whole argument eventually boils down to the requirement of people to live in close proximity.  The closer we live the more we respect each other it seems.

As a straight, white male in America, none of the demographic changes bother me.  Frankly, it’s way past time we acknowledge that the world is made of way more than just straight, white, males.

What does bother the hell out of me is the imminent threat of violence that seems to get amped up more and more as many of the straight, white, American males come unglued while watching their privilege slip out of their fingers. 

We had 8-years of relative calm among the nuts while their boy George gave them the impression The White Man would prevail.  Obama’s election has given them free-rein to go completely insane.  Glenn Beck is the new poster boy for American lunacy.

If they want to lose their shit, fine.  But taking out other people on their slide down to barbarism — that’s not cool at all.

Therapy, Prozac, hobbies: Good

Guns, guns, and more guns: DoublePlus Ungood…

I know this is completely off-topic, but the colors on that chart are not intuitive.  I expected purple to be a mix between red and blue, rather than the extreme of red.  I was surprised that Alabama and Mississippi were so moderate, until I took a closer look at the key.

Lisa Simpson: “Wasn’t this supposed to be a secret ballot?”
Library Dude: “Meh”

The issue in these states is also whether or not there’s an easily-locatable minority (especially black) population for the aggrieved white privileged class to target and blame. Look at this map now, and look at which states “opt out” of the public option to stop those people from getting their “government” hands on healthcare.

As (sort of) noted at the end, it’d be interesting to see a comparable map for white women.  I’m not sure exactly how the gender break is in American politics (we Canadians didn’t really have one through the 70s and 80s, it began to re-emerge in the 90s but it’s still far from settled) - looking though, numbers I see put women at +5% Democrat over men; I’m not sure there’s likely to be a strong racial component to it (but maybe there is?)

I’ll try and avoid taking any person offence, though I think I’m pretty moderate for a white guy (I was, for what it’s worth, a member of the Ontario Liberal Party at one point, but while I’ve vote for labour aligned New Democrats, I won’t vote for the Urban Hippie ones, and really only for the fiscally conservative Green candidates - I do mostly vote Liberal/Green; so middle-o’-the-road.  Maybe I should take offence and get told off?)

Speaking just as a thrice-transplanted and re-introduced Cheesehead, I’m pleased to see Wisconsin is the most “liberal” of the Midwest states - by this very limited measure.  Interesting to see that the northwest voted in the majority for Obama as well.

Anybody else noticed that the states who voted against Obama tended to be the most rural, thus the least likely to have a large minority population and any advanced urban society?

Alabama and Mississippi have large black minorities (26% and 37% respectively). And while Birmingham is a shithole for sure, it’s still as advanced an urban society as you’ll find in any other city of a million-odd people. The Appalachian states tend to be more rural, more racially homogenous and less urbanized (not to mention more historically likely to vote Republican) yet their white populations went for Obama at a 30-45% rate compared to the deep south’s 5-25% rate.

Although I would like to see a county by county breakdown. It’d be interesting to see how eastern Tennessee, which is Appalachian and has voted Republican consistently since well before The War, compares to western Tennessee which is more deep southish with a touch of midwestern.

“...essentialist”??!! Thank you, Amanda.  As a lifelong existentialist, I’m always glad to see someone who recognizes essentialism for what it is.

Amanda!  Please!  It’s “smarter than they.”  Not “smarter than them.”  You don’t say “smarter than them are.”

I see this all the time, and it drives me nuts.  Have a heart.  Get yer personal pronouns right.

Aurelius, I could care less.

I am shocked, SHOCKED, to see that Alabama & Mississippi had the lowest percentage of white men vote for President Obama. Did NOT see that one coming.

Amen to what you say.

I’d change “nuttiness” to HATE PANIC though.  Nuttiness sounds too benign.  There’s nothing benign or harmless about that level of orchestrated sustained hate nor the damage their panic can/will lead to and has already led to - re white supremacist, anti-choice/misogynist ‘random’ murders that have already happened since 11/3/08.

I deliberately use a conversational tone on this blog, which means conversational and not formal grammar. Hope that helps! I’m not a believer in “proper” grammar, though I do appreciate clear language.

Aurelius, I could care less.

You mean, couldn’t care less.

Heh.  This is fun.

They also demonstrated why randomly chosen color schemes in maps like this are a bad idea. I think half of the Yglesias thread Amanda links to (and where I first saw this) was spent complaining about the color scheme.

Having lived in Wisconsin for a long time, I think a county-by-county map like this would be interesting. In some ways Wisconsin is hugely divided. Madison, Milwaukee and a few other areas are fairly liberal, most of the rural areas and parts of suburban Milwaukee are conservative, and the Fox Valley area (home of Joe McCarthy) are rabidly conservative. The numbers lean slightly Democratic.

Amanda!  Please!  It’s “smarter than they.” Not “smarter than them.” You don’t say “smarter than them are.”

I see this all the time, and it drives me nuts.  Have a heart.  Get yer personal pronouns right.

You see this all the time because it is the way English has worked for hundreds and hundreds of years. English has an historical grammatical pattern that blocks the assignment of nominative case to personal pronouns unless the personal pronoun is in a position immediately preceding a finite verb form. Many native speakers of English still adhere to this historical pattern which produces things like “I am it” vs. “It’s me” or “I went to the store” vs. “Me and Bob went to the store”.

Sentences such as “It is I” and “smarter than they” are relatively recent innovations in English and many people only know them from school, they are not naturally occurring forms for many/most native speakers.

“advanced urban society”

And what is this?

“advanced urban society”

And what is this?

More advanced than less-advanced urban society?

Having lived in Wisconsin for a long time, I think a county-by-county map like this would be interesting. In some ways Wisconsin is hugely divided.

I bet it’s like this in nearly every state.  I live in northern Virginia, which is pretty different than the rest of the state.  It’s more of a suburb of Washington DC.  Oddly, it’s the more prosperous area, yet tends to vote more Democratic.  A county map would be great (as long as it uses a better color scheme).

Sure, many states are like that and I would be interested to see it for them, too. I just know Wisconsin reasonably well.

In some parts of the country we should see more of a straightforward urban/rural divide, but other states are going to be more interested. North Carolina, for instance.

Makes complete sense.

Interestingly enough, the person who popularized the phrase “god, guns, and gays” was a straight white man - Howard Dean in 2004.  And ultimately, shifting the insecure and arrogant institutional power grip my fellow straight, white males cling to is probably gonna require a whole lot more recognition from us about the massive amount of unearned privilege we really have, and the willingness to let go of a huge amount of that power in the pursuit of a more truly equitable society.

I sometimes hate being a part of a group that collectively stirs up so much resentment among other demographic groups who aren’t in our circle, but I also realize that my “burden” is absolutely nothing compared to the burden women, POC, and LGBTs in America have to bear every single day of their lives simply because of the innate characteristics they were born with.

I also have come to realize that it isn’t enough for straight, white males to sit on the sidelines and say, “yes, this is unfortunate” about the situation, that we must be active players in fighting against the institutions which have preserved our privilege for millennia.  Otherwise, we too are part of the problem, even though many of us may want to pretend that sitting on the sidelines and not actively disrupting the fight for equality is “good enough”.  Complacency is complicity.  And it would be damn patronizing for me to claim that I’ve never been complacent, so I won’t.  I do try to be a better proponent of equality everyday, though I often fall short.

And more importantly, plenty of straight white dudes don’t go along with this.  They’re either not invested in the idea that their straight white maleness should make them superior to others, or they’ve looked at the facts and adjusted their beliefs accordingly.  Usually, it’s a combination of both.  And I think that’s increasingly true of each generation, so in a sense this is a storm we just have to weather.

Very important point.  As ugly as that map reveals reality to be, I have no doubt that that map would have looked ten times worse had an African-American candidate been on the presidential ballot 40 years ago.  The most progressive state would be giving an African-American candidate only 20-24% of the white male vote in the 1960s.  And even in the 1980s, just 20 years ago, I’m not sure an African-American general election POTUS candidate can break 50% of the white male vote in any state, even liberal meccas on the West Coast.

So yeah, things are far from great and the straight, white, male demographic still has a lot of growing to do… but I think they’ve gotten better than they were a few decades ago, and believe they will only continue to get better as time progresses.  It would be interesting to see that map broken down further into generational cohorts, just to get an idea of where the Gen X and Millennial straight, white males lie compared to their older predecessors.

“And what is this?”

Something I suspect you take far too much for granted.

While it would be extremely interesting, I have a nagging feeling that a county-by-county breakdown would make me very, very ashamed of my hometown.

“advanced urban society”

And what is this?

Populations of a million plus people, traditionally with at least one university in or near it.  Overgrown factory towns like some of the “new south” urban centers aren’t as technically advanced as western urban centers or northeastern.  Course this is all up for debate in the end. 

On another note, Mississippi has a density of 60.7 people to a mile, so you would only find 20 blacks in any given square mile of the state, a relatively small number versus other similarly sized states.  The fact that Mississippi, Arkansas, and some of the other traditionally “deep south” states are so painfully racist still is evident.  Sometimes, all things just aren’t equal.

I looked at these numbers extensively after election (love that kind of nerdy thing) and was interested to see that in the Southern U.S., white women and white men voted virtually identically.  The big gender gap states among whites were generally in the northeast, plus Illinois, where women went for Obama in overwhelming numbers.  The gap between white women and men in places like Rhode Island and Delaware was huge and was in double digits or pretty close in Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.  I am sure that there is an interesting explanation here, but I am not sure what it is. 

http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2008/11/more-obsessing-about-the-election.html

Obama won a majority of the white vote in 18 states, plus DC (where I’m proud to say Obama got 86% of the white vote.)  Encouragingly, he won the white vote under 30 nationally, by 54-44 as opposed to losing it 55-43 across all white age groups.

Hate to double post but people who put words in my mouth bother me more than anything.  The states with large African-American residency also tend to have low electoral turn-outs for their elections.  Compounded by the fact that even as South Carolina was teetering close to a 50% majority for a time it continued to elect white candidates and had exclusionary tactics. 

Not everything is about race, but you can count it is a relative thing within the system at all times.  Go look up Project Implicit, it explains the underlying context of race in society.

that there a lot of gay people, non-white people, and women that are smarter than them, and that sometimes someone can be all these things at once and still be smarter than them.
And this blows their mind. they just don’t see it. I don’t even think they believe someone different then them period are even fully human. The whole White Mans Burden thing you know? 
The last sentence about weathering the storm makes me feel better though. It just seems as if things are never going to change.

Can I just say this map sucks? Once you get above three or four colors for a concept like this, it becomes nearly unreadable.

As for the message, people have been voting for their own racial/ethnic group as long as there has been democracy. It’s one of the reasons why democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

Sentences such as “It is I” and “smarter than they” are relatively recent innovations in English and many people only know them from school, they are not naturally occurring forms for many/most native speakers.

Actually, the former I learned from a comic book, of all places, as I’m not a natural grammarian, I can only tell you what sounds right or not.

This is my taxpayer dollars at work, it was on my city water/garbage/sewer bill:

We suggest that all exposed water pipes are insulated.

And no, I don’t live somewhere in the Far East.

<u>deliberately use a conversational tone on this blog, which means conversational and not formal grammar.</u>

Exactly.  When I was a young lad I took to reading some Gertrude Stein, and when I asked Mother Avenger for some guidance she informed me that Stein was writing in an old-fashioned style of spoken English that had become virtually extinct then as now.

I don’t understand where people got the idea that the deep South is lily-white and overwhelmingly rural. As someone already mentioned, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama are #1-3 on the list of states by percentage of black residents (discounting 60%-black DC as not actually a state). #4 is South Carolina, #5 is Georgia.

I don’t get this idea that rural = redneck either. Like Iowa for example is quite rural and they vote for the Democrat practically every Presidential election and just legalized gay marriage.

What I find interesting about this map is that despite all the talk about how Obama couldn’t perform in Appalachia, he got roughly the same number of white men in West Virginia to vote for him as he did in Maryland, which he won handily.

Like Iowa for example is quite rural and they vote for the Democrat practically every Presidential election and just legalized gay marriage.

See also: the entirety of upper New England (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, western Mass). Very rural, very white, very liberal. Or MN/WI.

The country is more complicated than urab/rural or coastal/heartland.

Or even redneck/not redneck, since white men in WV voted for Obama in the same numbers as those coastal elites in Maryland and Connecticut.

whew! for a minute there, i was starting to think i should just find a high bridge, and end it all.

“We’re all aware that not all white men are bad guys; so you straight white dudes about to get upset, why don’t you pat yourself on the back for being in the minority that knows how to act like grown-ups?”

agreed:

“As for the message, people have been voting for their own racial/ethnic group as long as there has been democracy. It’s one of the reasons why democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

think: jack kennedy and catholics.

i’m actually surprised at va’s % (35-39), but i suspect that if you were to do a distribution analysis, by county, it would be heavily skewed towards the northern va area.

and yes, that color scheme is somewhat annoying.

cpinv, I’d venture to guess he won a majority of the white male vote in NoVA proper, and while not winning a majority of the white male vote in the other metro areas like Richmond and Hampton Roads, probably won the white female vote (gender gap, like in PA, DE, etc).

O/T, but Ben, I just want you to know that you (and catgirl and all other Virginian Pandagonians) have my sympathy tonight.

Get ready for Governor Bob “where’s my dinner, bitch?” McDonnell for the next 4 years.

BTW, saw this advice on DKos… even though Deeds is a lost cause, you should still vote anyway, and be sure to vote for the Democrats for your local delegates.  Only chance to neutralize Taliban Bob from ramming through a total wingnut agenda in your state is gonna be to limit the power of the GOP in the state legislature.

DTG, I already voted straight Democratic ticket.

I don’t know what’s wrong with Deeds. He ran a great campaign when he barely lost in ‘05 to none other than Bob McDonnell for AG. He’s just been plain awful. The Washington Post endorsement made a better case for him than he ever did in the entire campaign!

I can only comfort myself with the fact that McDonnell ran as a moderate, not a wingnut. He didn’t even mention his party affiliation in his ads or on his website, and he even used Democratic blue colors in his ads. Nothing about abortion. Nothing about gays. Just some stuff about privatizing the VABC stores (which really isn’t that bad of an idea), widening I-66 (a bad idea) and extending the Metro to Dulles (a good idea that’s already been started).

Those are seriously the only concrete proposals he made. Everything else is feel good esoteric stuff about “jobs” and how he will find a “funding mechanism” (won’t say what) for transportation. The problem is he IS a wingnut even though he didn’t run as one. So the fact he has to hide his wingnuttiness is progress, I guess.

When George Allen ran, by contrast, it was God, Guns, Gays, fetuses, tax cuts, and underhandedly insinuating that his opponent was a closeted lesbian.

The other comforting fact is that the legislature usually hates the Governor and is very jealous of it’s power, regardless of party, so they will stymie him somewhat.

I don’t understand where people got the idea that the deep South is lily-white and overwhelmingly rural. As someone already mentioned, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama are #1-3 on the list of states by percentage of black residents (discounting 60%-black DC as not actually a state). #4 is South Carolina, #5 is Georgia.

Thank you.  It has long been noted as a trend that states with a greater per capita population of African-Americans will tend to have more polarized racial attitudes (more racist) while states with less diversity will often be less racist, at least in expressed attitudes.  As lilly-white states go, Vermont is one of them.  And while the south is highly segregated it is not necessarily more so than some of the northeastern/west coast areas.  Seattle is a very segregated city, for instance.  So the story is much, much more complex than just “them rural rubes who never met black folk.”

pennylane—

There are also lily-white states where white males overwhelmingly vote Republican. See: Wyoming, Idaho, Utah.

I bet it’s like this in nearly every state.

In many of them. People think of California as superlibrulland, but that depends absolutely on where in the state you are; I’ve been in parts of rural Arkansas that were less conservative than most of Kern County or Bakersfield.

re white dudes, while I get Amanda’s point, the “Confederate flag” thing ignores the vast numbers of wealthy, upper-class bigoted white dudes. You don’t slap a Confederate flag on your new Lexus, but you probably talk to your straight white dude buddies about how fuckable your female co-workers at your high-tech company or law firm are and how sure you are that the new black guy was an affirmative-action hire.

Ben D. and DTG-

This is off-topic, but I’m wondering if either of you saw the McDonnell campaign ad where a token black woman identifies herself as a “Democrat businesswoman” who supports McDonnell for some reason.  It made me laugh the first time I heard it.  But, is it possible that even actual Democrats don’t know how to make an adjective in this state, or is she clearly lying?  I’ve only been here for about 2 years, but I thought only the hardcore wingnuts pulled that stunt.

There are also lily-white states where white males overwhelmingly vote Republican. See: Wyoming, Idaho, Utah.

And?  My point was that the self-congratulatory description of tolerant urban folk who are more enlightened when it comes to racial issues than their sheltered rural counterparts is neither a correct description of the places being described nor does it adequately explain the racial dynamic being depicted.

Ben D. - Actually, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Utah isn’t darker (or purpler) than it is.

Incidentally, I think the complexity of the racial dynamic bears out a lot of what Amanda is saying.  In places like the South a lot of people cling to racial prejudice as a way of assert their marginal privilege.  It certainly is true of some of my friends’ relatives who have shit jobs, no health insurance, and variety of other socio-economic disadvantages but cling to their religion and prejudices as their last gasp of self-worth.  I grew up in a fairly racially homogenous midwestern state and while racial differences were less salient I do recall the same-sex marriage shitstorm in 2000 which was similarly situated as a threat to “our traditional way of life” in which “gays” became a bizarre signifier for “coastal values,” these wealthy people flocking in and pulling rank.  In both cases there’s a group identified as outsiders who are seen as a threat to their white dude privilege.

DTG and Ben D,

Jody Wagner has a strong showing (so far) and could be the balance in the state house that we so desperately need if McD decides to forget all about being a “moderate” after he wins.

catgirl,

the woman in the ad is Sheila Johnson. She is a billionaire and therefore willing to support a republican if it helps her keep her money.

I should clarify… I’m not actually from Virginia, but I have been following the VA race, the NJ race, the NY-23 race, and the ME gay marriage ballot issue quite closely.

I’m not feeling terribly optimistic about the overall results, and should it be a wingnut blowout at the polls today (quite possible), I’m not gonna buy into the almost certain media narrative that’s gonna come out of it if that happens - that this is all a huge referendum against Obama and that America is turning staunchly to the Right.

Unfortunately, the narrative isn’t completely meaningless, and while I don’t view it as being necessarily reflective of the actual sentiment of the country, I do fear the possibility that it could have an adverse affect on how the Conservadems and Blue Dogs in Congress vote over the next year on critical progressive legislation.  It will give them more of an excuse to water good bills down or vote against them entirely, and they’ll use the dubious claim that America is moving rightward, based on the outcomes of a microscopically small handful of races today.

>>>They’re getting nuttier because time is demonstrating that their argument—-which boils down to arguing they deserve power because they’re more competent—-is being disproven, and they don’t have a back-up plan.

You raise a good point here, Amanda, but I must clarify - what the GOP is doing now (e.g. racing to the far right via Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Michelle Bachman) is precisely the back-up plan they had in mind after losing the White House in 2008.

Yet as this is sure to eventually implode, I wonder what the party’s plan is after that? Because I can’t see one, as they have rejected the middle and after swerving far-right have nowhere else to go.

Either way, I wouldn’t count on Michael Steele or John Boehner to take the GOP’s reigns. Both are proving to be impotent drivers of a basic party message (other than hawking the same crap that failed under Bush/Cheney), and are currently being upstaged by talk radio whores who care more for lining their own pockets than they do the future of the Republican Party - much less, the nation itself.

In short, if the GOP’s current course continues as is with the same personalities steering the ship, they are screwed in the long term.

The Republicans always find a token prominent black man or woman they can buy off here. For George “Macaca” Allen, it was my (now former) State Senator Benny Lambert. Former because he deservedly got his ass primaried the year after he pulled that stunt.

I’ve been in parts of rural Arkansas that were less conservative than most of Kern County or Bakersfield.

My father and stepmother were at a hospital in Bakersfield and she noticed the relatively high number of smokers there and asked PA about it, as it’s not like that in Salinas where they now live.

“Oh, they’re all Okies from AR, OK, or TX .”, he said.

As the Wikipedia notes, Bakersfield is more like a West TX oil town than a town in CA. Up until the last 15 years or so, you could throw a stone in many Central Valley towns and hit someone from ‘back East” 99 times out of 100.

I looked up the statistics for my county and the election, it went 57% to McCain, 41% for Obama, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the McCain vote came from rural-dwelling white males.

See also: the entirety of upper New England (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, western Mass). Very rural, very white, very liberal.

I was just about to mention this.  Maybe it has something to do with the kind of rural.  In New England, there are smaller farms, organic farms, family farms; for the most part, a “big” new England farm is not that big.  Not miles and miles of monoculture, big ag, and all that. 

And the funny/not-funny part about clinging to guns, god, racism, and all that (and therefore voting conservatively) while economically disadvantaged, lacking health insurance, being late on the rent, and all that, is that it’s ab it of a feedback loop.  En masse stop electing the fuckers, and maybe life will improve.

DTG @ 53:

>>>Unfortunately, the narrative isn’t completely meaningless, and while I don’t view it as being necessarily reflective of the actual sentiment of the country, I do fear the possibility that it could have an adverse affect on how the Conservadems and Blue Dogs in Congress vote over the next year on critical progressive legislation.  It will give them more of an excuse to water good bills down or vote against them entirely, and they’ll use the dubious claim that America is moving rightward, based on the outcomes of a microscopically small handful of races today.

I think you raise a good point here - spinelessness and self-preservation will almost always win over voting the best interests of one’s constituents, no matter what party one generally belongs to.

For whatever it’s worth, though, my guess is the GOP takes two out of three of the main races today - winning the governorship in VA, and Hoffman seat in NY’s 23rd (a man who strikes me as totally incompetent) with Corzine scoring a very narrow win in NJ.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I live in Illinois - so I don’t have a horse in any of the above races.)

Looking at this map, all I can think is:

Civil war?

Not over yet.

Plus St. Ronnie’s plan of gutting education is surely paying dividends in the poorest states. 

Which leads me to a small OT rant:  In the lovely Texas-approved, Harcourt reader my son brought home last night, he was to read about the Revolutionary War.  The essay?  WRITTEN BY LYNNE FUCKING CHENEY.

They tout her authorial prowress and then note that she’s the wife of the 46th Vice President of the USA.  They made no note of how her husband is guilty of war profiteering and war crimes, but they made sure my kid got to read about how glorious it is to fight in a war for freedom.  Just don’t expect the VPOTUS to show up at Dover to see your cold, dead body, and you’ll be fine.

News Nag said:

I’d change “nuttiness” to HATE PANIC though.  Nuttiness sounds too benign.

THIS. I use the term wingnut as much as anyone but, I often wonder it’s too dismissive. It makes all wingnuts seem crazy but harmless, therefore easily dismissed. But we’ve seen many of these wingnuts are incredibly dangerous, like Scott Roeder and James Von Brunn. I wonder if we should have different terms for the different types of wingnuts.

Also, I thought saying that straight white male wingnuts are going through Cognitive Dissonance is like saying homophobes are actually homocurious; it’s redundant. I guess I just assumed that Cognitive Dissonance is a state inherent in being a wingnut.

DTG, in VA at least, the race means nothing nationally. If it did, we would have had Presidents Mondale, Dukakis, Dole, and Kerry.

Caren, I have a collection of old, hardback copies of American Heritage Magazine from the ‘50s, 60s, and 70s. In one of the ‘70s issues, there’s a surprisingly good (no, really) article about Womans sufferage in Wyoming. By? Lynn Cheney. Yes, really, the article was quite good, especially since I didn’t see who wrote it until the end!

DTG, in VA at least, the race means nothing nationally. If it did, we would have had Presidents Mondale, Dukakis, Dole, and Kerry.

Further back than that… I heard the stat a little while ago.

Since 1977, without exception, Virginia has ALWAYS elected a governor belonging to the opposite party of the current occupant of the White House.

On a national level, the main upside to Virginia already being a foregone conclusion is that it diminishes the ability of the wingnuts on Fucked Noise to try to play it up as a huge coup for the GOP (though undoubtedly they’ll still try).  And if by some miracle the Democrats are able to win New Jersey, NY-23, AND defeat the anti-gay marriage amendment in Maine, then it will be difficult to really portray the overall results as anything other than a huge disappointment for the Republicans.

Honestly, above and beyond any of the major elective offices up for grabs, I really hope the folks up in Maine are able to smack down the effort to pull a Prop 8 in that state - it would be the first major victory for the LGBT marital equality fight that was won on the ballot.  The polls are showing it to be an absolute dead heat, so it looks like its gonna be a real nailbiter.  It would be nice to have a strong refutation of what happened last November in California, but a 50.1%-49.9% victory is still a victory, so I’ll be happy with it no matter how close it is, so long as the good team wins.

Andrew Douchebart is already screaming “ACORN!!!” in the New Jersey race to try to undermine a possible Corzine victory.  That guy is such an insufferably smug piece of shit.

Yup, actually it is 1967 IIRC. Ever since the Dixiecrat Byrd Machine collapsed.

I don’t know what’s wrong with Deeds. He ran a great campaign when he barely lost in ‘05 to none other than Bob McDonnell for AG. He’s just been plain awful.

I moved to VA in 2005 and I can’t bring myself to watch local news.  So I’ve been hearing these tales of the awful Deeds campaign—but what was so awful about it?  From my admittedly skewed perspective, it seemed like he just kind of disappeared after winning the primary.  McDonnell didn’t seem all that visible himself, though.  So I’m not quite clear on where the idea of the particular awfulness of the Deeds campaign comes from.  And I’m disappointed because I had hopes for him as a plain-spoken, aw-shucks country pragmatist; I know he’s not my ideal liberal cup-o’-tea, but one gives up those dreams pretty quickly in Hampton Roads.  The whole race felt limp and uninteresting.  I suppose that was a lot of the problem.

FlipYrWhig—

Being invisible equals a horrible campaign. That and he ran as a moderate at first, then just attacked McDonnell without promoting himself (Virginians hate hate hate HATE negative campaigning, more than most electorates for some reason) then biarely made himself into an Obama Democrat the final two weeks.

No consistency. None.

I don’t know if I’d say that McDonnell was particularly “visible” either.  I don’t know anything about what either of them want to do, other than “jobs” and keeping the state “well-managed.”  It was as though there were no issues.  But, like I said, I was only following it by seeing the political ads during my steady diet of Olbermann, Maddow, and HGTV.

But I got the sense that McDonnell was already well-known and coasting on a superficially pleasant demeanor, almost like he was the incumbent, whereas Deeds always came across as a mysterious and kind of quirky dark-horse.  Neither one of them said “Here’s my signature issue” and ran on that.  It was a vapid campaign all around.

Just want to echo Catgirl at Comment No. 3. That is one of the worst colorizing jobs for a map/graph that I’ve ever seen. What the hell? Yowza.

Yup, actually it is 1967 IIRC. Ever since the Dixiecrat Byrd Machine collapsed

It’s a little complicated.  Mills Godwin, who had already served one term as VA governor from 1966-1970, had been a lifelong Democrat until 1973, when he sought and won the Republican Party nomination and switched his affiliation at the GOP state convention.  He went on to win that November, and became the only two-term governor of Virginia in the 20th Century.  He was elected as a Republican a year after Richard Nixon (whom Godwin had endorsed while still a Democrat) was elected POTUS as a Republican.  Godwin was one of the Southern Democrats who essentially abandoned the party in the wake of LBJ’s Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, though he didn’t officially cross over until 1973.

Prior to Godwin, Republican A. Linwood Holton was elected governor in 1969, one year after Nixon’s first election.  He was the first Republican governor of Virginia since Reconstruction, though most of his 20th Century gubernatorial predecessors were segregationist fucktards of the old Southern Democratic Party that was once home to Strom Thurmond.

While there is considerable accuracy to Amanda’s analysis here, I think she leaves out two important factors: class and religion.

If you look at the electoral maps for the last 3 Presidentail elections, they bear an uncanny resemblance to that of Lincoln’s first election in 1860. The states that aligned with the Republicans in 1860 are now the ones that trend heavily toward the Democratic party. And as Kevin Phillips pointed out in his book, “The Cousin’s Wars,” this alignment has endured since the 1600’s in England—Dixie versus Greater New England is merely the latest iteration of the Royalist-Church of England-Gentry party versus the Parliamentarian-Puritan-Rising-Industries (cf Silicon Valley)party… the ongoing struggle between those who worship a settled fixed order and authority and those who want to break with the stranglehold of the past. Insofar as men have a more vested interest in things as they are, they will vote accordingly.

For some (many?) that vested interest may be psychic, attached to the sense of superiority of being a straight white guy, but for others it is economic. Nate Silver over at the 538 website showed that when income is taken into account, had only those earning over $100 K voted, McCain would have won handily, but if voting was limited to those earning less than $25 K, Obama would have won every state except Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.

Given that men, on average, earn more than women, they tend to look at government spending and taxes in terms of doing the least harm to their paychecks (so that they can keep more for themselves and their families). Women, with their greater economic vulnerabilities, tend to look in terms of how government spending can help. For crass, but understandable reasons, that means men will tend to gravitate toward the GOP, while women will tend to gravitate toward the Dems.

One thing worth noting is that Obama’s share of the white male vote was larger than Gore’s or Kerry’s in all but the heart of Dixie.

revrick @70, a little asymmetry in your comparison there. That government spending women are considering “helps themselvese and their families”, too.

There’s also more than a little disconnect in how people look at government spending. Ask any middle-class homeowner how they feel about getting rid of the government subsidy that is the mortgage-interest deduction.

>>>Unfortunately, the narrative isn’t completely meaningless, and while I don’t view it as being necessarily reflective of the actual sentiment of the country, I do fear the possibility that it could have an adverse affect on how the Conservadems and Blue Dogs in Congress vote over the next year on critical progressive legislation.  It will give them more of an excuse to water good bills down or vote against them entirely, and they’ll use the dubious claim that America is moving rightward, based on the outcomes of a microscopically small handful of races today linux hosting.

I think you raise a good point here - spinelessness and self-preservation will almost always win over voting the best interests of one’s constituents, no matter what party one generally belongs to unix hosting.

For whatever it’s worth, though, my guess is the GOP takes two out of three of the main races today - winning the governorship in VA, and Hoffman seat in NY’s 23rd (a man who strikes me as totally incompetent) with Corzine scoring a very narrow win in NJ php hosting.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I live in Illinois - so I don’t have a horse in any of the above races.)

Is anyone else amused by the fact that Hawaii was so fucking blue they needed a color not on the %-scale?

mythago, the asymmetry has to do with marital status. The voting patterns of husbands and wives are quite similar, perhaps due to alignment of interests or ideology or, as Amanda posits, fear. The gender gap in favor of the Democrats comes entirely from single/divorced women.

Middle-class homeowners do not “see” the mortgage-interest deduction as a government subsidy or spending. Of course, they also don’t “see” that over half the benefit goes to homeowners earning over $100 K/year… and why do people make that much need ‘help’ buying a home?

Actually, I’m more amused by the spam FAIL at #72.

Either smarter people or better AI.  Pick one…

#72 is hilarious