It's Official. And Yet...
...and yet Pat Buchannan still insists it's a problem because Appalachian whites don't seem to cotton to Barack Obama. Ok, that's Pat. But for some reason, even the supposed liberal talking heads are mostly nodding in agreement.
It's as if all concerned are deeply, almost genetically invested in the idea that if any identifiable group of white people have a gut problem with him because he's black—and make no mistake, that is the core of it— then America has a problem with him. It's a corollary of that old axiom about how white people are always the majority group, even when they are not, as they are not here in New York and most major cities.
But the funny part is investing this newly rediscovered group of whites with the 'supermajority' status that we used reserve for the so called "heartland" whites, i,e. the whites in the midwest, Mississippi Valley belt from Missouri to Minnesota.
When did Appalachians move from the cyclical, cynical objects of pity every four years— thereafter to vanish from the social and political consciousness like the folks in Brigadoon— to the placeholders for the heart of white America?
And when did Kentucky and West Virginia become pivotal, battleground states, for either party? How many electoral votes do they have, 13? Since when did they matter more than the 13 overwhelmingly white electoral votes in Oregon, Montana and South Dakota, whose primaries Obama is expected to win handily?
Sorry, but sometimes I can't escape the feeling that many of us—left, right and center— really, really want to believe in the sanctity of the white privilege to prefer on the basis of race.
Oh, and while we're at the "when did " questions, when did Nora O'Donnell on MSNBC become a rocket scientist-sociologist? She concluded, based on a few quickly cobbled exit polls, that the intention of 1/3 of white Kentucky Democrats who said they'd vote for McCain if Obama is the nominee had nothing to do with race. Set aside the same exit polls that found that a majority of voters who said that race was a factor in their vote went for Hillary.
The really ludicrous part is the conclusion that since they also defected from John Kerry in similar proportions in 2004, it couldn't have been race. No, it was that elitist, Ivy League educated baggage that Obama and Kerry carry. That's why they went for that genuine good old boy from Harvard, George W. Bush. That's why they're wild about that other daughter of the sod, and Wellesly and Yale Law, Hillary.
Yeah, right. Only Rachel Maddow pointed out that the Democrats haven't won the majority of working class whites since 1964. But NOBODY stopped long enough to remember WHY the Democrats lost these folks in one year, after holding their unswerving loyalty for the previous 32. It was a little the thing called the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The one that Lyndon Johnson said would loose the white South to the Democrats for a generation.
That's race, Nora. Not culture, Pat. That's race.
It's as if all concerned are deeply, almost genetically invested in the idea that if any identifiable group of white people have a gut problem with him because he's black—and make no mistake, that is the core of it— then America has a problem with him. It's a corollary of that old axiom about how white people are always the majority group, even when they are not, as they are not here in New York and most major cities.
But the funny part is investing this newly rediscovered group of whites with the 'supermajority' status that we used reserve for the so called "heartland" whites, i,e. the whites in the midwest, Mississippi Valley belt from Missouri to Minnesota.
Ooops— I forgot that the entire Midwest, save Ohio and (barely) Indiana, is Obama country.
When did Appalachians move from the cyclical, cynical objects of pity every four years— thereafter to vanish from the social and political consciousness like the folks in Brigadoon— to the placeholders for the heart of white America?
And when did Kentucky and West Virginia become pivotal, battleground states, for either party? How many electoral votes do they have, 13? Since when did they matter more than the 13 overwhelmingly white electoral votes in Oregon, Montana and South Dakota, whose primaries Obama is expected to win handily?
Sorry, but sometimes I can't escape the feeling that many of us—left, right and center— really, really want to believe in the sanctity of the white privilege to prefer on the basis of race.
Oh, and while we're at the "when did " questions, when did Nora O'Donnell on MSNBC become a rocket scientist-sociologist? She concluded, based on a few quickly cobbled exit polls, that the intention of 1/3 of white Kentucky Democrats who said they'd vote for McCain if Obama is the nominee had nothing to do with race. Set aside the same exit polls that found that a majority of voters who said that race was a factor in their vote went for Hillary.
The really ludicrous part is the conclusion that since they also defected from John Kerry in similar proportions in 2004, it couldn't have been race. No, it was that elitist, Ivy League educated baggage that Obama and Kerry carry. That's why they went for that genuine good old boy from Harvard, George W. Bush. That's why they're wild about that other daughter of the sod, and Wellesly and Yale Law, Hillary.
Yeah, right. Only Rachel Maddow pointed out that the Democrats haven't won the majority of working class whites since 1964. But NOBODY stopped long enough to remember WHY the Democrats lost these folks in one year, after holding their unswerving loyalty for the previous 32. It was a little the thing called the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The one that Lyndon Johnson said would loose the white South to the Democrats for a generation.
That's race, Nora. Not culture, Pat. That's race.
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