But check out this post by DHinMI and this graphic from the post, which is over at DailyKos. It is titled "White Voters, Obama and Appalachia" and it is great analysis on the recent Clinton talking points that Obama can't win the support of mostly poor, white voters. DHinMI says:
"I don't believe Obama has a significant "race problem." However, I do believe that he has and will continue to have a problem with some white voters who are clustered mostly in Appalachia."And Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo adds his perspective on the Appalachians here:
"Each of these regions was fiercely anti-Slavery. And most ended up raising regiments that fought in the Union Army. But they were as anti-slave as they were anti-slavery, both of which they viewed as the linchpins of the aristocratic and inegalitarian society they loathed."There is a difference between a racist and a bigot. So I apologize to the people of West Virginia for shouting at my TV that they were dumb, racist assholes last night. That was before I read these posts.
Josh Marshall adds:
"This is history. But it shapes the region. It's overwhelmingly white, economically underdeveloped (another legacy of the pre-civil war pattern) and arguably because of that underdevelopment has very low education rates and disproportionately old populations. For all these reasons, if you're familiar with the history, it's really no surprise that Barack Obama would have a very hard time running in this region."It's too early to write off this area for Obama. You may not see him making many trips to this region during the fall campaign, but he will need high profile surrogates like Bill and Hillary Clinton to go into this area on the Democratic Party's behalf. The Clintons may be just the people to go there and make the case to these people that they shouldn't vote against their own best economic and social interests.
A Democratic President will have their back ... even if he is black.
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