WaPo: The GOP is no party for blacks, Latinos, and gays

[Fuzzybigfoot]

First of all, race may have been a factor in 1964, but it wasn't after that. 

Yes, that's right! After LBJ signed the civil rights act, we all held hands and danced around the camp fire!  MLK was never shot!  The KKK disbanded!  It was just a random coincidence that Obama was black, and somehow underperformed Kerry in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, and..... 

[Fuzzybigfoot]

First of all, race may have been a factor in 1964, but it wasn't after that. 

Yes, that's right! After LBJ signed the civil rights act, we all held hands and danced around the camp fire!  MLK was never shot!  The KKK disbanded!  It was just a random coincidence that Obama was black, and somehow underperformed Kerry in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, and..... 

I mean in the South.  Remember that much of western Virginia also voted for Doug Wilder (who was also black) for governor in 1989.  And here are some articles to disprove your theory, including one by a liberal professor who ascribes to the revisionist history on the Southern strategy:

 http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300432/party-civil-rights-kevin-d-williamson
 http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.928/article_detail.asp

Obama underperformed Kerry in E. Kentucky and West Virginia because of his perceived hostility to coal.  Likewise, the only congressional district in America to vote for Kerry in 2004 and McCain in 2008 was in SW Pennsylvania, the heart of coal country.  

And notice on the map of the 1989 Virginia governor's race how Wilder carried several counties in the western part of the state, on the border with Kentucky:

 

Actually, for the time, that wasn't a very impresive showing for a Democrat in SoWe Virginia.

Here's Clinton 1996:



Note how Clinton did just as well, if not, better in coal country, even though he lost the state as a whole while Wilder won it.  And no one is denying that coal was a big factor.  It was a HUGE factor.  But the fact of the matter is that despite a horrible economy and the fact that John Kerry was a rich Northeasterner, Obama still wasn't able to match his performance during the 2008 election.  Odd?  


And 1989?  Please, that's 25 years after.  

[Fuzzybigfoot]

First of all, race may have been a factor in 1964, but it wasn't after that. 

Yes, that's right! After LBJ signed the civil rights act, we all held hands and danced around the camp fire!  MLK was never shot!  The KKK disbanded!  It was just a random coincidence that Obama was black, and somehow underperformed Kerry in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, and..... 

Obama underperformed Kerry in E. Kentucky and West Virginia because of his perceived hostility to coal.  Likewise, the only congressional district in America to vote for Kerry in 2004 and McCain in 2008 was in SW PA right in the heart of coal country?

while I agree Obama's underperformance in southern Wv and eastern KY had notably more to do with coal than race, PA-12 has relatively little coal-related employment and doesn't support your theory.

On another note, if you're going to try to sell a southern strategy revisionist historian as a 'liberal', you may not want to claim that for an article published in freakin' National Review. That is only SLIGHTLY mor compelling than your citing Pat Buchanan to claim there was never any race-based southern strategy.

First of all, race may have been a factor in 1964, but it wasn't after that.

Yes, that's right! After LBJ signed the civil rights act, we all held hands and danced around the camp fire!  MLK was never shot!  The KKK disbanded!  It was just a random coincidence that Obama was black, and somehow underperformed Kerry in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, and.....  

I mean in the South.  Remember that much of western Virginia also voted for Doug Wilder (who was also black) for governor in 1989.  And here are some articles to disprove your theory, including one by a liberal professor who ascribes to the revisionist history on the Southern strategy:

 http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300432/party-civil-rights-kevin-d-williamson
 http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.928/article_detail.asp

Obama underperformed Kerry in E. Kentucky and West Virginia because of his perceived hostility to coal.  Likewise, the only congressional district in America to vote for Kerry in 2004 and McCain in 2008 was in SW Pennsylvania, the heart of coal country.  

And notice on the map of the 1989 Virginia governor's race how Wilder carried several counties in the western part of the state, on the border with Kentucky:

 

Actually, for the time, that wasn't a very impressive showing for a Democrat in SoWe Virginia.

Here's Clinton 1996:



Note how Clinton did just as well, if not, better in coal country, even though he lost the state as a whole while Wilder won it.  And no one is denying that coal was a big factor.  It was a HUGE factor.  But the fact of the matter is that despite a horrible economy and the fact that John Kerry was a rich Northeasterner, Obama still wasn't able to match his performance during the 2008 election.  Odd?  


And 1989?  Please, that's 25 years after.  

The article by the liberal professor was the second one, not the one in National Review.  And 2008 was 44 years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  What makes you think that race wasn't a factor in 1989 but was in 2008?  Clinton was very popular in coal country, as evidenced by how he carried Kentucky and West Virginia (the latter by wide margins) both times he ran.  Obama is much more liberal than Clinton and is perceived as more hostile to coal.  (Remember when he said that "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket" under his cap-and-trade plan?)

I never said race wasn't a factor in 1989.  On the contrary, I was suggesting that it may have been a factor, just not enough to override the conventional strength that Democrats had with labor at the time.  No, I wasn't comparing Obama to Clinton, I was comparing him to John Kerry, who was also seen as to the left on things like climate change.  But I think you knew that...

And  he didn't actually say "electricity rates will skyrocket."  That quote was taken out of context.  He was responding to a theoretical question.  If you actually listened to the audio of that statement, you would know that, instead of just accepting the obvious paraphrasing done by conservative bloggers as fact.  Then again, there aren't a whole lot of people in the coal industry who are less shallow than you are, so I guess you have a point.