Which issue will hurt J.Kerry the most?

[nclib]

While it is true that in the North people are generally colder/ruder than in the South .... they are rude to everyone.  In the South there is a "you no good Yankee" attitude.  Heck, I got pulled over in TX doing 52 in a 45 and was told "we don't need you Yankees coming down here flying all over the place".

Not only that, but there is no Northern voting bias.  You don't hear people saying "oh ... no one in the North will vote for Clinton/Gore/Bush because they are from the South".  But you have heard the opposite said of Dean, Kerry, and others.

I'm sorry, but in my experience the North is indifferent to the South whereas the South seems to resent the North.

Absolutely agree regarding voting patterns. Also southerners are more conscious of region in general. When Liddy Dole ran for Senate here, I once heard an ad where she said something like "I'm a Southern woman who grew up in Salisbury [N.C.]." Can anyone even imagine a candidate for Senate from Connecticut saying "I'm a Northern woman who grew up in Bridgeport."??

[nclib]

Gustaf,

As someone who has lived in both places, I can tell you that the North is perhaps more anti-South than vice versa...they just do it in a more subtle, condescending fashion.

I agree completely.  Northeasterns love to pat themselves on the back for their presumed cultural and intellectual superiority over southerners, and southerners pick up on this condescension.  Howard Dean positively reeked of it, and John Kerry will probably have a hard time suppressing it.

As someone who lives in the South, but whose parents are from NYC, I don't condone either direction of regional prejudice. However, I do believe that anti-South Northerners are more understandable than visa versa. Northerners may be condescending to the South because of its [the South's] lower education, higher crime rate, lesser cultural diversity, lesser respect for minorities of race, gender, and lifestyle, etc. Southerners detesting the North tends to be more of an emotional bias, which is usually related to historical events.

[nclib]

I'm really not much of a yankee.  Though born and bred in PA the political region selector said that my #1 political region was 'Peripheral South'.

Where did you find that selector at?

It's at selectsmart.com

Soulty, do you happen to know what states the 13 regions match up with? After each region it gives a link for explanation, but it's never opened correctly for me.

For example, Mid Atlantic

It says:
 
Copy & Paste
Results Code:  <Li>My #4 result for the SelectSmart.com selector, <a href="http://www.selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=PoliticalRegion"><B>U.S. Political Region Selector</A></B>, is <I>Mid Atlantic</I><P>

What specifically is meant to be copied?

[nclib]

This is getting really emotional...

You have no idea how emotional class/cultural/regional issues are in the US.  Basically rural areas in most of the country, and the South as a whole, resent, even hate, the liberal urban elites (and coincidentally their poor racial dependents).  The urban leftist elites despise the above mentioned ruralites.  I can tell you that rural people who are nowhere near the South actually identify or at least strongly sympathize with the South.

Certainly. Politics and culture do tend to coincide. It is very interesting that on this board (and in real life) the conservatives are sympathizing with the South and the liberals aren't. Regardless of where they actually live. My region in N.C. has a relatively proportion of people who are either migrants from the North and/or liberals. Very few liberals here identify with the Southern culture even if they grew up here.

[nclib]

dazzleman,

I would agree that the rural-urban divide is also pretty strong, but that wouldn't explain why suburbs of Charlotte, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, etc. are very conservative and rural areas along the Mississippi River and in New England tend to be moderate.

[nclib]

Legalizing gay marriage will highlight one important part of marriage--the fact that it is a partnership between equals.