Why do DU'ers dump all over the South and not the Great Plains States?

[dolstein]

After all, if you look at the presidential election returns, you'd find that the Democrats are far more competitive in the South than in states like Idaho, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, the Dakotas and Kansas.

[ButterflyBlood]

1. because:

1-We never hear anyone say we must win the Great Plains to win the election
2-The Great Plains don't have blacks, which is the main reason the numbers are way lower. but it's very telling if a state that's 1/3 black is unwinnable.
3-The Great Plains never succeeded
4-The Great Plains don't have an obsession over having their own culture.

[aldian159]

30. You're forgetting one.

Far more people live in the South than the plains states

[meisje]

39. try comparing the population

I think you'll have your answer

[HuskerDem]

43. Oh my God what a racist shit bomb that was.

" 2-The Great Plains don't have blacks"

It's so refreshing to be told you don't exist.

" which is the main reason the numbers are way lower"

Yep, us darkies sho does like screwin' and havin babies donts we?

[ButterflyBlood]

48. ack, I typed that post horribly

first the typo about seccession and that.

I was referring to Democratic votes in numbers. The Great Plains don't have a SIGNIFICANT black population, and thus not as large a source of reliable Democratic votes as the south. They have Native Americans, but not in as high numbers as the south has blacks. So my point is the Great Plains have a larger handicap in not having as many reliable Democratic votes as the South does.

and I apologize for the vague and insenstive language, but I was in quite a hurry when I typed it up (such as the secede/succeed typo), and it was too late to edit it when I wanted to.

[HuskerDem]

51. I sure would like to say that made me feel better, but let me ask you

When was the last time you visited Omaha, Nebraska? Kansas City, Kansas? Denver, Colorado?

When exactly do the minorities become "significant" in your opinion?

I don't doubt that you are probably a good person, I just want you to look at your mindset through my lens.

[ButterflyBlood]

53. I've actually never been to any of those places

Might be going to Omaha this summer, but I don't doubt they're much different from Minneapolis. But due to being almost exclusively white outside of the Twin Cities, the black vote doesn't really play a major factor here in Minnesota like it does in say, Louisiana, where black turnout is the main key to whether Democrats can win.

That's not to say black votes in such places don't matter, but the numbers aren't large enough to influence the elections except in the closest ones.

[HuskerDem]

60. Maybe that's why you don't understand my state?

7/10ths of the population is in Lincoln and Omaha. The metropolitan vote is very integrated and VERY independent. We have had many Democrat governors and senators elected many times over.

To overlook this area, to write it off................... is under-sighted.

Think about the implications of coloring the middle of the United States IN BLUE !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[QC]

45. "The Great Plains never succeeded"

Don't you think that's a pretty harsh statement? The Great Plains states have been very successful in many ways.

[HuskerDem]

46. I guess if you are looking for strip malls, 45 minute commutes and

a murder a day then yea, the great plains are a failure. You want a decent priced home, clean air and a safe place to raise your kids...... the great plains are hard to beat.

[ButterflyBlood]

47. it was a typo

that I didn't notice until it was too late to edit. I meant "seceeded"

[MsUnderstood]

2. because it rolls downhill? n/t

[GumboYaYa]

3. That would be contrary to the preconceived notion

that all southerners are ignorant hicks. Us dems have our own stereotypes that we hold dear.

[dsc]

4. It might be because we don't consistantly hear

how we need to nominate someone from one of those states to win the Presidency.

[ulysses]

37. bingo. n/t

[IndianaGreen]

5. Kerry said today that he didn't need the South to get elected President

according to Crossfire.

[judge_smales]

6. Because there are some people in the South.

Why talk about the Plains? No one lives there.

[eissa]

7. Nothing against the south

Just get a little perturbed when I hear things like southerners will not vote for northerners, or other asinine comments like that. I have a colleague whose father-in-law is a Texan and who adamantly refuses to visit them because we're in California. How stupid. We're suppose to be one country; this kind of thinking really irks me.

[HereSince1628]

8. this belongs in a different forum,

[economic justice]

9. Plains States versus Southern States

I think it's wrong to be slanderous toward any region actually. But, I think many who are our favorite "south-bashers" have problems with their racial views. Plains Republicans vote less on race and social issues than on economic issues. The Plains states have mostly "Enterprise Republicans" where the South has many "God & Country Republicans"........ Just a guess.

[ButterflyBlood]

18. not quite

I used to live in North Dakota. It's poor as shit. Ironically my Democrat parents are wealthier than your average person there. It basically comes down guns and abortion, social issues, however your average Plains Republican is less fascist than your average Southern Republican. Your average Plains Republican won't send death threats to a gay bar owner or dumb pictures of aborted fetuses everywhere.

[GumboYaYa]

19. Right, ever hear of Matthew Sheppard......

[economic justice]

27. There's always exceptions

I was writing what many think to be a general rule of thumb. Is everybody in the Plains rich? Hardly. Are the Plains states less culturally" right as the South? Yes. That was my point.

[AntiCoup2K4]

34. That's Wyoming, not North Dakota.

Dick Cheney came from Wyoming, along with his favorite corporation Halliburton, so that state is generally accepted as a Nexus of evil and bigotry.

[economic justice]

36. Hallibuton is based in Houston, TX <eom>

[JVS]

64. Isn't that a western mountain state, not a plains state?

[Walt Starr]

10. Have you ever actually been to Wyoming?

Seriously, I lived there for 20 years.

The politics are slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan and most of the state is inhabited by coyotes (yes, real coyotes) which outnumber humans by at least three to one.

[HuskerDem]

52. hey Walt, where did you live?

Have family in Wheatland.

[ButterflyBlood]

54. his profile says Chicago

n/t

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

11. Excellent point. Google the Heartland Institute

[MasonJar]

12. Actually without a bunch of cheats (repug-style),

Gore would have won Tennessee and Florida. Frist did the same intimidation in Tenn. that Jeb did in Fla. What can you expect from a bunch of cat-killing, vote-mongering, rich white trash. Texas is more West than South.

[GumboYaYa]

13. And LA and AR both elected Dem Senators in 2002,

when NH and MN elected Repukes, yet the South is a Republican monolith that we should ignore.

Anyone who says ignore the South is not paying attention to political trends in this country.

<ON EDIT> LA also just elected a Dem govenor.

[kitkatrose]

23. TN has a Dem governor, but

we elected a Repub Senator, so that probably cancels out.

[ieoeja]

14. "We cannot win without the Great Plains"

If anybody ever made the claim that we could not win without the Great Plains ... we'd laugh. If they made this claim constantly, we would "dump" on them.

Okay, we wouldn't dump on them any more than we dump on the South. But we would argue the point just as we argue the point vis-a-vis the South.

Arizona and Nevada are leaning to the Democratic nominee this year. Are any states won by Gore leaning Republican to cancel this out?

[LittleDannySlowhorse]

15. OK.

I hate the great plains states! Boo hiss on them!

[lastknowngood]

16. The great plains states are a functional extension of the south

right wing rural and mostly white. No diversity of population or ideas. Idaho is the hotbed of the Aryn nation and their ideas extend well beyond there.

[economic justice]

41. Stereotype. "no" is a mighty big word. <eom>

[THUNDER HANDS]

17. because there are few electoral votes in the plains states

We win the coasts, and a few midwest and rustbelt states, we win in a walk.

[NicoleM]

24. I can't believe

it took *seventeen posts* until somebody said that. That is the biggest reason. I was born and raised in ND. It is not worth the time and money it would take to turn ND blue for three measly electoral votes.

[ButterflyBlood]

25. hey, fellow ND to Minnesota transplant!

however, i think others said something similar, just beat around the point a bit. We aren't told we need the Great Plains or we need to nominate someone from there constantly.

And no, I don't support Clark because he's from the South or because he could possibly win the South (which I leave open to debate), I just think he's the best candidate overall.

[atre]

55. Who says this?

Who says that we must nominate a Southerner to win? I only demand that Southerners be acknowledged as humans. The way that a lot of the people at this website view Southerners is no different than the way racists view blacks. They pick the least desireable among us and use these few to paint as broad a brush stroke as possible.

I refuse to support Kerry because he has written this region off- a Kerry nomination would be disastrous for local Southern Democrats- and no, most Southern Democrats are NOT like Zell Miller.

Clark, Dean, or Edwards would do much more for this area. Considering how we have so many seats up for grabs during this term, it's also terribly important that we consider more than the Presidency. Which of the candidates would have the largest coattails?

[ButterflyBlood]

56. countless people

just look up any old arguments about the South, you'll see loads saying only Southerners can win. I think it's bullshit. I support Clark, but I definately think Dean and Kerry could win too. I mean come on, look at who they're facing.

[hatrack]

31. Thanks for noticing!

KS - 6 EV
NE - 5 EV
WY - 3 EV
SD - 3 EV
ND - 3 EV
MT - 3 EV

That's not even 10% of the total needed.

[denverbill]

20. I never heard a midwesterner say they'd only vote for a midwesterner.

Same with Northeasterners, Westerners, and Pacific Coasters. There is only one region of the country that does that, and that's the one that seceded from the Union 140 years ago and has been crying about it ever since.

I sure as hell don't know why we should pander to the south when it appears that even the Southern candidates would get their asses handed to them down there by Bush.

[Cheswick2.0]

21. because those plain states people will whip out a gun

and shoot us in the street? Maybe they will sic bears on us? :scared:

[ButterflyBlood]

22. Might I also add

compare Zell Miller to Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan, they're hardly flawless, but compared to that creep...

[KoKo]

26. We're just fun to pick at.......adding a "smiley."

:-)'s and ;-)'s

[no name no slogan]

29. Yeah, but don't you get sick of feeling like a nose after a while? (nt)

:D

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

28. because half of DU hates Christians

and the Southeast is most associated with Christianity in the US. Sad, but true.

[ButterflyBlood]

33. I'm a Christian

and I will never live in the South, and most likely will never even visit it.

[AntiCoup2K4]

32. My main problem with the South..

Is that they have dominated Presidential politics for the last 20 years, and that NO one region of the country should have the monopoly on Presidential elections. And the fact that people like Zell Miller, John Breaux and Sam Nunn pass for "Democrats" doesn't help their case any.

[QC]

35. Dominated? How?

Even granting you Bush II, a transplant if ever there was one, Reagan was from California and Bush I from Connecticut ("summered" in Maine). Carter and Johnson fall outside your 20-year window, and prior to them you have to go back to Woodrow Wilson (Virginia) to find a president from the South. To find a president from the deep South you have to go back prior to the Civil War.

That is hardly a history of dominating the presidency, even if we just look at the last two decades.

[AntiCoup2K4]

38. More or less started with Jimmy Carter

As crazy as it sounds now, a lot of Jimmy's vote came from the Falwell/Robertson brigades in the south. When Jimmy actually acted like the Christian he claimed to be, they deserted him and created the Reagan myth. Ronnie might have been from Orange County, but a lot of his right wing fanatic base was in the South.

Poppy Bush is a New England preppie turned CIA drug smuggler, but he saw what was going on with Jellybean brain and remade himself into a good ol boy from Texas, despite the fact that his "residency" in the Lone Star state consisted of one week a year in a Houston hotel room.

1992 election: Clinton. Bush Sr. Perot

1996 election: Clinton. Perot. Dole. (Kansas was a pro-confederacy territory during the Civil War, and Fred Phelps lives there, so close enough)

2000 non-election: Gore. Bush Jr.

I'd say it's time we had a candidate from somewhere else.

[QC]

44. Kansas was pro-confederate?

It wasn't that simple. There was extremely violent conflict over slavery in Kansas; ever heard of Pottawatomie Creek?

But, if we are going to play the game this way, by defining any place we happen not to like as "really Southern," then it's very easy to "prove" that all bad places are Southern. I've even seen people at DU and elsewhere use that strategy to argue that Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ohio are "really Southern."

I doubt anyone was ever convinced of it, though. It would be like arguing that since you only like Chinese food, and you like pizza, then pizza is really Chinese.

[skippysmom]

40. fewer people...

..and I've read that the population is shrinking.

[QC]

42. Dolstein, it's usually one of two things.

Sometimes people are having a genuine discussion of electoral strategy, and since they recognize that most Southern states are pretty heavily Republican, they know that we have to look elsewhere for a win.

And other times, unfortunately, the real reason for "discussing" the South's voting patterns is to allow some here to vent their prejudices, pat themselves on the back for being so much better than those hicks, etc.

The language people use is a dead giveaway, much as it was when Republicans talked about Clinton. When Republicans lapsed into talk of trailer trash, rednecks, etc., as they usually did, then I immediately knew that class was the real reason for their animus. They couldn't stand it that a boy from the sticks beat their aristocrat. The same works for the discussions here; when people start slinging around terms like rednecks, hillbillies, trailer trash, etc. then their main interest is clearly in having an excuse to indulge a prejudice. I avoid those discussions.

And you raise an interesting point about how the Midwest and Plains States seem to get a pass on these things. The last time Indiana voted for a Democrat was in 1964, and Ohio has gone Republican in four of the past six elections, but I never hear anyone at DU accusing the people of those states of being fascists.

[dolstein]

49. "They know they have to look elsewhere for a win"

They know nothing of the sort. If you look at the red states, where else are you going to look? West Virginia is the one traditionally Democratic state that Gore lost. States like Arizona, Colorado, Ohio and New Hampshire, which are frequently mentioned as good prospects are in fact no more compeitive -- indeed, often less so -- than Southern and border states like Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida.

[ButterflyBlood]

50. I don't count Florida as south

And I don't see Tennessee as too competetive. If Gore couldn't win it, I don't see how anyone else could.

The only southern states I see as winnable are Arkansas and Louisiana (Missouri too, but I don't consider it south). Clark could take Arkansas no problem and would have a good shot at Louisiana, but otherwise, I'd write off the south.

And honestly, even Clinton didn't do too well there if you consider how unhandicapped he was. In 1992 he won Arkansas (his home), Louisiana, Tennessee (his VP's home), Kentucky (which no one thinks can happen now) and Georgia by a slim margin and thus you could argue Perot was the reason. In 1996 he lost Georgia.

some Southern states might be shifting our way, Virginia and North Carolina for two examples, but it's still a little too early for those.

[QC]

57. I agree with you that some states are no more likely to go our way.

That's why I get so impatient with the "All we have to do is win Ohio" talking point that pops up here every few minutes. As I sometimes point out, Ohio has gone GOP in four of the past six elections, six of the past ten. While we should certainly fight for Ohio, it's not the certain pickup that some suggest. (And I still don't understand why Colorado comes up on that list--it seems to be getting more Republican, not less.)

But, OTOH, I can tell you that Alabama and Mississippi, the two states where I have spent most of my life, are not good prospects for us. I think we should compete in all states, in order not to let Bush concentrate on only the competitive ones, but I think it will be years before a Dem carries AL or MS.

[ButterflyBlood]

59. Actually the reason Ohio is mentioned so much

is because last year it was the closest state if you add in the Nader vote. And that's after Gore conceded the state and quit campaigning there a month ago. Colorado was also very close if you add in the Nader vote, and could be seen as getting more Democratic, the Democrats have made large gains in the state legislature, took the Senate for awhile, and the new congressional seat is held by a Republican, but it's Democratic leaning and one of the closest elections in 2002. It's also a state where many Democrats from the Northeast are moving to.

[atre]

58. Excellent post

I think you nailed the crux of the reason here.

[QC]

62. Thanks!

[mmonk]

61. Driven into their heads as children

to think in negative terms concerning the south. Also, there's been talk of southern strategies for several presidential elections going quite awhile back.

[JVS]

63. The great plains states never invaded my state and didn't kill almost...

everyone in my great-great-grandfather's regiment at Gettysburg.