A November Disaster

Sadly for the Democrats in America and for the Country itself, ignorant Republicans vote and ignorant Democrats don't. I'm not saying that there are not a lot of smart and well informed voters on both sides, I'm just saying that the Republicans have done a better job of convincing their constituents to vote against their best interests. If you look at some of the poorest states and districts in the country, you have to wonder, why did so many of these poor people vote Republican, or not vote at all. Mississippi, probably the poorest state in the country has a Republican Governor, two Republican Senators and one out of the four districts has a Republican Congressman.



Race plays a part in the over all equation. In 2008, blacks voted at about the same rates as whites, around 68% of the population. Hispanic and Asian voting also increased, although not at quite as high of a percentage. In 2006 however, all three minority populations lagged behind whites in percentage of voters by race. The white population voted at about 49 percent, while the combined black, Asian, and Hispanic voters only turned out at about 35%. These 2006 numbers bode ill for the democrats in the 2010 midterms.



The other reason that the republicans did so well during the Bush years, is the Karl Rove tactic of convincing mostly white voters to vote because of various wedge issues. You know the ones I'm talking about: Gay marriage, gays in the military, abortion, and gun control. A friend of mine characterized the Republican strategy with this analogy. He used the example of Cherokee County North Carolina, a white Republican stronghold, which includes Murphy, Andrews, and Robbinsville (Which I've been told had a billboard up in the sixties that said "Nigger, don't let the sun set on you in Robbinsville). The essence of the strategy was to convince voters that they needed to keep their guns so that they could kill niggers, queers, and abortionists in the name of the Lord. Now, to their credit, most of the people in Cherokee County would probably not do any of those things, but this proposition was put forth in such a push come to shove manner, that the citizens decided that these things were more important than economic security or health care. Couple these ideas with the current strategy of blaming the democrats for running up the deficit, and the collapse of the economy, and you can see what's going to happen in November.