Realignment

Will this be a sea change for Democratic hopes?

dinamic — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:19:56 -0400

Sen. Evan Bayh is forming a small, 15 member, group that will change everything that goes on in the senate. This is a group of "moderate" Democratic senators who formed to force the dems back to the "center" they say. So much for the 60 seat majority.

This Land Really IS Made for You and Me!

dlindorff — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:57:09 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

Maybe symbolism is just symbolism, but the optimist in me says that
Barack Obama's invitation to former Communist and life-long political
activist Pete Seeger (along with Bruce Springstein and 89-year-old
Pete's full-throated grandson Tao) to sing Woody Guthrie's anthem This Land is Your Land,
and the fact that the once blacklisted folk legend chose to do not just
the feel-good, approved-for-public-school-music-class-use verses, but all
the verses, including Woody's long-censored "commie" verses, and that
Obama was right there singing those verses along with the rest of the
million people on the Mall, has to mean something.

Now, of course, we need to see if there is more to this than just a
change in the Washington soundtrack. A good test of Obama's real
intentions will be to see if his new administration presses forward
with winning passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would
finally give workers a decent chance at winning union representation in
the workplace. Maybe Woody's old song needs a new verse:

The boss where I'm working is anti-union,
He fires our members, and fights elections.
But with Free Choice we'll defeat his harassment
And win the union contract we all need.

Here, meanwhile, is the song as Woody wrote it, and as Pete sang it on the National Mall yesterday:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.

Chorus

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling
Is this land made for you and me?

Chorus

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based folksinger and journalist.
His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006
and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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Will Jeb Bush Lead a Southern Republican Rebellion Against Obama?

Bob Fertik — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:45:26 -0500

While most coverage of the Chambliss-Martin runoff has focused on the fact that Democrats will not get a filibuster-proof majority, there's a deeper story here. On Election Day, Saxby Chambliss beat Jim Martin by only 3%. Just four weeks later, Chambliss won the runoff by 15%. What the heck happened to Georgia voters?

Obviously Obama wasn't on the ballot, and many Democrats who turned out on Election Day for Obama were not highly motivated to vote again for Martin, a decent but uncharismatic candidate.

But Republican turnout was strong. Why were they so motivated? Chambliss's allies said he would stop Obama's "radical agenda." It appears this message resonated strongly with Georgia Republicans.

So here's a simple question: Will Southern Republicans accept Barack Obama as their president, or will they organize a political (but not military) rebellion against him??

It doesn't matter to them that Obama has bent over backwards to embrace Republicans, including keeping Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, arguably the most powerful position in the cabinet. All of Obama's other appointments have been centrists who have won wide praise from Republicans. Just yesterday, Obama told Republican governors he would treat them exactly as he treats Democrats.

Will these conciliatory moves win over southern Republicans? Or will they refuse to accept Barack Obama as their President because Obama is black? (Thanks to Internet smears, nearly half of them believe Obama is not a Christian - that he's a Muslim or something else. And a cottage industry has grown up around the smear that Obama was born in Kenya.)

But you can't have a rebellion without a leader. Who would lead Southern Republicans?

The Republican National Committee can't lead the Rebs because it's desperately trying to hold on to non-southern seats. Sarah Palin would love the job, but she's as far from the South as you can get. Mike Huckabee is local, but too jovial. Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina was the leading critic of Obama at the National Governors Association, but South Carolina and Sanford are too conspicuously "red" to be credible. So who else is available?

Enter Jeb Bush.

Just this weekend, Jeb said Republicans need to form a "shadow government." While "shadow government" is a familiar term in parliamentary systems, it's unheard of here in the U.S. And it runs completely contrary to our system of having "one President at a time." Can you imagine the screams from Republicans and the Washington Establishment if Al Gore had formed a "shadow government" in 2000 after George Bush stole the White House from him?

It looks like Jeb's words were not merely hypothetical. Two days after his "shadow government" idea was published, Florida Sen. Mel Martinez - a close ally of Jeb - announced he would not run for re-election in 2010. His announcement was preceeded by reports he would resign before the end of his term.

A Martinez resignation would allow Gov. Charlie Crist - another close ally of Jeb - to appoint Jeb as the replacement Senator. In his statement, Martinez said he "expected" to complete his term - hardly a firm promise. And Politico reports, "[Jeb] retains a strong following among Florida Republicans and would almost certainly clear the Republican field should he decide to run."

So is Jeb Bush planning to lead a Southern Republican political rebellion against President Obama? Stay tuned. And if you don't want Gov. Crist to appoint Jeb as Senator, sign our petition:
http://www.democrats.com/stop-jeb

As Congress Lay Dying

davidswanson — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:47:01 -0500

By David Swanson

The debate among progressive activists and commentators in recent weeks has tended to range from the leave-Obama-alone-and-he'll-fix-everything position to the stage-a-protest-at-Obama's-house-for-the-next-month position, including numerous stances in between those extremes. What all these positions share is acceptance of the incredible shift of power from Congress to the White House that we have seen in just the last eight years. It is in these concluding moments of the Bush-Cheney era that Congress's coffin is being constructed just outside our window, and I'm afraid that the peace and justice movement is picking flowers to bring to the funeral.

Congress is corrupted by money, media, and parties, and it has chosen its impotence. We've replaced a disastrous president with one who can't help but be in at least some ways dramatically better. Why in the world would we distract ourselves with worrying about Congress? The frightening reason is this: if we leave all power in the hands of the president, sooner or later all power will belong to someone even worse than Bush. The hopeful reason is this: the only possible path to truly transformative democratic change lies in re-empowering and reforming Congress. It may take some of us a few more months to consider the possibility of that. It may take us generations to prove it. The authors of the U.S. Constitution were closer to grasping it than we are.

Congress was supposed to write every law. The president can now ignore laws at his or her whim and rewrite new laws with signing statements. Congress was supposed to have the exclusive power to begin wars and the power to end wars. The president now does both and even negotiates treaties authorizing war without even obtaining Senate authorization of the treaties. Congress was supposed to raise and spend every dime. Now the White House simply invents or borrows trillions of dollars and gives it away without any pretense of authorization or oversight. The Iraq "Status of Forces Agreement" and the ongoing Wall Street "bailout" are eleventh hour nails in Congress's coffin.

What if the peace movement had not played dead for six months because there was an election coming, but instead had put some fraction of the time and energy and resources that went into the election into demanding that Congress not permit a treaty with Iraq without Congressional approval, and demanding a rejection of any treaty that extended the occupation? We're occupying and terrorizing a nation in the name of spreading democracy, yet that nation's legislature insisted on the right to vote and on the right of the nation's people to vote next summer on the new withdrawal agreement. This is the same model followed as we impose new "missile defense" bases on eastern Europe: those who have a voice are our president and the legislatures of our imperial outposts, but not our own legislature, much less the residents of the "homeland."

What if we learned that over $8.4 trillion was being looted from our grandchildren and given to some of those who least need it, and reacted appropriately? That much money could have been spent differently. Our government could have given almost $30,000 to every man, woman, and child in the country. Would you invest a thousand dollars in time and travel to lobby Congress to take back its power and our money, in exchange for taking a $30,000 check home? There's no reason we can't do that this month and have a much merrier holiday season. All that's required is that enough of us remember that Congress still exists and that our role is to tell it what to do. Washington, D.C., is on most maps; I'll meet on you the hill where the big white dome is.

Only one nail remains to be hammered home, and we may never again hear from the first branch of our late republic. Both James Madison and George Mason wanted the impeachment power placed in the Constitution in case a president ever pardoned someone for a crime he was in any way involved with, much less a crime he authorized, much less the crime of obstructing an investigation into a crime committed by the president, much less a direct self-pardon. I didn't go to law school, but anyone who did who argues that the pardon power includes the right to commit the same offense the impeachment power was created to counter deserves their money back.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler and Senator Russ Feingold and several good columnists and even some ordinarily awful editorial boards have spoken against the possibility of Bush pardoning crimes he authorized, but these voices have all falsely conceded that Bush can do this if he chooses before asking him not to. He cannot, and Congress is not powerless to stop him. House Members should sign onto Nadler's resolution to raise awareness of the issue (http://democrats.com/nadler-pardons ) but should not stop there. Congress members should pursue impeachment immediately for the commutation of Libby's sentence, pass a bill criminalizing the pardoning of crimes the president authorized or committed, if necessary pass of a bill to propose amending the Constitution to clarify that obvious point, and join with courts and the president elect in announcing that any such pardons will not be honored.

Congress contracted its potentially fatal illness in May 2006 when Nancy Pelosi stripped the impeachment power out of the Constitution, and has since then been bed-ridden. Nearly six years of Republican rubber-stampism had weakened both houses. Decades of power drift had created huge vulnerabilities, but the last two years have been a breaking point. Rather than impeaching, Congress members pretended to investigate known and possible crimes. When subpoenas were rejected and even witnesses who appeared refused to answer questions, Congress did not imprison anyone (as it indisputably has the power to do), but pointlessly asked the executive branch to enforce its subpoenas. In January, the Justice Department might honor such requests, but Congress appears poised to retract them and encourage us all to forget they ever existed.

Congress has grown unpleasant in its illness, and many will not lament its passing, but democratic representation will die with it. We will be very sorry to see it go, even if we won't know what we've lost till it's gone.

The Democratic Mandate

Bob Fertik — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:00:09 -0500

The CNN/Opinion Research poll has incredible numbers:

59 percent of those questioned said Democratic control of both the executive and legislative branches will be good for the country, compared with 38 percent saying such one-party control will be bad...

So the Republican mantra that America is a center-right country that doesn't want Obama's agenda to succeed is one more Big Lie.

The poll also indicates that the public has a positive view of the Democratic Party, with 62 percent saying they have a favorable opinion and 31 percent an unfavorable opinion of the party. For the Republicans, a majority, 54 percent, said they have an unfavorable view of the GOP while 38 percent hold a positive view.

Got that? The Democratic approval rating is 62/31 (+31), while the Republicaan rating is 38/54 (-16). That means Democrats have a net 47% advantage. With numbers like these, it's amazing any Republicans survived Election Day.

Of course, the American people want Democrats to produce results - and they want Congressional Republicans to lend a hand, not wage guerrilla war. So let's get to work right away!

How MyBO Will Change the World

Bob Fertik — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:47:39 -0500

Barack Obama took Howard Dean's pioneering concept of an Internet-powered campaign and raised it to unbelievable levels, resulting in the landslide election of America's first black President.

Today we learned Obama built an email list of 10 million progressive activists. (Ari Melber says 11 million, representing an incredible 16% of his voters.) So what's next for Obama's online machine, a.k.a. MyBO? David Carr is spot-on:

Special-interest groups and lobbyists will now contend with an environment of transparency and a president who owes them nothing. The news media will now contend with an administration that can take its case directly to its base without even booking time on the networks.

For the first time in the TV era, the two most powerful gatekeepers in Washington - Corporate lobbyists and the Corporate Media - will no longer control the gates to the Federal Government. And the potential consequences of this are as revolutionary as FDR's fireside radio chats, which allowed his New Deal to overcome strenuous Corporate opposition.

In 1993, Bill Clinton entered the White House with similar popular support and enthusiasm. But his Presidency effectively ended the day the health insurance industry launched its "Harry and Louise" ads to block his health care bill. Those ads killed Clinton's bill, leaving the Democratic base demoralized heading into the 1994 election. Many of Clinton's voters stayed home, allowing Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution to sweep into power and dictate Clinton's agenda for the next 6 years.

Barack Obama knows exactly what happened to Clinton, and he now has an incredible weapon - mass emails - to make sure it doesn't happen to him. First, Obama will be able to frame policy debates on his terms, rather than letting his opponents do the framing. Second, Obama will be able to turn his supporters into an unprecedented grassroots lobbying force to pressure reluctant Members of Congress. Third, Obama will be able to recruit and fund challengers to run against Members who dare to vote against his bills.

In fact, Obama's power even goes beyond raw politics. If a Corporate Media entity gets in his way, Obama could ask his supporters to boycott it and put it out of business. (Are you listening, FOX?) And if an industry group - like the health insurance industry - gets in his way, he could put its worst corporate member out of business the same way. Of course that would be awfully radical, but that may be the only way to overcome entrenched corporate opposition.

The potential power of Obama's Internet "base" is limitless. It will be fascinating to see how he uses it.

Update 1: I'd love to see Obama give his political machine a trial run in the Georgia Senate runoff on December 2 between Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin. Chambliss led on Election Day by just under 50% to 47%, with the remaining 3% going to the Libertarian candidate. The conventional wisdom is that Republicans are more likely to turn out for a special election than Democrats, but it's also possible Georgia Republicans are demoralized by Obama's victory while Georgia Democrats are energized.

Obama has every reason to get involved. John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning for Chambliss, so it's already a test of Obama's political strength. Senate Democrats badly want a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority, and this is one of the very few GOP seats we can win. Democratic activists remember how Chambliss viciously attacked Vietnam veteran Max Cleland in 2002.

Obama could easily raise $10 million and enlist 1 million callers for a 3-week campaign. No doubt David Axelrod is polling Georgia carefully to get the answer. (Kos is doing his own weekly polls through Election Day.) annrose just reported Obama field operatives are on the ground. If Obama thinks this long-shot race is winnable and uses his brand new machine to win it, the Washington Establishment will go into shock, and the GOP will go into all-out depression.

Update 2: Kevin Thurman makes some excellent points, including this one about promoting citizen participation:

Obama can use the internet to do more, calls of service and action can come from the President directly to you, not on television, not through the paper – but direct appeals for your help. Imagine an energy policy boosted by the White House list, moving people towards a conservation program. It might not solve our problems, but it will make an impact. It's about a personal appeal to do more.

I can easily imagine using thermometer-style organizing to get citizens to replace old incandescent lightbulbs with CFL/LED's or to buy hybrid cars.

Thurman also suggests Obama should keep the BarackObama.com list separate from the WhiteHouse.gov and Democrats.org lists, which makes good sense. He also suggests we donate Democrats.com to the Democratic National Committee, which doesn't ;)

America is a Center-Left Nation

Bob Fertik — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:01:59 -0500

Here's a graph by Andrew Gelman (h/t Paul Krugman) that brilliantly refutes all the nonsense that America is a "center-right nation."

As you can see, House Democrats received over 50% of the two-party vote in every election since 1946 except 1994. And even in the Gingrich Revolution of 1994, Republicans only got 52% of the two-party vote.

House votes are infinitely more useful in looking at national ideology than Presidential votes. The biggest Democratic Presidential vote was LBJ's landslide 1964, which was a fluke resulting from the assassination of JFK. The biggest Republican Presidential vote was Nixon's landslide in 1972 over George McGovern, which was also a fluke.

For the past 62 years, House Democrats have received roughly 55% of the vote, except from 1994-2004. A good case could be made that the force undercutting natural Democratic strength during those years was powerful rightwing talk radio (Rush Limbaugh, etc.) and cable TV (FOX).

The progressive blogosphere (including Democrats.com) grew in response to rightwing radio and TV lies. Those lies became clear to everyone when the U.S. military found no WMD's in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Bush barely stole the 2004 election by using the power of the White House to keep Americans in fear with regular terror alerts, and by using the power of rightwing radio and TV to convince Americans John Kerry shot himself to get his medals. But the continuing carnage in Iraq gradually turned a majority of Americans against Bush, and Bush's dismal response to Hurricane Katrina finally convinced them Republicans are incapable of governing.

Update 1: The actual point of Gelman's blog is that House Democrats did better in 2008 (56%) than Obama (53%). That makes the idea absurd that Americans want Obama to block Congressional Democrats from enacting a progressive agenda. If Americans didn't want a progressive agenda, they wouldn't have elected a Democratic Congress.

The Obama Realignment

Bob Fertik — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:10:33 -0500

Jerome Karabel offers six excellent reasons why Obama's victory looks like a realignment:

Young people flocked to Obama in unprecedented numbers, with those 18 to 29 preferring him to McCain by 66 to 32 percent
The rapidly growing Hispanic population is shifting decisively to the Democratic Party. Obama carried Hispanics by 66 to 32
Obama shattered the Red-Blue divide, winning such rapidly growing states as Florida, Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada
McCain's greatest strength was among those over 65, among whom he beat Obama by 53 to 45 percent. Over time, however, the ranks of this age group will grow thinner and thinner.
Obama did well among the swing voters whom the Democrats need to build a majority coalition, winning 52 percent of "independents" (who now comprise 29 percent of the electorate) and 60 percent of moderates.
Republicans have for some time been hemorrhaging support among the college-educated. This trend accelerated in 2008, with Obama winning 53 percent of college graduates.

Karabel cites two previous realignments: FDR in 1932 and Reagan in 1980. My only quibble is citing Reagan, who was never terribly popular because of his unpopular conservative policies. Instead of 1980, I would cite Nixon's victory in 1968 as the Republican realignment, because Nixon's "Southern Strategy" flipped the Dixiecrat South from Democratic to Republican and thereby transformed America's political map.

Even though Democrats subsequently elected two Southerners, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both elections were flukes. Carter beat Ford largely because Ford pardoned Nixon for his Watergate crimes and because the economic hangover of the Vietnam War produced stagflation. Clinton beat Bush largely because Ross Perot took 20% of the vote and because of "the economy, stupid."

It took 40 years for Barack Obama to overcome Nixon's "Southern Strategy" by extending the Democratic coalition into the South (Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida), while also winning the Hispanic-trending Southwestern states (New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada). Now that Obama has a strong foothold in these states, there is good reason to believe Democrats will hold them until the next major realignment.

Update 1: Chris Bowers compares Obama's win to Dukakis's defeat in 1988 and credits three major changes: growth of the non-white population from 15% to 26%, growth of the non-Christian population from 10% to 22%, and the rise of the Internet, which was mostly limited to academia before the Web arrived in 1994.

These three broad social trends--the network neutral Internet, the increasing number of non-Christians in America, and the increasing number of non-whites in America (mainly Latinos)--were more responsible for the 2008 Democratic victories than any other factor. This includes the relative strengths of the two major candidates, the performance and strategic decisions of the campaigns, and even the pro-Democratic political environment caused by widespread disaffection with Republican governance. These demographic and media trends are the main reason non-southern Democratic nominees have once again become competitive in Presidential elections. Without them, all of our nominees who are not "good ol' boys" would end up suffering the same fate as Dukakis.

This article is not meant to denigrate the tremendous efforts of the millions of people who worked on behalf of the Obama campaign, or to argue that the result of the election was a demographic foregone conclusion. Rather, it is to argue that broad social and cultural trends are typically at the foundation of any election. Dukakis had a lot of smart people working for him, but the demographic and media landscapre of the country was very different. As such, we shouldn't get either too down on our past defeats, such as 1988, or too high on our current victories, such as 2008. We win or lose because of our position relative to these long-term trends, as much as any other reason.

To make Bowers' analysis "stick," it would have to be applied to the battleground states that Obama won. I think it would.

Of course the Internet isn't a demographic factor and cannot be localized by state. But one could argue that the arrival of the Internet as a transformative political force in 2008 is comparable to the arrival of TV as a transformative political force in 1968.

Most pundits like to credit 1960 as the first "TV" election, citing JFK's alleged victory over Nixon in their TV debate and Nixon's 5 pm shadow. But TV was much more of a force in 1968, when the country was visibly divided over Vietnam, including Chicago cops beating peace activists on TV outside the Democratic convention.

Similarly, most pundits like to credit 2000 as the first "Internet" election, citing John McCain's then-huge fundraising haul of $6 million after his upset victory over George Bush in the New Hampshire primary. But that money wasn't enough to overcome Bush's telephone smear campaign in South Carolina. Similarly, Howard Dean's amazing Internet fundraising and organizing in 2004 produced a massively disappointing 3rd-place finish in Iowa, which in turn produced the famous "Dean scream" that ended Dean's campaign.

It wasn't until 2008 that Barack Obama married Internet success with electoral success. Obama took the millions he raised online and invested them in field staff in the early primaries - Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. Obama's field-driven victory in Iowa transformed him from a long-shot to a finalist, and his continuing investment in "field" brought him victories in the later primaries and in the general election.

The Obama Revolution

Bob Fertik — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:23:46 -0500

Harris & VandeHei did a good job of describing the massive shift in power from conservatives to Obama, which is nothing short of a revolution.

The rout of the Republican Party, and the accompanying gains by Democrats in Congress, mean that Barack Obama will assume office with vastly more influence in the nation’s capital than most of his recent predecessors have wielded.

The only exceptions suggest the magnitude of the moment. Power flowed in unprecedented ways to George W. Bush in the year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It flowed likewise to Lyndon B. Johnson after his landslide in 1964.

In both cases, the power shift followed the shock of a sudden tragedy - 9/11 and the assassination of JFK. Obama's revolution followed the slow-motion tragedies of Iraq, Katrina, innumerable scandals, and finally the market meltdown.

For most of the past 30 years, since the dawn of the Reagan Era, conservatives have held the momentum in American politics. Even the Clinton years were shaped — and constrained — by conservative ideas (work requirements for welfare, the Defense of Marriage Act) and conservative rhetoric (“the era of Big Government is over”). Republicans rode this wave to win the presidency five of seven times since 1980, and to dominate Congress for a dozen years after 1994. Now the wave has crashed, breaking the back of the modern Republican Party in the process.

In reality, conservative "ideas" were never very popular. Reagan beat Carter because Carter was both ineffectual (Iranian hostages, oil prices) and unpopular ("malaise"), not because of Reagan's conservative "ideas." Reagan betrayed those "ideas" by creating huge deficits, raising taxes to reduce them, and negotiating Start II with the Evil Empire.

Reagan was never very popular because of his attacks on the poor, and George H.W. Bush had to run as a "kinder and gentler" candidate. Bush only beat Dukakis because he looked like Snoopy in a tank and wouldn't even defend his wife. Even after driving Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991, Bush lost to neoliberal Bill Clinton.

Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution stormed Congress in 1994, but their victory was driven by Democratic disappointment over Clinton's failed health care plan. Gingrich was never popular, and his relentless attacks on Clinton - including impeachment - only made Clinton more popular.

In 2000, George W. Bush ran as a "compassionate conservative" who promised a "humble foreign policy" and a prescription drug plan. Even so, he lost to Al Gore. In 2004, Bush only beat Kerry through a vicious Swift Boat campaign and constant Code Red terror alerts.

Democrats are positioned to do more than move legislation. They will flush Republicans out of key positions in the federal government and lobbying firms. They will install their people in the federal courts. They will be positioned to raise money for those who usually give to Republicans and easily recruit the most desirable candidates in 2010, as other Democrats look to join what looks like a winning team.

Before the election, I said the biggest problem facing the Republican Party is its pathetic bench. Because of the ideological takeover by the far right, the GOP has no credible candidates for President, for the Senate, for the House, or for any other office. And it will be impossible for the GOP to recruit decent candidates for 2010 because of its losing record, its lack of money, and its shrinking base.

A party dominated by white males is poorly positioned to prosper among an increasingly diverse electorate. Somehow, the GOP needs to find new ways to appeal to minorities — or risk a long life in the wilderness as a percentage of the overall population continues to shrink.

Karl Rove tried desperately to reach out to hispanics through comprehensive immigration reform, but his friends on rightwing hate radio went into full-scale revolt, and conservatives in Congress quickly followed. Thanks to Jim Sensenbrenner's draconian anti-immigration bill, Hispanics went for Obama by 67-31.

Obama is the Google of politics: He has technological expertise and an audience his political competitors simply cannot match. Looking ahead to 2010, House and Senate Democrats will be jealously eyeing Obama’s e-mail lists and technology secrets — giving him even greater leverage over them. Republicans will be forced to invest serious money and time to narrow the technology gap.

Republicans can invest as much in technology as they like, but web 2.0 is all about bottom-up user participation, not top-down messaging. The only grassroots activists who are still Republicans are neofascist ideologues who believe Obama is a Muslim communist. Why would any normal voter want to associate with crazies like them?

Watch the GOP Shrink

Bob Fertik — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:26:01 -0500

This county map shows how the GOP is shrinking compared to 2004. The only growth areas are eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma. (The red dots on the Gulf probably reflect poor Democrats driven out by hurricanes, rather than actual Republican gains.) The heart of the Confederacy - Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, along with most of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi - is actually turning blue.

One of Ben Smith's readers found a map that roughly overlaps the red-leaning counties.

The reader comments:

This second map is based on census data and shows what the largest (self-reported) ancestry is in county of the United States. Take a look at it and you'll see that the interior south, where Obama could get no traction and almost the only part of the country where people voted more Republican in 2008 is the part of the country dominated by people who describe their ancestry as not German or English or Spanish or Irish but "American."

This sounds at first blush like simple ignorance of the concept of ancestry, but the map's annotation notes that "The region had very low levels of immigration for 200 years. ... According to the 1870 census, less than 2% of the south was immigrants." In most of the rest of the deep south's counties the biggest ethnic group is African-Americans descended from slaves. While the rest of the country has gotten more ethnically mixed recently, the south, and I'd guess particularly Appalachia, has had a nearly static, isolated population for two centuries.

And now those "American" Americans are the most reliable Republican voters.

Interesting, eh?

During the primaries, bloggers traced Appalachian voters to their Scots-Irish ancestors. Josh Marshall wrote:

These regions were settled disproportionately by Scots-Irish immigrants who pushed into the hill country to the west in part because that's where the affordable land was but also because they wanted to get away from the more stratified and inegalitarian society of the east which was built by English settlers and their African slaves. Crucially, slavery never really took root in these areas. And this is why during the Civil War, Unionism (as in support for the federal union and opposition to the treason of secession) ran strong through the Appalachian upcountry, even into Deep South states like Alabama and Mississippi.

As I alluded to earlier, this was the origin of West Virginia, which was originally the westernmost part of Virginia. The anti-slavery, anti-slaveholding upcountry seceded from Virginia to remain in the Union after Virginia seceded from the Union. 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. It was a society that was both more violent and more self-reliant.

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.