I wish I could neg youSo Mitt Romney making a private call to congratulate President Obama's election win is now a Lee Atwater "dog whistle" designed to divide Americans by race???????
Let's be honest, no matter what conservatives say you left wingers are going to accuse them of using secret coded language to promote racism. When there is nothing to be outraged about liberals have to invent things like in this case.
Rove meltdown was classic
According to Bill O'Reilly Obama only got voters because he promised them "gifts" and handouts.
As if the GOP doesn't give corporate gifts to the rich and pander to corporate lobbyist.
How the GOP is Winning Among the Poor (white)
Among the far-right entertainer class, 2012 was defined as the “takers versus makers” election. According to that narrative, Romney lost because the grasping poor wanted a President who would promise them “free stuff” instead of opening up opportunities to succeed through hard work. Minority voters supposedly chose Obama by spectacular margins because, well…you know what those people are like.
The results tell a very different story. Obama performed well in many of America’s wealthiest areas, including places that have been Republican strongholds for generations. Romney, on the other hand, racked up lopsided wins won in some of the country’s poorest counties. A closer look at Romney’s success among the poor reveals a disturbing picture of the forces overwhelming the Republican Party in our time.
Brian Kelsey at Civic Analytics in Austin did an excellent analysis of voting patterns in the most government dependent counties in the US. He used data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to gather a list of counties whose residents are most dependent on government aid in the form of food stamps, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and other “welfare” programs.
Strangely, Kelsey discovered that Romney won 21 of the 25 most welfare-dependent counties in the country. The pattern Kelsey found extends beyond his limited data set. Romney won some of his most overwhelming support in the 2012 election from America’s most “dependent” regions, carrying 77 of America’s 100 most welfare-dependent counties.
It turns out that America’s most aid-dependent counties share some other characteristics that might explain their voting patterns. They are overwhelmingly white, southern, and rural. In fact, 86 of them are in areas that did not outlaw slavery prior to the Civil War and 81 of them are majority white.
Romney lost only four of those 81. Three of those four are in the North. He lost only one county on that list which was white and Southern (Elliot, KY), and he lost there by 60 votes.
Another surprising pattern emerges from the analysis – the stark racial divide between the poorest Americans, and those who receive the most poverty relief. In an interesting irony, the list of most dependent counties does not line up with the list of poorest counties. The counties which receive the highest levels of welfare assistance are disproportionately white; while most of America’s poorest counties are majority-minority.
Though African-Americans and Hispanics suffer far higher poverty rates, they receive far less proportionately in government transfers. Poor whites receive government assistance at a far higher rate than poor non-whites. In other words, even in poverty, it pays to be white.
On the other end of the spectrum, Obama won half of the nation’s fifty wealthiest counties. He lost all of the counties on the 50 wealthiest list which are located in the South (if you exclude Virginia’s DC suburbs – not exactly the heart of Dixie).
This reflects a pattern seen across the country in the 2012 results. The Republican ticket saw its greatest success based not on wealth or welfare, but on three, ranked criteria:
1) Region – The single highest indicator of success for the GOP ticket regional. Republicans won reliably in sections of the country in which slavery was legal until Lincoln’s election.
2) Urbanity – The lower the population density, the more successful the GOP ticket.
3) Race – Romney performed best among white voters, particularly older white voters.
Where factors were at tension with one another, as in Harris County (Houston), the outcome was muddled. Houston is Southern, urban, and ethnically diverse. Obama scored a narrow win there, also winning Texas’ other big cities by modest margins.
In rural, Southern, majority-white counties, Romney racked up margins sometimes topping 90%. Apart from those three criteria, outcomes appear to be almost completely unaffected by poverty rates, welfare, food stamps, or any other socio-economic factors.
The “takers” narrative is not born out anywhere in the election results. Like voter fraud and un-skewed polls, it’s one of those ironclad facts of life that somehow only exist inside the magical world of rightwing media. Were those desperately poor white voters in counties across Kentucky and Tennessee choosing Romney in order to end their own “dependency,” or did some other factor inspire their passionate support of the GOP ticket?
The racial and regional character of the 2012 election and every subsequent political fight is ominous. It helps explain why political compromise has come to be equated with betrayal and why so-called “patriots” are willing to bring the country to its knees just to take rhetorical swipes at this Administration.
This approach to politics is not just failing the GOP at a national level. It is placing the party at odds with the country’s future direction. By playing on latent racial tensions, the party is fostering a degree of bitterness that will be difficult to diffuse and may have dangerous implications down the line.
How the GOP is Winning Among the Poor - GOPlifer
Keep your guvmint hands off my welfare!Who will feel real pain with these food stamps cuts? As it turns out, most of them live in Red State, Real People America. Among the 254 counties where food stamp use doubled during the economic collapse, Mitt Romney won 213 of them, Bloomberg News reported. Half of Owsley County, Ky., is receiving federal food aid. Half.
You can’t get any more Team Red than Owsley County; it is 98 percent white, 81 percent Republican, per the 2012 presidential election. And that hardscrabble region has the distinction of being the poorest in the nation, with the lowest household income of any county in the United States, the Census Bureau found in 2010.
Since nearly half of Owsley’s residents also live below the poverty line, it would seem logical that the congressman who represents the area, Hal Rogers, a Republican, would be interested in, say, boosting income for poor working folks. But Rogers joined every single Republican in the House earlier this year in voting down a plan to raise the minimum wage over the next two years to $10.10 an hour.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/red-state-pain/
Obama is reaching
Obligatory negSo Mitt Romney making a private call to congratulate President Obama's election win is now a Lee Atwater "dog whistle" designed to divide Americans by race???????
Let's be honest, no matter what conservatives say you left wingers are going to accuse them of using secret coded language to promote racism. When there is nothing to be outraged about liberals have to invent things like in this case.
When white people talk about "welfare beneficiaries", they don't imagine other white people even though the poorest and most-welfare dependent areas are full of them (Appalachia and rural South)
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/red-state-pain/?_r=0
Keep your guvmint hands off my welfare!
Dumbest voting demographic in the country. They consistently vote against their own interests. It's baffling.Poor whites are the biggest imbeciles when it comes to voting. Their hatred just won't allow them to vote their interests. It's mind boggling.
I'll never forget this
He won the white vote 60-39 (same as Reagan in 1980)... and still lost heavilythe fact is most white people voted for Romney and he still lost easily
that ether will never die
Poor whites have this "I may be poor but I'm still better than a niqger" mentality. It's an existential pathology, a need for superiority to compensate for their failures. This country was set up for them to succeed, yet they failed.Poor whites are the biggest imbeciles when it comes to voting. Their hatred just won't allow them to vote their interests. It's mind boggling.
He won the white vote 60-39 (same as Reagan in 1980)... and still lost heavily
Poor whites have this "I may be poor but I'm still better than a ******" mentality. It's an existential pathology, a need for superiority to compensate for their failures. This country was set up for them to succeed, yet they failed.
That's why they are the most racist folks around, so they vote republican (against their best interests)... Associating politically with poor minorities would be too painful for their fragile egos.
That's why the GOP has been very successful at convincing poor whites in rural areas to vote for them and against their own economic interests (by using tools like abortion, racism, gays, guns)
Poor whites defending tax cuts for the rich kinda reminds me of poor southerners dying to preserve slavery in the 1860s (while only the super rich owned slaves)
"If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll even empty his pockets for you."
- President Lyndon Johnson
I was reading Double Down: Game Change 2012 and Romney's pollsters as well as conservative media pollsters had Romney convinced they were going to win. All the Romney women were in tears when the race was called.
They should have been checking out Nate Silver.
Poor whites are the biggest imbeciles when it comes to voting. Their hatred just won't allow them to vote their interests. It's mind boggling.
Dumbest voting demographic in the country. They consistently vote against their own interests. It's baffling.
So why do poor black people vote against their own economic interests?
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/5455efbe-4fa4-11e4-a0a4-00144feab7de.html#axzz3R0aW2JVI
The riddle of black America’s rising woes under Obama
By Edward Luce
Those who have fared worst under this president are the ones who love him the most paradox haunts America’s first black president. African-American wealth has fallen further under Barack Obama than under any president since the Depression. Yet they are the only group that still gives him high ratings. So meagre is Mr Obama’s national approval rating that embattled Democrats have made him unwelcome in states that twice swept him to power. Those who have fared worst under Mr Obama are the ones who love him the most. You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of perception-driven politics. As the Reverend Kevin Johnson asked in 2013: “Why are we so loyal to a president who isn’t loyal to us?”
By no honest reckoning can Mr Obama be blamed for the decline in black America’s fortunes. Yet the facts are deeply unflattering. Since 2009, median non-white household income has dropped by almost a 10th to $33,000 a year, according to the US Federal Reserve’s survey of consumer finances. As a whole, median incomes fell by 5 per cent. But by the more telling measure of net wealth – assets minus liabilities – the numbers offer a more troubling story.
The median non-white family today has a net worth of just $18,100 – almost a fifth lower than it was when Mr Obama took office. White median wealth, on the other hand, has inched up by 1 per cent to $142,000. In 2009, white households were seven times richer than their black counterparts. That gap is now eightfold. Both in relative and absolute terms, blacks are doing worse under Mr Obama.