OBAMA WILL WIN MISSISSIPPI! A final thought on my run-in with former DNC chair Don Fowler last Friday, specifically as it relates to the piece I will be publishing shortly in The Nation in response to Bob Moser�s provocative essay about a potential, economic populism-led renaissance for Democrats in the South. (By which, of course, Moser really means the white South, since blacks are already voting their economic populist interests.) As Paul Waldman discovered, just moments before Fowler repeatedly called me an asshole, he was telling The Politico�s Roger Simon that Barack Obama could carry Alabama, Mississippi, and his home state of South Carolina in the 2008 general election. Waldman provides the glaringly contradictory evidence from 2004, which shows that blacks in these states voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry while whites voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush, leading to comfortable wins for Bush in all three. (And, I would add, black turnout is not the problem, either: As I show in Whistling Past Dixie, African Americans in the South actually turn out at rates proportional to their population share -- and at higher rates when controlling for socioeconomic status.) Putting aside Fowler�s delusions about any Democrat�s competitiveness in the Deep South, no less an Illinois black Democrat�s, how do his comments connect to the far more thoughtful, judicious article penned by Moser? The short answer is class and poverty. You see, most studies of political tolerance -- racial or otherwise -- show tolerance to be positively related to socioeconomic status. Because Fowler�s three Deep South states are among the poorest in the country, we can fairly expect lower levels of racial tolerance among whites there and, by extension, more polarized black-white voting. And sure enough, that�s exactly the case, as Waldman demonstrates. (The other problem with economic populism saving Democrats in the South is the region�s low rates of unionization; but you�ll have to wait for my response in The Nation for more on that.) Of course, Fowler seems less interested in data or empirics than visceral and anecdotal notions; data and studies like those showing that racial antipathies were positively correlated with Republican voting in the white South in 2004 are silly diversions that preoccupy assholish minds like mine.
--Tom Schaller
