Quote Originally Posted by El Kabong View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing View Post
I'm not under the impression that the south as a whole is racist. However there are a lot of racists in the south.

Back in 2008 the republican brand was in the toilet. Iraq, Katrina and a whole bunch of scandals had left Bush and Cheney and the GOP with historical low approval ratings and historically high disapproval ratings. And then to top it off their eight year abdication of any regulation or oversight of the financial industry resulted in the biggest financial crash since 1929.

As this map of the country shows, it was impossible for the GOP facing those kind of headwinds to get more votes in districts/states in 2008 than they had done in 2004. Apart from a large swathe of the south and Appalachia where somehow they improved on the 2004 showing:




Blue is where Obama did better than Kerry. Red is where he did worse.
You actually said "The north/south vote breakdown is about as clear as you can get, isn't it." where you included Southern Republicans and lumped them in with Southern Democrats for the 1968 Civil Rights Act vote. That's what you did and THEN you complain about gerrymandering in the South which makes little to no sense if you're accusing both parties in that geographical area of being racist.

Also you DO realize that the map you've decided to use has North Carolina, a state you wanted to make a great deal about their "gerrymandering", as pretty much blue from Murphy (Westernmost city in NC) to Rodanthe (Easternmost city in NC). Why would that be the case if North Carolina is gerrymandered and/or racist?


So I guess I don't understand what it is you're actually attempting to push here.....are just the Southern Republicans racist? Is it the South in general? Is it North Carolina specifically that is racist?
You're conflating southern racists voting against the Civil Rights Act over half a century ago with current day events.

What difference would gerrymandering make in a statewide election? In what way do you think gerrymandering would affect changes in the vote between 2004 and 2008 in the same NC districts? You still don't understand what it is. I'm going to get my ten year old niece to register here and explain it to you.