Sunday, November 04, 2012

THE WRONG KIND OF SWING VOTERS

Alec MacGillis:



I suspect the reason that Virginia gets so much less attention than Ohio as a swing state is that, y'know, the wrong kind of voters will put Obama over the top if he wins Virginia. Ohio is much more interesting to the media because Obama may win the votes of regular people. You know what I mean -- white people.

See also this passage from a Politico story by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (hat tip: Josh Marshall):
If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That's what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it's possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000.

A broad mandate this is not.
Oh, right. Never mind the fact that if you're a successful Republican presidential candidate, you're considered to have a "broad mandate" if you get suburban white voters in Michigan as well as suburban white voters in Mississippi.

Also see this tweet from Ana Marie Cox:



That message may become the conventional wisdom if Obama wins a close election: that his coalition has too much melanin (and not enough penises), so Romney sort of really won.

6 comments:

Susanna said...

I think there are a lot of OWM (older white men) who are annoyed that they aren't solely in charge of everything anymore.

giantslor said...

As a white male, I'm looking forward to others of my type becoming the minority. We really suck, especially those of us who are old and live in the South.

Philo Vaihinger said...

Is O going to lose the white retirees, again?

Fox beats AARP, eh?

Jeez.

Victor said...

Yes, older white males suck - BUT NOT ALL OF US!!!

Maybe the morons at PolitiCLOWN need to reflect on the fact that President Obama, should he win, will win a higher percentage of white voters, than Mitt will Blacks, Hispanics, Gays, Native Americans, Asians, and any other minority group that you morons at PolitiCLOWN can think of.

Kathy said...

Our family is a combination of "real Americans" (white Southern husband and wife) and those "other" people (two single daughters of voting age). Oddly enough, we're all voting for Obama. I guess that makes us outliers. Actually, I think the only person in our extended family who's not voting for Obama is my 81-year-old mother, and I'm not sure about her. My Tennessee in-laws? Big Obama supporters. I hope our "anomaly" is more like reality in many states. And Karl Rove can...well, fill in the blank with something negative.

Batocchio said...

Northern Virginia is also full of highly-educated, affluent whites, who tend to vote Democratic, unlike whites in the deep South and some areas of rural Virginia. So I think Politico's chatter is off in more ways than one.