Exit polls found that blacks constituted 13 percent of the electorate, a 2 percentage-point gain over 2004

http://www.mlive.com/us-politics/index.ssf/2008/11/that_huge_voter_turnout_didnt.html

I think that is exactly my point and I just didn’t make it clear. Saying Southerns vote for Republicans because they are Republicans and that’s how they vote is circular logic. They vote Republican today because the GOP is the more conservative party and a lot of racists identify themselves as Republicans for a variety of reasons. I promise you that if the Republican Party embraces Affirmative Action and quotas, the South won’t be voting Republican much longer.

I think 2012 could be really interesting. Bobby Jindal could possibly be the GOP’s candidate and he is a Punjabi Indian. But he is also very conservative, he’s actually Obama’s doppelganger. But you also have someone like Ron Paul, who is even more conservative and will not attract moderate voters. Would the GOP run Jindal and have a Ross Perot type third party candidate run and skim votes? Would Southern Republicans vote for a brown candidate? I think that would be showcase how far we’ve come in terms of race relations than Obama winning Indiana, as positive as that may be.

Southerns felt abandoned by the Democratic Party and embraced the Republican Party in just the last few decades because of the Republican Party’s spotty record on civil rights and race relations. The reason the Democratic Party can count on 90% of the black population voting for them is because of the distrust the Black community has for the Republican Party and for good reason. Men like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms have been the faces of the party for many years, they have opposed civil rights legislation and there have been countless racist Republicans who come front and center to speak their mind and sully the reputation of honest, non-racist Republicans.

They did a little piece on MSNBC concerning exit polling in North Carolina. I believe they said 70% of white voters in North Carolina felt that race did play a role in their voting decision and 75% of those voters voted for McCain. Now it is kind of amazing that 25% voted for Obama anyway but more than half of white North Carolinians felt race was an major issue and voted for the white candidate. It’s not a stereotype, it’s hard facts. The South loved the Democrats for a hundred years until they started getting into bed with African Americans. They switched party affiliations due to that issue and the Republicans lack of concern when it came to civil rights. And the South today continues to vote Republican and you cannot divorce the racial history of the South from their allegiance to the Republican Party.

Also, during the live broadcast on CNN, Jonathan King kept pointing out how Obama was outperforming Kerry in like every district he had shown. The fact that Obama was able to carry Florida, North Carolina, Indiana (which has had a strong KKK history), and it looks like he is taking the Omaha vote as well.

As for the popular vote, he is currently winning by roughly six percent (there are still some votes to be counted so I don’t want to presume) but that is a fairly sizable victory. Most of the polls going into Tuesday had him around 6-8 points so things went pretty much as expected. I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t thing insane groundswell of support that pollsters missed amongst young and newly registered voters but that was probably more optimism on my part.

Certainly the laws trying to ban gay marriage are disheartening and disappointing but progress is being made. Rome wasn’t built in a day and right now we have a national government in place that may help lead a change in all areas of life.

I honestly have no idea. They are not being deleted. I’m going to upgrade WordPress this weekend and see if that fixes it.