Is Obama the Token character from South Park?
Is there a correlation between the States that Obama seems to win easily and those that he doesn't? Is it size, location, race, class?
Benji Krudwig, a young student reporter at the University of Colorado, has an interesting take on it based on the work of Robert Putnam of Harvard University. In his book Bowling alone, Putname identified the loss of community that has spread across the US.
His research is based on comparison of communities that are homogeneous to ones that are racially diverse. And the results of the Democratic primaries, so far, support the conclusion that local diversity (or lack of it) might be the decisive factor in explaining how Democratic voters behave.
In States like Washington and Colorado where there are so few blacks most people don't think of them as a group but as Brian or Alica who work down the hall. We don't have a history of racial tension really like some do.
Sixteen U.S. states are more than 85 percent non-Hispanic white. These are the kind of states where a snowstorm render the population invisible. Nine of these states have held primaries so far, and Obama has won eight of the nine.
and this theory would predict a win in Wyoming as well.
Both candidates also won the states that they were from or that they had strong ties in as well but it is interesting to see the correlation between those states with a lack of racial diversity and Obama wins. (The article also addresses those states with a large enough minority population to swing the vote as well). The basic premise is that Obama can only win those states where there are too few blacks to threaten whites and those in which there are enough blacks to swing the election but not those in the middle. The ones in the middle just happen to be the swing states though like Ohio.
Putnam's studies, published in an article titled "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century", lead to the conclusion that the phenomenon of social withdrawal may be a reaction, in part, to racial diversity.
Is this election really just a barometer to tell which parts of the country are full of unusually naive, cheerful, optimists who can buy into the premise that if you think it it will happen versus the realistic, pessimistic, pragmatists who got burned trying to stop an unjust war and are turning inward now?
Is Obama leading a group of people who are more interested in taking pictures of real life then living it right off the cliff of optimism or is Hillary backing her supporters into an alley bocked by the national debt and the impending recession? Do people who are white wealthy professionals or haven't started working yet really reflect those areas were we need Government?Does it matter that Dems in places like Idaho and Utah want him but working class men and women don't? What do the demographic changes happening in this country tell us about his ability to build a coalition going forward?
As we move forward into an increasingly diverse population does it make sense to put someone in office that oddly enough carries more appeal to white upper middle class voters then to anyone else? Is his support really a backlash against the very base of the party and the systems that he benefited from? Minorities, women, children, health care, the elderly, immigrants?
In the fictional town of South Park, a character named "Token" becomes the first black student in a homogeneously white elementary school
Is that who Obama is? How odd that a black, first generation son of an immigrant would have more appeal to white upper middle class men and a white women would to immigrants and non-black minorities. Is this the race really a reflection of class and not race or sex?