Texas and Ohio: Don't Write Clinton Off Yet
Thu Feb 21, 2008 at 04:08:06 AM PDT
As I've been watching the coverage of the primary and caucus results on MSNBC, I've been struck by a pattern in the outcomes, one that doesn't track women, African-Americans, blue-collar voters, senior citizens, college students, lattes, Priuses, Birkenstocks or trust funds.
I call this pattern "the stripes." And it harks back to the analysis of American geographical subcultures of David Hackett Fischer in his book Albion's Seed.
In my previous diary on this topic, I discussed how John Edwards' highland Southerner ("Borderer") background gave him strength as a general election candidate but would probably prevent him from winning the Democratic Party nomination; how Barack Obama's Midwestern roots and Quaker-like style gave him a strong geographic and cultural base across the heartland; and how Hillary Clinton's background, style and current office were somewhat at odds, weakening her despite her early advantages in the campaign. With Edwards out of the race, certain early patterns have become sharper, giving new grounds for speculation on the outcomes of the upcoming contests in Ohio and Texas.
A quick-and-dirty recap: America was originally settled by four waves of immigrants from the British Isles: East Anglian Puritans, who settled in New England; Southern Cavaliers, who settled in Virginia and along the southern Atlantic coast; Midland Quakers, who settled in the Delaware River Valley; and Northern Borderers, who settled in the highlands of the South and settled much of the frontier in the early 19th century.
The Puritans were an egalitarian and communitarian culture, with a high regard for education at all levels and a rigid code of morals and laws. The Cavaliers were mostly Anglican aristocrats and their servants, who re-created the hierarchical rural culture of England on American shores and introduced the institution of slavery. The Quakers were industrious and unusually tolerant for their time, creating a pluralistic urban society of tradesmen, clerks and manufacturers. The Borderers were mostly downtrodden tenant farmers, warlike, xenophobic and Evangelical Protestant.
Other regional cultures arose in Rhode Island, New York City, Maryland and South Carolina (from Congregationalist dissenters, Dutch patroons, Catholics and Huguenots, respectively), but of these, the only one that persisted as a distinct culture was New York's (as Fischer describes it, "a very heavy infusion of middle European and Jewish culture grafted on the old Dutch root"). To this day, the rest of the country sees New York as not quite part of the "real America," and New Yorkers return the favor by seeing the rest of the country as not quite worthy of New York. While the other dominant English cultures moved westward across the continent, New Yorkers tended to stay put.
Modern-day historians track the migrations of these dominant cultures using a variety of measures, but one of the most interesting to me (and to Fischer) is speech regions. As New Englanders moved westward, their speech evolved into the Northern speech of upstate New York, northern Pennsylvania and Ohio, Michigan, and northern Wisconsin -- leaping across the continent to leave traces in the Great Salt Lake, Puget Sound and San Francisco Bay areas as well. The descendants of the Delaware Valley Quakers spread widely across the northern portion of the continent, carrying their Midland speech pattern with them. The descendants of Borderers and Cavaliers did they same as they traveled westward, creating the two distinct dialects that give away any Yankee who tries to fake a "Southern" accent without being aware of the difference between highland Southern (Borderer) and coastal Southern (Cavalier).
The map below, of states that have held Democratic Party primaries and caucuses so far, is taken from the website of the New York Times, overlaid with lines demarcating the different speech regions, as shown on page 833 of Albion's Seed:
The dotted lines designate two additional regions that Fischer describes on pages 887–88 of Albion's Seed, the Great Basin ("a predominantly Mormon culture in Utah, and parts of Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado and Wyoming; a mix of New England, Midland and highland Southern culture") and Southern California ("a hybrid of highland Southern, midland, Hispanic and Jewish culture, spreading into Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico"). These lines are approximate, based on Fischer's descriptions.
Are the correlations as striking to you as they are to me? Clinton dominates across the Northern speech region, with only Connecticut and Maine standing out as aberrations. Obama dominates across the Midland speech region, with only New Jersey and the Southwest as aberrations. Clinton again dominates across the Highland Southern speech region, with no aberration, and Obama across the Coastal Southern speech region, the only aberration being Florida. If Southern California is viewed as a distinct region, then award it to Clinton, and the greater part of the Midland aberration goes away.
In my previous diary, I speculated that Clinton's campaigning style is consonant with the Puritan temperament, with its communitarian rhetoric and lecture-like tone. I believe this explains her success across New England and the Northern Tier. She has also put herself across as distinctly hawkish, in contrast to Obama's anti-war stance, which I believe has given her an advantage over him in the Highland Southern region; combine it with a forceful pro-Israel stance (not discussed much in the campaign but evident in her record), and she wins over Jewish voters in Southern California and New York, along with the parts of Florida that are dominated by relocated New Yorkers.
On the other side, Obama's tolerant and inclusive style and his up-front spirituality align him with the traditional Quaker values of the Midland region. As for his success in the coastal South, I think there are two things going on here. One is that Cavalier culture, historically, is very male-dominated and sexist. (Borderer culture is too, but in the case of this campaign, I think belligerence trumps sex.) The other is the legacy of slavery: a disproportionate number of African-American voters, whose numbers are even more disproportionate within the Democratic Party.
So what does this spell for Texas and Ohio? Aside from Kentucky and West Virginia, two almost wholly Borderer states, Texas and Ohio are the states where Clinton is most likely to outperform Obama.
Eight out of ten of Texas's largest population centers -- all but San Antonio and El Paso -- fall in the coastal Southern speech region, making them favorable territory for Obama. However, the state as an entity has always had a distinctly Borderer character, and this character has intensified greatly in the last two decades. This trend strongly favors Clinton, as does the state's enormous Latino population. I am not sure whether favorable conditions for Obama in coastal Texas can overcome these two large advantages for Clinton, his winning streak notwithstanding. (Keep in mind, as you look at the map, that all the states he's won recently are ones that he ought to have won, except for Maine.) The Burnt Orange Report mostly confirms what the map suggests: "Clinton also enjoys majority support in the South (57%) and Western (61%) regions of the state, and edges ahead in the Eastern part of the state 46% to 40%. Obama is beating Clinton 53% to 32% in the Central region and leads 49% to 44% in the Houston area. The Dallas Fort-Worth region is tied within margin of error (Clinton 42%, Obama 41%)." I hesitate to call the state; whoever wins will not, I think, win by much. But I think Clinton probably has the edge in the popular vote. (Curiously, according to the link, this probably won't win her a majority of delegates! I'm guessing this is due to Obama's strength in Austin and Houston.)
Ohio is a similar story. Based on cultural geography, one would expect Clinton to run strongly in Cleveland and Toledo, Obama in Dayton and Cincinnati. Having lived in Ohio, however, I can attest that it's a weird state, and it won't break down so simply. For starters, southern and southeastern Ohio have a sizable Appalachian (read: Borderer) population, which I would expect to swing to Clinton. Also, despite Cleveland itself's being pretty much what you'd expect of a northern city, the inner-ring suburbs around Cleveland have become strikingly liberal -- much more so than anywhere else in the state, except for liberal arts college towns such as Oberlin, Yellow Springs and Oxford. According to the New Republic, current polls show Obama leading strongly in Cincinnati, Clinton kicking his ass in Columbus, Toledo and rural southeastern Ohio, and the two running in a dead heat in Cleveland and Dayton. The New Republic finds these variations strange, but I see nothing here to disprove my overall hypothesis. If Obama does win Ohio, it won't be by the 20-point margins he's gotten used to. Frankly, I think Clinton will take the state, probably by 5 to 10 percentage points.
I might as well call the rest, while I'm at it: Vermont and Rhode Island probably ought to go to Clinton, but then again, Connecticut didn't, so who the hell knows? I'm going to guess that Vermont will go to Obama, but no bet on Rhode Island. Wyoming, a Great Basin state, will absolutely go for Obama, as will Mississippi. Pennsylvania will be closer, but Obama will win. Indiana and North Carolina will go to Obama; Indiana will be close, North Carolina won't. West Virginia and Kentucky will absolutely go to Clinton. Oregon, Montana and South Dakota are all Obama's.
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