The Right Giving Credit to Obama?

Clarify for me: Are you saying the Deep South isn’t poor, or isn’t right-leaning (or both)?

It’s apparently quite the puzzle. Given your intellectual superiority to the “entire” south though I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

Sounds like the response of someone who realizes their position is untenable.

ED doesn’t need me to defend him, but I didn’t see where he claimed or emitted superiority to the entire South.

That was a bread crumb back to his original statement which I even reposted. Enjoy

Read that. Still didn’t see it.

I’ll take a crack at it. I’ve never lived in the South, but I took this to mean that “the entire South” is not a monolith of poor right-leaning people. The UES of Manhattan, Buckhead, and Palm Beach are all very wealthy enclaves. My family members who lived in Buckhead also had a sailboat in the Keys, and a house in Aspen kind of $$$. I believe Buckhead is more politically divided, but The UES and Palm Beach are also very wealthy and BLUE. Am I missing something?

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Pretty much nailed it there.

I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about, raj.

  1. Trump celebrated the multi-billion deal with Saudia Arabia to “fight Terrorism”.

  2. Less than 2 weeks later; it’s posted: “YOU DUMB-ASSES! FAKE NEWS!” (Perpetrated by who, exactly?)

No raj…I’m not “outraged” in the least. The better word would be confused by all the chaos that seems to follow Trump and everything he does.

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I will say this as it relates to this “Southern” argument:

Thank goodness for Southern Governors AND SENATORS (for the most part) and their understanding of the realities.

While the Welfare Queen with 5 babies, five baby-daddies, a cell-phone, and a Big Screen may be a common stereotype of the person on Government assistance; that is far from being the reality…and these Governors and Senators know that.

They have to ultimately deal with the "real’ World…not the one of people’s biased perceptions.

It’s not a monolith, but are the Southern states generally right-leaning? Certainly. In fact, in 2016, the last state legislature controlled by Democrats in the South (KY) flipped into GOP hands:

And most data reveals that Southern states are the poorest on a per-capita basis.

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Would you agree, TB, that for the most part.…Southern Governors and Senators understand that more than many?

(I take House Members on a person-by-person basis. They tend to be much more partisan, and play too much of the “Zeb-game”).

My comment wasn’t directed at the entire south, although you could argue my statement applies to most of it. I was being more anecdotal with the places I’ve seen, mainly in WV and OH. I don’t personally consider WV to be part of “the south” but you’d have a hard time distinguishing my family from the stereotypical southern hillbilly.

I was more referring to how the GOP commonly demonizes people on social programs. In a normal election cycle, the GOP isn’t being flooded with right leaning welfare collectors like they were this past election. If Trump goes around killing social programs (given he owes a much larger chunk of his victory to social program users compared to previous GOP candidates) he’s going to see a large drop in his base.

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Pretty much nailed it there.

The South has actually been gradually getting less poor and more urban. Over the las 50 years they have seen the largest positive change in poverty rates of any region in the US. They started from the bottom though… so not too surprising. Just a different perspective than the NY/LA/Chicago crowd.

The highest concentration of poverty is in 20 large counties mostly outside the south.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/14/a-poverty-map-where-the-south-looks-the-best/

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Good link. But as authors point out, the South is still home to the lion’s share of poor folk in the US–41%, which while better than the 49% of 50 years ago, is a distressingly high number.

So Buckhead notwithstanding, my point about the entire Deep South being a poor region remains valid (@thunderbolt23 already made the case that it’s conservative).

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For the most part, yes. Where they go wrong (in my view) is the purported solutions. But especially Southern governors, who, while conservative, are generally not the blindly partisan dopes their federal Representatives often are, are more understanding, because they have to be. Governing requires moderation.[quote=“Mufasa, post:52, topic:230548”]
(I take House Members on a person-by-person basis. They tend to be much more partisan, and play too much of the “Zeb-game”).
[/quote]

Agreed. There are some good ones, but far too many are a bunch of wankers that haven’t had an original thought in decades and produce next to no value in the public business.

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Yeah, Bolt. I wasn’t arguing a point. Just trying to figure out why the misunderstanding about what that meant. I don’t think anyone here would argue that CA is deep blue even though there are cities and counties that are red.

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I didn’t think you were - I was just making the point that gets lost on a lot of non-Southerners: yes, there are islands of blue, but they are tiny islands that seem to be shrinking further still.

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Sorry, but no. You don’t get to backtrack from sweeping statements about the entire south that you’re too dense to notice. Virginia, for example, has a lower poverty rate than California, New York, Colorado, Vermont, Illinois, and many other states outside of the South. What about New Mexico or the District of Columbia? D.C. is hardly red and is, in fact, among the most blue areas in the country and yet it is around 7th in poverty rate. Florida is only about 5 states removed from New York’s poverty rate. The point here is to avoid making sweeping statements about entire states and instead to drill into data based on zip code or other more specific parameters. I’m always somewhat amused about assumptions made about cities and states from people who haven’t lived in the places about which they have such strong opinions. Worse yet, those who spend all but two of their 55 years living in one place. I can’t imagine that level of provincialism.

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