Here is ONE MORE NAIL in McCain's coffin!
"South may be shifting in Democrats' direction; Party sees its best chance to alter the electoral map" by Susan Milligan, Globe Staff | October 31, 2008
HARRISONBURG, Va. - The racial divides that have buttressed Republican power in the South for decades appear to be crumbling in this year's elections, loosening the GOP's firm grip on the region, political analysts and independent pollsters say.
The South is still culturally conservative, and the deep South in particular is still challenging territory for Democrats, political specialists say. But demographic changes - including a migration of voters from other regions, as well as an increase in education and racial tolerance among some younger residents - have given Barack Obama and other Democrats an opening this year and are likely to change the electoral map in future elections, they said.
And what have I been saying day-after-day on this blog?
Also see: Debunking the "America is Racist" Myth Promoted by AmeriKan MSM
"There's definitely a shift going on," especially in states with larger cities, said Harry L. Wilson, director of the Center for Community Research at Roanoke College in Virginia. "If the Democrats are going to win these states back, this is the year to do it. I'm not saying a Republican couldn't win [Southern battlegrounds] back in 2012 or 2016, but they won't be able to take it for granted the way they have in the past."
The "Southern strategy," created by Richard Nixon's campaign in 1968, pitted white conservative voters against African-Americans, who had won landmark protections under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Once solid Democratic territory, the South became increasingly GOP-dominated, and except for Southern-born candidates such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the region has remained nearly impenetrable for Democratic presidential nominees. President Bush swept the South from Texas to Virginia in both 2000 and 2004.
But Obama, aided by a massive voter registration campaign and population shifts in the region, appears poised to break that Republican stranglehold. The Illinois senator is ahead substantially in polls against GOP nominee John McCain in Virginia, and is narrowly leading in North Carolina and Florida. Obama aides believe Missouri and even Georgia could be competitive Tuesday, especially if black voters and young people turn out in high numbers to make him the nation's first African-American president.
Democratic US Senate candidates, too, are threatening GOP incumbents in North Carolina and Kentucky, as the party seeks a potentially filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats, and Democrats see opportunities to pick up House seats in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia and expand their majority.
"This is a realigning election," said John Zogby, an independent pollster. The rise of a "creative class" in Southern cities, along with more relaxed attitudes toward race among younger voters south of the Mason-Dixon line, has dramatically improved the prospects for Democrats in the region, he said.
Most of the change is pure demographics: Cities such as Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., have attracted new residents from all over the country, and in many ways feel northern, Wilson said. The high-tech industry around Raleigh, N.C., has drawn highly educated people who tend to have more open-minded attitudes toward race, he said.
In North Carolina, Democratic challenger Kay Hagan, a state senator, has moved into the lead in polls over Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole, wife of the 1996 Republican presidential nominee. This week, there has been a huge uproar over a Dole TV ad that accuses Hagan, a Sunday school teacher, of taking "godless money" when she secretly attended a September fund-raiser in Boston hosted by an advisory board member of the Godless Americans Political Action Committee.
A large influx of Democratic-leaning voters has moved into Northern Virginia, especially in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Democrats expect to pick up the House seat being vacated by moderate GOP Representative Tom Davis in Northern Virginia, and Democrat Mark Warner, the former governor, is heavily favored to win the open US Senate seat.
And in Florida, the Latino population is changing in ways that boost Democratic hopes. Cuban-Americans, who tend to vote Republican, are diminishing in dominance in the Latino population, while the ranks of Puerto Ricans from both the island itself and New York City are growing. The newer Latino voters - who are already citizens and eligible to vote - are more sympathetic to Democrats, said Richard Johnston, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and coauthor of "The End of Southern Exceptionalism," a book about Southern politics.
Democrats stand to make substantial gains in the region in part because of an enormous black-voter turnout expected for Obama, and in part because of a poor environment for Republicans overall because of the flailing economy, Johnston said. Attitudes, too, have changed in the region, especially among younger voters more comfortable with the idea of a black president, residents and analysts said.
That's because the RACIST CHARGE against the American people is a CANARD!!!
Stolen Elections: 2000
Stolen Elections: 2004
Stolen Elections: 2006
How to Rig the 2008 Presidential Election
Election Poll Update
AP Prepares Election Theft Narrative
Even in the heart of Virginia's conservative Shenandoah Valley, Obama this week drew a crowd of 8,000 people - plus another 12,000 who waited outside for hours but couldn't squeeze into the James Madison University Convocation Center in Harrisonburg. And while several voters there acknowledged that some of their fellow Virginians still would not vote for a black candidate, they said opinions were changing with the advent of new media and immigrant populations.
Ken Weaver, 77 and retired, said he could not have imagined even a decade ago that an African-American candidate could compete in his home state. "It means that we're in a new age of enlightenment," said Weaver, who said he has lived in the Shenandoah region for 60 years. "It's a time when we've realized that the old biases have to go."
Now if only the divisive, Zionist-controlled, agenda-pushing MSM would catch up.
This election is "the beginning of the end" of GOP dominance in Virginia, said Barbara Luck, a 57-year-old accountant from Harrisonburg. "This county has been a solid Republican county for as long as I remember," Luck said, marveling at the overflow crowd. But "these young people, they don't see race the way my parents did," she said.
Republicans believe McCain is still strong in the South. Tennessee and Arkansas - swing states during the Clinton era - are considered safe for McCain this year.
You guys are grasping at shit now!!
But the McCain campaign is less optimistic about holding on to Virginia, a state that has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1968.
"The one big thing that's happened this year is the historic nature of Senator Obama's candidacy. You'll have the highest African-American turnout ever and he'll get all their votes," said Charlie Black, a senior McCain strategist and South Carolina native.
Demographics are also working against the GOP in the region, he added. "The one thing you see is that North Carolina has become a swing state . . . The state's changed a lot. There's over one million people that have moved there since 2000." --more--"
C'mon, even McCain's campaign advisers know it is over!!!!
