One interesting fact about 2012 may be that demographic shifts — the aging of the rust belt, the Latinifaction of the west and so on — will change the nature of the “swing states”; that is, North Carolina and Colorado may be more more in play for Obama than, say, Ohio is (though wildly unpopular midwestern governors may change all of that). A PPP memo speculates:
“Obama’s approval numbers in North Carolina are superior to what we’re finding for him in your quintessential swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. While North Carolina was one of the closest states in the country in 2008, it was really just the cherry on top for Obama in an electoral landslide. This time it could very well be part of the path to 270 electoral votes for the President.”
Personally, I look forward to a day when a Democrat can win the presidency without winning a single part of the country that the pundits think of as Real Murka, which rules out much of the midwest (Illinois gets a pass because of Chicago). I want to see the electoral results blamed entirely on blacks and Research Triangle weirdos, hippies and Mexicans, and so on.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
You forgot the gays. I knew you hated the gays.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
R’mber when they announced the convention would be held in North Carolina, and the knee-jerk liburel blogosphere screamed bloody murder.
RSA
I live in Raleigh, wear my hair in a pony tail, and have a grandfather with a Spanish surname – are you talkin’ to me?
scav
Flyover weirdos are grossly underserved, undercounted and underappreciated.
aimai
I’m waiting for the day when each and every election isn’t between the most evil people in the world and the democrats, but between two factions of pretty good choices on the center/left. I’m not holding my breath.
aimai
beltane
Let’s not call those places Real Murka when they are really Old Murka, places where people have been so thoroughly brainwashed by the quaint, 20th century religion known as Reaganomics that all the cult deprogrammers in the world cannot save them.
jibeaux
Aw, Research Triangle weirdos. A whole new category of people to hate that I can actually be in! A boring as all hell category, but o.k.
N.C. is just a bloody mess and who knows how it will turn out. On the one hand, you’ve got the fact that we apparently got high on purple drank and elected a R legislature for the first time in over a century, which, unsurprisingly, passed a horrible budget with 23% approval ratings, and there might be a reverse coattails effect in our hurry to get those guys out. On the other hand, you’ve got bad employment numbers which don’t help Obama regardless of his degree of fault in that matter. Then there’s the idea that PPP is a Democratic polling firm, which it is, but they’re also sometimes the only folks doing polling around here so it’s hard to gauge the accuracy.
Villago Delenda Est
Which they are eternally grateful that they can fly over, and don’t have to set foot on.
WyldPirate
North Carolina was a surprise and the closest margin of victory for Obama as his MOV was just a tad over 14,000 votes.
The Republicans took NC for granted in ’08 and Obama had an amazing ground game here in the state. I spent damn near every free hour I had from late Aug. through the election either working phone banks, canvassing neigborhoods or serving as a taxi service taking people who didn’t have a ride to the polls to vote in our extended early voting period
Despite that ground game, he barely got a victory.
The Rethugs took control of the state senate and house and for the first time in nearly a century in 2010. While we still have a Dem governor, they are wreaking havoc probably the best higher education system in the South along with K-`12 schools, the environmen, an odious 24 hour waiting period for abortions, etc.
The point being, the Rethugs will not be caught off-guard in NC again. Moreover, while this is anecdotal evidence, I have a host of friends who were campaign volunteers (almost all university employees) who have fucking had it with Obama. No less than ten I have talked to have said they won’t lift a finger for him in ’12 and every swinging one of them volunteered in ’08.
My bet is that Obama doesn’t win in NC in 2012. In fact, I won’t be surprised to see him lose by 100K votes.
PeakVT
OT: Italy just held a nationwide referendum on four questions, included nuclear power and privatization of water services. It started yesterday and ended today at 3pm local. The government position on them was crushed. (Note that the vote tallies are skewed because the pro-government position was to not turn out in hopes of invalidating the election. Turnout was ~80% in the last general election, and for this referendum it was 56%.)
Zifnab
I never really got what made the Midwest run red. Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa have historically fielded some grade A liberals. Michigan’s unions defined what unions were. Plenty of progressives could have pointed to the midwest as “Real Murka” and highlighted lots of true blue liberal Democrats in the mix.
I don’t want Obama to lose the middle of the nation because I think the middle of the nation is a hotbed of progressive values, once you scratch below the surface. It would be terrible to see Obama lose the Great Lakes states, aggregate election results be damned.
Obama’s electoral sweep in ’08 put a huge hole in the “Center Right Nation” story Republicans have been pitching. I want him to pull a Reagen ’84, not eek by with a reverse Bush ’00.
stuckinred
@jibeaux: Coming back from the outer banks we cut down from New Bern to 1-95 on backroads and if it hadn’t been so green we could have BEEN in Mexico.
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: Yep, that’ll teach em.
Bulworth
Also, too: teh gay and Caleefornia.
spark
“…I want to see the electoral results blamed entirely on blacks and Research Triangle weirdos, hippies and Mexicans, and so on….”
Or as thee mighty Hold Steady put it
“there’s war goin down in the middle western states/kevlar vests against the crystal flakes”
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@beltane: I don’t think they were brainwashed by reaganomics, but rather by the direct appeal of racial resentment.
The teaparty is only against budget deficits when a black guy is in charge. They loved deficits when St Ronnie and Jesus Bush were looting the treasury.
WyldPirate
Here is a link to a decent article in the Raleigh News and Observer about the early start to the fight for North Carolina in 2012.
Obama’s N.C. visit spotlights political battleground
@stuckinred:
Dude, you passed within 45 mins of where I live.
We have had a huge influx of Hispanics into eastern NC in the last 20 years
Kane
The changing face of the country not only has profound implications on future elections, but also on policy. The young, increasingly minority population is likely to view Democratic policies of public investment in schools, health care, climate change, and infrastructure as critical to its economic prospects and well-being.
The current GOP policies are a desperate last-ditch effort to prevent the inevitable. Republicans will be forced to either abandoned their policies or face the extinction of their party.
david mizner
Well, economic conditions aren’t as bleak in North Carolina as they are in most other states. Obama can pretty much forget about winning, for example, Florida or Nevada.
http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=06&year=2011&base_name=unemployment_in_the_swing_stat
NonyNony
@Zifnab:
I dunno. Maybe all the jobs that no longer exist in the Midwest combined with the Democrats running away from Labor politics for the last 30+ years? Combined with fallout from the Civil Rights Act and abortion politics?
If you give socially conservative folks in the Midwest a choice between two candidates, both in the pocket of Big Business who refuse to do anything serious about Labor issues, and one of them at least panders to their social conservative issues and the other one doesn’t, who the hell do you THINK they’re going to vote for?
Or, to put it more bluntly, what have the Democrats done for Midwestern voters in the last 30 years that would make them want to vote for Democrats? NAFTA? About all that Democrats have is that they’re not as bad as Republicans – and that only works on every other election cycle because people’s memories are short and they forget over two years just how bad the Republicans actually were.
stormhit
Yes, when I think of Real America I think of Detroit, Flint, and Ann Arbor.
Spaghetti Lee
You know, I’ve never been fond of the whole “fuck the parts of the country that aren’t dark blue” thing (because it’s basically what the wingers do, just with the states that get hated being reversed), and I’m really kind of nervous with the anti-Midwest sentiment that’s popped up here recently. Can we please stop writing off entire regions as lost, because they elected a few wingnut governors by small margins (governors who are now terribly unpopular), after voting mostly Democratic in presidential elections since 1992 (OH and IN are the only great lakes area states who didn’t vote for the Democrat at least 3 of the last 5, if I recall.)
bobbo
You can exclude much of Ohio and Michigan from real Murka too, what with Cleveland and Detroit and all the non-real Murkans who live there
WyldPirate
@stuckinred:
It’s not a matter of “teaching” them anything. Too many people feel like they busted their asses for nothing but the same old shit just with a D behind it. And we have got it with the continual wars, the degradation of the economy, the human rights and privacy violations, etc.
You may not like it, but it’s a fact that a lot of folks feel that way. The question is are there enough disappointed people who won’t turn out to re-elect him when all they see from Mr “Hope and Change” is no hope, no change and more of the same.
Eric S.
Thank you.
Joel
The campaign hasn’t even started yet from the White House. I think (and hope) they’re looking at making NC #270 on the path to 350+. A big presidential win means more Democrats in congress.
cleek
by coincidence, Obama is in RTP today, fucking-up traffic.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kane:
“Better dead than red.”
Redshift
@Villago Delenda Est:
Of course. It would be much harder to maintain their delusions of what the area is like if they actually had any direct experience.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@david mizner:
If unemployment numbers were determinative FDR would not have won re-election in 1940, and 1936 might have been dicey. I think it also depends on who voters hold to blame for the current direction of the economy and that is a bit more complicated than just pulling the U3 or U6 numbers for the state in question and writing it off.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i look forward to the day when rectangle states are legitimately in play. you would think we could move enough folks there to make them competitive, its only about a million people that could swing 5 states, i wanna see a reverse reagan.
of course, i’d settle for holding the white house in 2016 as well, and tipping the courts back.
burnspbesq
@WyldPirate:
Fucking Tarheels. Dukies don’t wimp out when the going gets tough.
Spaghetti Lee
@WyldPirate:
The reason 2010 happened is in large part because of people like you and your friends. Democratic turnout was cripplingly low. I haven’t been voting for very long, but one thing I’ve figured out is that it’s not always about making yourself feel warm and fuzzy inside so much as figuring out the best candidate available and voting for him or her, because part of one’s duty as a citizen, in my view, is doing what you can to prevent corporate raiders and their psycho followers from gaining power.
But the Republicans are exactly the same as the Democrats, so why bother? Have you noticed how states with Democratic governors and legislatures aren’t going through this whole union-busting, vote-suppressing, abortion-illegalizing kick, and some of them are actually passing some very good legislation? Now, why do you think that is?
beltane
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff): I didn’t want to go there. I really don’t want to single out any specific ethnic group, but it seems that the myth of racial purity is the only thing these people have to believe in. I guess when you’ve got nothing else to be proud of, that myth will have to suffice.
WyldPirate
@burnspbesq:
Bullshit. Dukies hire someone to do their work for them. ;)
Jewish Steel
@Eric S.:
And you and me and BGinCHI, arguingwithsignposts and a bunch of others.
AnotherBruce
@NonyNony: This hits it exactly, the upper midwest is mostly socially conservative and economically liberal, and if the social conservatives are more motivated politically, Democrats are going to lose elections.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Zifnab:
I live in Misery but everything you read in “What’s the Matter With Kansas” applies here. Between that and the late Joe Bageant’s fantastic book “Dear Hunting With Jesus” you will learn *everything* about why the Midwest is trending hard red.
aisce
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff):
who, the voices in your head? who possibly cared about where a stupid convention is held? c’mon, mike kay, you don’t have to make shit up, not when there’s so much better poutrage to hit back on. like this douchebag.
@david mizner:
keep telling yourself that obama’s gonna lose, asshole. i’ll be looking forward to your tears come november 2012. stupid fucker. rick scott. rick scott. rick scott. and you have the gall to tell me democrats are going to lose in florida?! to mitt romney (or tim pawlenty or rick perry or whatever white supremacist corporate thief the gop runs out there)? obama derangement syndrome. seek help.
david mizner
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
They shouldn’t write off any purplish state off, not when they’ve got a billion dollars to spend. But the economy’s crappy (UE numbers are really the least of it), and it hasn’t gotten any better under Obama; by some measures, it’s gotten worse. Given the economy, it’s almost certainly going to be a close election, if not a big victory for the GOP candidate.
Democracy Corps:
“Our tracking on people‘s own and immediate family experience shows a stable 35 percent who have lost a job in the last year and shows a worsening situation on health care, foreclosure, and particularly reduced wages and benefits. That is particularly true for white non-college and working class voters.”
http://www.democracycorps.com/strategy/2011/06/a-path-to-democratic-ascendancy-on-the-economy/
WyldPirate
@Spaghetti Lee:
Don’t blame me, Spaghetti Lee. I’ve voted in every election since 1980.
My Dem State Senator and Representative were re-elected. Nothing short of death is going to unseat Rep. Walter B. “Freedom Fries” Jones. I vote for Gov. Bev Perdue who is fighting a real uphill battle (and giving a finger to them all the way) against the Rethugs. She vetoed the state budget for the first time ever yestarday, but enough Dems will probably vote with the Rethugs to override the veto.
So you can politely go fuck yourself for accusing me of having any part in the turnover of the legislature to the Rethugs.
Culture of Truth
Why doesn’t Obama ever visit any factories or talk about jobs?
Frankensteinbeck
Wyldpirate:
Fortunately, it is not a fact. Obama is extremely popular. He is especially popular among liberals. The disappointed abandoner crowd is tiny and very loud on the Internet, that’s all. And if anybody thinks 2010 showed otherwise, sorry. Dems voted in typical midterm numbers, Republicans voted high because THEY at least can tell Obama kicked ass and they’re pissed. And all of this is same-as-it-ever-was like the electoral pattern watchers told us it would go.
Spaghetti Lee
@Jewish Steel:
Well, I myself am an Illinoisan, so I guess I should be grateful for my “pass”. Of course, I am from DuPage County, which hasn’t elected a Democrat to anything since the dinosaurs roamed the earth (and indeed sent Henry Hyde to Washington for 32 fucking years), so maybe I should be excluded?
ppcli
@NonyNony:
Um, Um, wait, I know this one,…Oh yeah:
Kept Chrysler and GM from going down the tubes, leaving Michigan with an economy worse than Burkina Faso’s?
WyldPirate
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Greet book, BTW, Comrade Scott. I didn’t realize Bageant had passed.
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: It ain’t got shit to do with what I like and don’t like. It is now and always has been all bullshit. Busting your ass for a presidential candidate is a pure set-up for a crash and burn.
WyldPirate
@Frankensteinbeck:
Keep on drinking that sweet, sweet, Koolaid, Frankensteinbeck.
Stock up, too. You may need a lot of it to drown your sorrows in late 2012.
stuckinred
@Spaghetti Lee: Villa Park, my old man was an insane Repuke and my grandpa was a Puke precinct captain in VP. if it hadn’t been for their association with the party I probably wouldn’t have gotten the choice between the Army and jail from the judge in Wheaton. It would have been straight to Charlie Town!
Chris
@NonyNony:
Meaning that if Democrats went back to a populist platform, they’d win votes again?
I’ve heard this argument before, but it seems to ignore the fact that the shift towards the Repubs goes as far back as the 1970s, a time when both parties were still reasonably not-corporate-whores, and continued through the 1980s. Reagan won the entire Midwest, minus his opponent’s state: those socially conservative labor voters didn’t do a thing to stop him while he was redefining the country along corporate whore lines.
Might be a chicken-and-egg argument, but I’m not at all convinced that the Democrats tacking rightwards, becoming corporate whores, adopted the Third Way are what caused those states to become shaky. That was already happening long before.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
O.T.
Anyone find it telling that blogging icon anthony weiner repeatedly refused to join the Progressive Caucus?
Kucinich is a member. Barney Frank is a member. Bernie Sanders is a member. Henry Waxman is a member. Alan Grayson was a member. Bob Wexler was. So was the late great Paul Wellstone.
Yet in his 13 years as a congressman, Weiner repeatedly rejected the call to join. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Progressive_Caucus
Was he afraid of being called a “liburel”?
Jewish Steel
@Spaghetti Lee: I’m in McLean Co which, even though it’s the home of Adlai Stevenson, would elect a raccoon so long as there was an R after its name.
AAA Bonds
Cities that will be blamed by NC conservatives, in order:
1) Durham
2) Chapel Hill
3) Asheville
We all know why Durham is first.
Corner Stone
@Spaghetti Lee:
Fer God fucking sake, can we please kill this perniciously stupid zombie lie? Will no one rid me of this meddlesome lie mischaracterizing normal D voter turnout?
Let me guess, Big Ed Schultz and his bikini clad handmaiden on a chain Jane Hamsher depressed D voter turnout, too?
“Bargon wanchi kox pa D Voters! Hoo hoo hoo hoo”
Judas Escargot
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
Your eye. It is on the ball, sir.
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: What’s the point in all this? Do you think there will ever be a candidate that would really come anywhere near being what you want? Kennedy was a ratfucker just as much as Nixon and LBJ was worse. Life’s too short.
WyldPirate
@stuckinred:
Unlike you stuckinred, I didn’t learn that lesson in cynicism at such an early age and in such a dangerous, fucked up place.
I road the roller coaster from true kell commies for Uncle Ronnie Raygun to middle of the road Clinton-nite early and then on to dyed in the wool near soshulist, war-hating pinko who was inspired to work on a political campaign for the first time by Obama’s sweet little lies about “hope and Change” and “Yes we can”.
I’m not buying the horseshit again. I’ll vote, but I’m back to voting for the one I think will do the least amount of damage to what I think my vision of America should be. None of them are to be trusted.
Jewish Steel
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Florida poling is pretty good as of the end of May:
NYT:
AAA Bonds
@burnspbesq:
LOL, no, Dukies scream about taxes in Yankee accents and vote Republican, and then drown in poorly-planned debt
WyldPirate
@stuckinred:
We have a melding of the minds, I think.
I’m still in the rage stage about it. You’ve reached a stage of acceptance.
Linnaeus
I generally like what Doug Harlan J writes here, but I can’t get behind this sentiment, and I’m very glad to see others on this thread have been pushing back on it. What Doug writes here sets up a false dichotomy that is simply an inversion of the BS “Real America” false dichotomy that the Republicans have been pushing for the last few decades. Neither narrative is constructive.
As one who grew up in the Midwest and is now a goddamn fake-American coastal elitist, I feel I’ve got a foot in both worlds and they’re both more complicated than we often like to think. Yeah, the Midwest is rural Kansas, but it’s also places like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Madison, Ann Arbor, etc., and there is a lot of progressive potential in all of those places. By the same token, I live in bright blue Seattle (which is not always as liberal as people think, btw), but just drive eastward for about half an hour and you are in bright red territory. Probably the most viable Republican candidate for governor that we’ve had in years here in Washington just announced his candidacy. This guy (Rob McKenna) can play up his moderate image and win here. Not saying he will, but he’s the best shot the GOP in Washington has had for a long time. Democratic turnout in Puget Sound will need to be huge.
There are some specifically regional grievances and problems that have had an impact on Midwestern politics – most notably the wrenching economic changes the region has undergone and the concurrent embrace of neoliberal economics on the part of both major political parties – but I’d say the divide that Doug describes is more of a rural/urban one than region vs. region.
Lolis
@WyldPirate:
No way. Wyld Pirate’s liberal friends all hate Obama too. I am truly stunned.
Thanks for the chuckle.
Spaghetti Lee
@Chris:
The weird thing is, I don’t get this “Midwest is trending Red” argument, when, from a historical perspective, it’s trending blue. Illinois and Michigan were red states for a long, long time. Wisconsin too, to a lesser degree. Now they’re all pretty reliably Democratic on the Presidential level.
Might be a chicken-and-egg argument, but I’m not at all convinced that the Democrats tacking rightwards, becoming corporate whores, adopted the Third Way are what caused those states to become shaky.
I see a lot of talk about right-wing sympathies in Midwestern voters, and lots of talk about the corrupt Republican vote-suppressing machine, but I don’t see them tied together as often as they should be. The Republican electoral apparatus is at best far more organized and battle-ready than most Democrats, and at worst a haven for suppressing votes and messing with polling places and voter machines in blue districts. Am I the only one who thinks that recent Republican victories in the Midwest might not be deep ideological shifts among the majority of the population, but rather the highly efficient, probably crooked work of a dedicated right-wing minority?
Kane
I wouldn’t write off the Midwest so fast. There’s a reason why Mitt didn’t announce his candidacy in Michigan.
The U.S. auto industry is still the spine of the economies of Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, as well as being important to other states including Pennsylvania, Illinois and Kentucky. Consider too the auto dealerships and auto parts companies across the country which rely on the American auto industry.
The glaring issue of Mitt and fellow republicans to casually throw American auto workers and union jobs under the bus will surely not be forgotten.
WyldPirate
@Lolis:
He lost most of them after the senseless Afghanistan escalation and many of the others for his pansy-assed approach to health care reform and the wheeling and dealing with Big Pharma which give them extended patent protections and preserve their mega profits.
Eric S.
@stuckinred: Woodridge / Downers Grove native myself. Moved into the city about 13 years ago and have been kicking myself for taking so long to do so. It does help that I work in the city as well.
I still have extended family and friends in the area. We visit on holidays and try to keep the politics off the agenda. Doesn’t always work.
Culture of Truth
I look forward to the ‘real America’ voting all Democratic, giving our media and the GOP fits.
MikeJ
@WyldPirate: He lost them after doing exactly what he said he’d do when he won them.
jeffreyw
Ahem, and also Glorious Southern Illinois! Home of Homer.
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: When Kerry wouldn’t fight back I bagged it. I still like Obama but the fucking gig is impossible. I’d rather be out on the Miss Hatteras dragging up amberjack for fish tacos.
Martin
@NonyNony:
I’m going to say something unpopular, but it’s not personal.
What the fuck have midwestern voters done for themselves the last half century? I’m not questioning work ethic or community or any of those things which I genuinely admire about the midwest, but the midwest and the south, with only a few exceptions, have been clinging onto a 19th century economic model like grim death – farming and low-tech manufacturing were the economic model at the time of the Civil War, and there’s no jobs program on earth going to pay 21st century wages for 19th century work. The educational thrust into high tech anything has taken place on the coasts, with some notable recent exceptions in Texas, Georgia, NC, Indiana and Michigan, and only Texas and NC have put the full economic grunt out there to match. Everywhere else in the south, midwest, and mountain states seems hellbent and determined to complain why there aren’t more jobs for their entirely unqualified workforce and entirely inadequate infrastructure. For all of California’s woes of state mismanagement, high costs of living and whatnot, we’re still getting an influx of high tech jobs because we paid the goddamn taxes needed to provide world class education and the infrastructure to attract those businesses.
Let’s be honest here, why the hell would any current growth company move to Ohio? Or Indiana? Or Kansas? That’s not a problem that Dems can solve. And the social climate in most of those states isn’t particularly appealing to employers either. It’s a lot easier to recruit a gay engineer in Massachusetts than it is in Missouri, but Missouri would rather win their culture war than solve their economic problems. That again isn’t a problem that Dems can solve, except for those inside the state.
Southern Beale
Yeeesh. Check this out: Target forces all of its employees to watch this “Reefer Madness”-style anti-union video.
You know, they’re officially dead to me. I can buy toilet paper somewhere else.
SectarianSofa
I’m waiting for the Southwest to go solidly Dem. I eagerly await karmic retribution for Arizona. I don’t understand NM politics, though. Maybe it can wake up by 2012.
Texas might become a swing state before “a Democrat can win the presidency without winning a single part of the country that the pundits think of as Real Murka”. I’m not sure if Texas counts as Real Murka reliably, though
piratedan
@burnspbesq: because they all live out of state
stuckinred
@Eric S.: Got busted after a day of drinking in the Sag Inn in Westmont when I was 16. The final straw in my delinquent career! Left in 66 and, apart from one quarter at DupeU, I adios’ed they windy city.
jane from hell
@Culture of Truth: uhh…he’s visiting an NC LED manufacturer today, does that count? (also, NC IN DA HIZZLE!)
Southern Beale
@Martin:
I hear what you’re saying but the South actually has a lot of car manufacturing plants, and Tennessee has several solar and PV manufacturing plants. I don’t think what you’re saying is entirely true, at least not in the South.
Of course, we’re “right to be paid like crap” states, I mean, “right to work.” Tennessee has no income tax. The state legislature has done a lot to make Tennessee attractive to employers, but that doesn’t mean employees want these jobs. They just passed a version of tort reform. If they could bring back slavery, they would.
As was mentioned in the earlier thread about migrant workers, just because there are jobs doesn’t mean there are jobs people WANT.
stuckinred
@Southern Beale:Don’t forget the outlawing of teaching anything about teh gay.
El Cid
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff): No, I don’t. Who were the big voices in the liberal blogosphere who went ape-shit about NC for the convention?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Except that doesn’t apply in the Midwest’s larger cities. St. Louis, Kansas City, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Chicago etc are all deep blue. Iowa City isn’t big, and yet it is deep blue, too. The problem is that we are surrounded by the ‘I’ve got mine’ suburbs and the Meth country crazies.
13th Generation
Here in Charlotte, unfortunately it’s still pretty fucking conservative. The insufferably sanctimonious Sue Myrick is my rep and she ain’t going anywhere soon.
But, there have been a lot of Yankee transplants to NC the last few years, and parts of rural Nc are still surprisingly Democratic. Here’s hoping..
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
I was speaking more of that oft-invoked class of “socially conservative but economically left wing” voters, the guys Democrats are said to have thrown away, than about the Midwestern region in particular (lot of this applies to the Northeast too).
I don’t know if the Midwest’s been trending blue: if so, happy day. Historically, I think it’s been a more nuanced place than most of the other regions – Linnaeus’ description of rural Kansas vs Chicago and Detroit fits everything I’ve read about it. It was a breeding ground for abolitionism, the original Republican Party, labor activism, some hardcore populist and Soshulist movements, and strong support for Progressive and New Deal reforms. It’s also been a breeding ground for religious fundamentalist and racist movements (KKK membership there in the inter-war period was through the roof) and other things that the GOP loves.
Like I posted the other day – it’s the region that gave us William Jennings Bryan. Big antitrust populist and patron saint of the Progressive Era; big Bible thumper who went down fighting the theory of evolution.
Mike in NC
@WyldPirate:
I thought I read today that it was closer to 140 years, but whatever. The people that the teabaggers sent up to Raleigh last year plan to do for the state what Godzilla did for Tokyo. Yet I sincerely believe voters will be paying attention. The NC GOP has been getting some bad press lately with the stories of frozen unemployment benefits for 40,000 people, the anti-abortion antics, and definitely the way they plan to offset tax cuts with stiffer “user fees” on everything from fishing licenses to learner’s permits.
SectarianSofa
Relevant perhaps:
Voters in red states and blue states virtually the same on the issues, study shows
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@stuckinred:
Looking back at the men who’ve occupied the WH, especially over the last 100 years, it is amazing the extent to which pretty much every one of them was psychologically twisted in some fashion (or as Marty Feldman put it to Gene Wilder: “Abby Normal”), and the degree to which decisions made during their administration were influenced by their individual peculiarlities. Waiting for a white knight on a horse to ride in and save the Republic from its various ills is a fool’s game. We have to save ourselves, and electing better leaders is merely a means to that end. Emphasis on the word “better”, as in an improvement over what came before. Somebody who doesn’t see Obama as an improvement compared with what the Dems have offered up in the recent past (most of whom couldn’t even win the election unless they had the last name Clinton), or what the GOP has for sale, that person has a long and frustrating road ahead of them.
Culture of Truth
@jane from hell: It just might!
I was snarking on complaints I’ve read re: Obama’s failure to visit factories and talk up jobs.
Spaghetti Lee
@Martin:
There’s nothing wrong with technological innovation, but I get the whole “adapt or die, blue-collars” argument a lot from libertarians and other market-fundies, and I think it can play pretty easily into anti-union, anti-labor corporate politics if you’re not careful.
Studly Pantload, a full-service troll
@Spaghetti Lee:
This, as the kids say.
cleek
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
maybe people enjoy those kinds of roads. gives their life meaning, or something.
tis better to have complained and lost than to have to settle for reality.
which i guess is a variation of Beese’ “protest people” line
jane from hell
@Martin: yes, NC and RTP have attracted more high-tech businesses. Including crazy ass biotech (human genes spliced into your rice! what could go wrong?). And I’d love to see your bulgogi recipe, by the way…
Davis X. Machina
@Culture of Truth: When they remake “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’, the new famous quote will become “This is the Internet, sir. When the snark becomes fact, print the snark”.
Linnaeus
@Martin:
I think you’re understating the extent to which states benefited from the US’ de facto industrial policy made at the federal level. It’s true that California did a lot of good things at the state level in the 1950s and 1960s, but the state (and the American west generally) benefited enormously from years of significant federal investment. California’s high-tech growth was intimately linked to the huge amount of defense spending that went into the state, which created the infrastructure (among other things) that allowed high-tech companies to continue to come there.
There are actually some pretty decent reasons why a company might want to go to someplace like Ohio; lots of technical expertise is still there for companies who aren’t just in the dot.com world.
Martin
@Southern Beale: Car manufacturing is low-tech. It’s assembly work, with most of the technical bits (like hybrid units) coming out of Asia and the design and engineering work coming out of Japan and South Korea. The south is competing with India for those jobs, so that’s hardly a platform to build off of economically.
They need to be aiming for jobs that require high skills and/or significant investments in infrastructure. If those plants have short ROIs or can be easily relocated, then it’s not something the state can easily build off of – they’re going to have to fight constantly just to keep the jobs, which usually means the company is going to keep raping the states tax base, and I don’t see long ROI manufacturing showing up much in the south or the midwest. For example, Samsung just invested another $4B to expand their semiconductor plant in Austin (in which they initially invested $3.5B in 2007). They’re not going to pack that plant up anytime soon – those jobs are secure for quite a while and Texas can use that plant to attract related businesses to the area knowing that there will be a built-in base of expertise in the field. That’s not happening in most of the south and midwest. Indiana has Purdue and Georgia has GATech, but the states aren’t investing economically in the regions as they should (Purdue is most unfortunately located, so the challenge is doubly hard there). NC didn’t start out any stronger than those states, but they effectively created an enterprise zone there in the triangle that has attracted a huge number of biotech and other tech firms, and those industries aren’t going anywhere. MA did the same as did CA and TX on biotech, but there’s no reason why that couldn’t have been Wisconsin or Indiana or Ohio or Iowa. But the states aren’t doing much to encourage that to happen.
Linnaeus
@Spaghetti Lee:
Yes. Heard it for years back in Michigan, even from otherwise liberal/progressive people. Interesting thing is that outsourcing/offshoring was put in the media spotlight when it started happening to white-collar technical workers whose jobs were supposedly safe. Prior to that, it was just the natural order of things.
WyldPirate
@stuckinred:
Kerry drove me nuts after the Swift Boating shit. I seriously nearly lost it that Kerry, who was legitimately wounded in action, got smeared by the campaign of an AWOL reservist. Particularly galling to me was the fact that my favorite uncle (who was KIA in ‘Nam) got sent to Vietnam for skipping out on one too many National Guard drills because he was a dumbass party animal (just like Bush).
Chris
@Martin:
I have a similar reaction sometimes, but mine revolves more around voting patterns… and, like I said, isn’t limited to the Midwest.
The beating the Democratic Party, and the unions, and the moderate, Keynesian, pro-worker model they stood for, all endured during the 1970s and 1980s… and the extremely weakened state in which they survive to this day… are to a very large extent the result of voting patterns in that demographic of blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth, economically-liberal-but-socially-conservative demographic. Where were all these guys when Reagan was firing their colleagues, shifting the tax burden onto them, stacking the government with people hostile to them, trying to dismantle their safety net and setting the stage for an era when those things would be the norm?
I’m sorry that so many of them have suffered since then – and I’m even sorrier for the millions of people who didn’t vote for it but, thanks to them, are suffering anyway. Moral of the story? You get what you vote for.
stuckinred
@Martin: You’d have to be nuts to build anything hi-tech in Georgia with the fucking morons we have in the statehouse.
gene108
@Chris:
White identity politics has as much or more to do with the Democrats demise in the Midwest as anything else.
Republicans became the Party that would keep Affirmative Action from taking the jobs of another white man.
Democrats tried to explain it wasn’t a hard quota system, but rather a means to insure businesses were open with their selection criteria and to reverse centuries of past discrimination. In reality, AA actually would help expand the power of the free-markets, because the good-old boys networks that ran many major corporations would be broken, since they had to consider people from different backgrounds, rather than the NYC businesses only hiring Wharton and Harvard business majors, while Midwestern firms, like Goodyear, Firestone, GM, etc. were willing to expand their pool of available talent, to include the University of Michigan and Ohio State Univ.’s business majors.
And you wonder why Democrats lost the Midwest.
WyldPirate
@Mike in NC:
You’re probably right, Mike. It would make sense as that would put it right after the “carpetbagger Republicans” ran things right after the Civil War.
Since you live in NC like me, you are no doubt aware of all of the shiny-faced, rednecked Bubbas and Jeebus freaks who eat up the Galtian/Teabagger shit the Rethugs are pulling here in NC.
I hope they pay for it in ’12, but I’m not getting my hopes up. Two more years of the shit the Rethugs are pulling here will pretty much decimate the only faint light of progessivism in the South.
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: I was at Dewey Canyon III and a couple of us who were there together got in touch when he got nominated. “Remember that fuck-head running around with a bullhorn acting like he was in charge”! His speech was great but he was obviously angling for something more. I went up to him at the 10th anniversary of the Wall and said “hi, I was here with you in 1971”. He looked at me like I had the fucking plague.
fasteddie9318
I’m just looking forward to Obama winning reelection so the teabillies can REALLY lose their shit.
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: BTW, I spent half my tour in this NG outfit that got called up and sent over.
cat48
Obama will go for NC & has added Arizona. He also hired the first Latina Political Director on June 9, which wasn’t reported b/c of “Weiner reports”. She’s been hiding in plain site as COS to Hilda Solis, Dept. Labor; and is a heavyweight political operative in the Hispanic community. This is all I know right now.
kay
@Martin:
This is a really common populist-liberal argument in Ohio, Martin. Marcy Kaptur makes it constantly, and so does Sherrod Brown. They put it in local terms, but it’s the same argument. She presents it as a choice: race to the bottom or invest and innovate. The comparison Kaptur uses are Minnesota and Wisconsin (although I suppose neither state is the best current example).
Everyone here knows all the young people are fleeing to Chicago. They know that. The problem is what you’re talking about takes a while, and Ohio is a swing state. They swing like hyperactive children from easy-peasy no-pain conservative “solutions” to longer-term liberal-Democrat “plans, and they drop the ball and go home when neither “works”, immediately.
Authentic Democratic populists don’t get enough attention or credit. They’ve been harping on this for years, not just since the economic collapse.
It’s hard. They’re asking people to commit to a long haul, and pick an actual positive direction. They’re telling people “you have a choice where your state goes, but here’s what you have to do” while Republicans are presenting this kind of magical market alchemy that doesn’t require any sacrifice.
People like Kaptur and Brown have spent entire careers making your argument.
Martin
@Linnaeus: Oh, I’m not underestimating that. The UC system was, for the most part, expanded to be an engine to drive the DOD. But CA had land that it was willing to give to do that – and it gave land that it knew would be prime for development in 20-40 years. Other states weren’t willing to make those investments.
But the big problem was that from the start of WWII until the 70s, states with agricultural and manufacturing economies got fat and happy off of the idea that post-WWII reconstruction would lead to permanent export, without any consideration that the only place for those nations to rebuild was directly out of the US manufacturing and agricultural base, which is exactly what they did. States that had the benefit of what appeared to be a permanent middle class thanks to being among last industrialized nations not bombed into dust never invested in their own economies to replace the jobs that were certain to be lost to other nations, and when it all came to a head in the 80s and 90s, they blame NAFTA and everything else for the loss when the reality is that we benefit economically more from all of that cheap oil out of Canada and Mexico than we do for the jobs lost to them, but again we were too lazy and shortsighted to invest to stave off what was obviously going to come.
Sure, there’s expertise in Ohio, but you can find the same expertise in China or India, so why not go there if the output of that work can be shipped at a reasonable cost? And if you bring a business to Ohio and push the envelope on technology, will the state be there to transfer that knowledge back to the next generation of workers so that they can grow? Does the state provide opportunities to pool that expertise so that companies can contract it out? That’s what’s really important to start-ups and smaller tech companies – they can’t afford the equipment and talent full time, but if there’s a local tech center – a well supported university or a collection of related companies – they can contract out what they need. If I needed to do small-scale but leading edge semiconductor manufacturing for prototype work in Ohio, is there anywhere to go? What about leading edge biotech? Materials manufacturing? That’s the problem. But it’s going to cost some tax dollars and it requires a populace that is behind the effort.
normal liberal
Also in McLean County, which Obama carried in 2008. Yes, we have a dominant R population, but there are flashes of hope still. Despite Kinzinger.
Martin
@stuckinred: Georgia has one of the best universities in the nation there, yet it’s NC, who started with less, that’s making the most of what they already invested. GaTech is a phenomenal school, and all of that talent gets exported from the state. Stupid.
Catsy
@WyldPirate:
Wait, what’s that? You say you have a personal anecdote about some people you know who used to totally support Obama but who’ve now realized that your unhinged one-note-Johnnyism was right all along?
Well, that does it: you’ve convinced me.
13th Generation
@Martin
I don’t know. I’ve got family and friends who went to GA Tech and a lot of them stayed right there in ATL.
WyldPirate
@stuckinred: @stuckinred:
My uncle was an 11-Bush in a TN ARNG unit. He got sent as an individual for–as I said–being a drunken fuck-up and skipping drills.
Kicker was that he somehow managed to get a billet in the Guard unit late in the war (late ’70 I think)even though our poor-assed family had zero influence. If he would have kept his nose clean, he would have probably never went to ‘Nam.
He got over there and didn’t make it three fucking weeks in-country…one of those FNGs no one wanted to get to know because they got killed so damned quick.
You sorta lost me in the Dewey Canyon III post. Was Kerry the one you were referring to as the dude with the bullhorn?
fasteddie9318
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff):
Yeah, I don’t know why this is talked about so little. White elites have been trying to hang on to power by driving wedges between poor whites and racial minorities ever since “white elite” became a thing that you could be. Their craft in this respect has come to full fruition in America, from colonial days on.
Jewish Steel
@normal liberal: Absolutely. B/N is going to turn within the next 10 years. It’s already getting better here. Certainly less the cultural wasteland I moved to in 1991
NCvoter3
North Carolina is a state that corporate media and pundits do not understand. They think its a countrified “redneck” state. They overlook the many Universities, the diversity of races as well as sexual diversity, the many small business owners, etc. NC is a modern state and I am glad the president and his team have spent much time here, he understand us. We will be out campaigning just as fiercely or even more so as in 2008. We do not want a GOP/Kochbrothers/libertarian/Mormon shill for president. We will stick with the man that put all his political cache on the line for the middle class. President Obama truly puts country first.
artem1s
@Martin:
water. we got it, the south and west doesn’t. look at any metro area south of the Mason Dixon and west of the Rockies and tell me how they continue to exist if the population continues it’s present trend? suburban sprawl is great until you find out there isn’t enough water for all those golf courses and cement ponds. California and Colorado have stolen all the water rights they can and the great lakes states aren’t letting go of theirs.
There’s not any growth industry that can be sustained without water. you want it, your going to have to move back to the great lakes sooner or later.
WyldPirate
@Catsy:
No, asswipe. I have the personal integrity to admit that it is an anecdote.
I’m not lying about my friends and many of their arguments convinced me that Obama is full of shit.
But you keep on singing the praises of Obama and forget history all you want. Bush I was sitting at about a 70% approval rating at this point in ’91 and a nobody out of nowhere riven with scandals along the way ended up beating him (wouldn’t have happened had not Perot got in the race, though).
All bets are off for Obama if the economy doesn’t improve no matter how weak the current Repuke field is.
artem1s
@kay:
excellent explanation of the current situation in NEOH.
Southern Beale
Some amazing pics from a Wisconsin protest at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, their state business lobby. Amazes me how this story has dropped off the radar and MSM never covered it. Guess you need boners and tricorn hats to get their attention these days.
Southern Beale
@artem1s:
Nashville sits on the Cumberland River, which flooded in May 2010. I’d say some of us have more than enough water.
normal liberal
My family has been in central Illinois since the late sixties, when it was really retrograde. Bit of a shock for my parents from that big scary place up north.
Leave their guns alone, and some of the rural die-hards (not the anti-abortion ones) can be turned with a properly couched economic pitch, as long as you let them believe they’re sticking it to Chicago.
I wish I could figure out that “cite prior comment” thing…
gene108
@Martin:
From what I remember growing up in RTP, the Triangle is more of an exception than a rule to economic development in North Carolina.
There’s huge swaths of the state, which have never really recovered from the drop in tobacco demand and the closing of textile mills.
kay
@artem1s:
Didn’t you feel the clock ticking from 2006 on? Tick, tick, tick…”have they FIXED IT YET? NO? Well, let’s try the other way, again!”
I knew those loathsome attention-addled swing voters would run off again :)
Marcy Kaptur makes me sad. I think she’s going to collapse one of these days screaming about GREEN ENERGY and NEW INDUSTRY and INVESTMENT. I don’t know where people get that kind of perseverance. Years. Decades. Same argument. Good god.
WyldPirate
@artem1s:
Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Memphis will be just fine with water.
Charlotte isn’t in too bad of shape for water. The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area could face some challenges with water, but they have three pretty decent sized lakes nearby.
Climate change could make things dicey everywhere, though.
WyldPirate
@gene108:
You’re absolutely right, gene108. Much of NC is an economic wasteland for the exact reasons you mention.
trollhattan
My NH bro informs me tonight’s Republican panderfest(tm) coincides with the Bruins’ game. Nice planning there, fellas.
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: Yea, there is film of him walking up and down with the bullhorn as we went to Arlington. The VVAW rank-and-file wasn’t exactly taken with officers if you know what I mean?
Sorry, it wasn’t a bullhorn it was a walkie talkie
http://airbornecombatengineer.typepad.com/photos/david_driskell/kerry71demo.jpg
dmsilev
@trollhattan: Maybe CNN could arrange for a combined broadcast. It’d bring a whole new meaning to the phrase “fact-check”. I’d watch.
Martin
@artem1s: Ok. So California is the nations largest manufacturing state. The state uses 1/10th the amount of water for industry as any of Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, or Louisiana. 1/6th as much as NJ, TN, AL, GA, SC. 1/3 as much as OH, IL, VA, or most of the rest in the north east.
That’s not per capita, that TOTAL. With 5x the population of Indiana, and with a much larger industrial base, we use 1/10 the amount of water. CA uses over 20B gallons of water per day, roughly 1% is used for industrial purposes and another 1% for residential purposes. 90% of it is used for agriculture and livestock, so whenever you guys get around to parking cows and finding enough sunlight to grow something other than apples and wheat, give us a call because we produce 1/6th of the nations food.
So, no, water isn’t really a limiting factor for industry, actually.
stuckinred
@trollhattan: And this bootlickin, oreo motherfucker will be in the house with this sorry shit:
Martin
@gene108: That’s actually proving my point. The 19th century jobs left, but the state is building a new economy to replace it. These transitions are hard, but at least NC is doing it and should be stronger for the effort. But what’s the alternative, having the government buy tobacco just to prop that economy up? Isn’t that the very farm policy we’ve been fighting against for ages?
General Stuck
Right now, the republican crazy is diffused out among a troupe of clowns. When the wingers select clown numero uno, then we will see specific policy platforms largely written by the Tea Party and assorted other psychos now running the GOP, and these policies will then become personified in a single candidate, who doesn’t dare veer far from the wishes of the inmates running gooper asylum.
It is a platform for nothing, except maybe white pride and supremacy, with large doses of stingy, mean and crazy. The least of which is not grannies of all colors, races and creeds running in pitchfork platoons. Throw in all the other minorities and pissed off female population being once again reduced to not much more than betrothed brood mares with state owned uteruses , and there could well be some kind of shift no one is predicting, toward dems, beyond Obama’s 08 voters, most of which are hanging on according to polling that remains very stable, and has been from day one.
Lots of shit can happen, bad and good, but this could well turn out to be the unelection for republicans rather than a reelection for Obama. I guess there could be a wingnut white knight, slick enough to please the tea tards and bullshit enough others je doesn’t really mean it, to win a POTUS election, but even another Reagan would have to run a step or two to the right of Attila the Hun. And have a huge silver and forked tongue.
One thing is fairly certain, any Mormon candidate will lose a vital and fickle faction of their national electorate, the evangelical right, who will not vote for no Mormon. They might hold their collective noses and vote for a convicted ax murderer, but no Mormons need apply with that bunch.
Disclaimer – I disavow any errors in this comment, and deem them the work of demonic weiners running the internets right now.
JPL
Ah shucks…the debate is not on if you depend on an antenna. There is no way I am streaming the debate..I hope there is an open thread and I can read the comments in the morning though.
goblue72
@Martin: California doesn’t count. We’re all a bunch of soshulist hippies and pencil-neck geeks whose nation leading energy efficiency regulation just makes us slaves to Big Government telling us what kind of light bulbs to buy.
PreservedKillick
True.
My thinking is that they do end up nominating a nut.
And that one of the sane ones wakes up, smells the gun oil, and runs as an independent…not because he/she might win, but strictly as a wakeup call to the party.
Southern Beale
Speaking of Republican crazy: Washington Times website had to yank a web post claiming Anthony Weiner was a secret Muslim. What is with these idiots?
Chris
@Southern Beale:
For starters, their owner claims to be a god.
It goes downhill from there.
Southern Beale
@Martin:
Well, Nashville is quite a healthcare center. I can’t speak for any other city in the South but I think your allegation that the South is stuck in an antebellum era agriculture-based business model his horseshit.
srv
While the FP diddle, Dana Rohrabacher has been kicked out of Iraq.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: You should look into the biotech companies that are in the Madison area.
Reality Check
I see the liberals are still disarray, with even hardcore leftists like WyldPirate jumping off Obama’s sinking ship.
I can’t wait until next year. Keep dreaming of winning North Carolina, meanwhile, we’ll be taking Minesotta, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, and maybe even New Jersey and Connecticut or Oregon on election day…
MikeJ
@srv: Put it on your own fucking blog.
Reality Check
As to the evangelicals and their attitude to Mormons, fact is, evangelicals don’t matter anymore. Why do you think Huckabee passed? Big government evangelical “compassionate” conservatism is dead, fiscal conservatives now run the GOP. They can sit down and shut the fuck up, they had their time with Bush. Now it’s our turn.
NR
Obama is still obsessing over the deficit, and meanwhile, Romney is hitting him on what really matters: Jobs.
If Obama keeps this up, 2012 is going to be a nightmare.
Reality Check
@NR:
Damn straight! Start crying in your beer now, lefty.
Martin
@Southern Beale: Well, I don’t think the entire south is. NC isn’t. I don’t think Texas is either. Other states are doing fine with agriculture, being transportation hubs (LA), tourism (FL) and so on. But when those things aren’t working and residents come back and say ‘Hey Dems, why aren’t you promoting our industries?!’ all while rejecting high speed rail and other federal initiatives like green energy, then what the fuck are we supposed to say? NonyNony put the blame back on NAFTA. Well, Mexico is only taking 19th century agriculture and manufacturing jobs, and in return they and Canada are sending us cheap, non-Middle East oil which, economically, is far from worthless. If you want to know where those wind turbine and high speed rail jobs are, they’re in China not because of NAFTA but because China has been sending tons of their engineering students to earn PhDs and brings as many back home as possible. They’re using that export surplus to invest heavily in high tech – something that isn’t happening across most of the US, where we’re slashing education budgets left and right and refusing to invest in infrastructure because it’s more important to have unfettered access to an assault rifle and ban birth control than it is to have a job.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, I would have added Wisconsin to the list of states doing good, but look at them now. You think that’s going to last with the current crop of idiots running the state?
gene108
@Martin:
I’m not really arguing about propping up dying businesses. I’m just pointing out that economic development in North Carolina (India, China, New York state, etc.) tends to concentrate in more urban areas and the rural areas are getting left behind.
I haven’t seen the same sort of economic development that happened in RTP, happening in rural North Carolina.
Charlotte’s attracted banking as a major industry.
The Greensboro area created the Triad, an economic development zone like the Triangle, but I’m not sure if it has been as successful (I’ve been out of the state for some time now).
Otherwise, I don’t really see anything returning jobs to rural North Carolina.
EDIT: I think in most cases a “rising tide” lifts all boats. The prosperity of RTP did probably help offset the loss of textile jobs for some folks, but the last recession has probably wiped out whatever those benefits might have been.
Georgia Pig
@Martin: Gene108 has a point though, there are big chunks of NC that are not doing very well and not looking very promising for the future, as they are plagued by a new sort of semi-rural poverty, including meth addiction and a host of other ills. It could get much worse with the Republicans taking over the legislature and gutting education.
The wingnuts in SC will tell you the answer is competing for manufacturing jobs with China by busting unions and gutting environmental protections, but a fat lot of good that’s done them in beating out AL and MS for the bottom of the heap. You just can’t compete with whatever low cost place in the world that global capital decides to plant its flag to extract cheap labor resources. They’ll screw China once they have the opportunity. They’re fucking parasites.
A lot of stuff that starts out high tech ends up commodotized in short order because of the nature of finance and trade policy in the US. Even high end engineering work is increasingly being offshored to China and elsewhere. Cree, where Obama visited today, is a success story coming out of NC State, but the area they are working in, LED lighting, will soon technologically mature to the point that manufacturing will be largely done in Asia and other low-cost labor zones. At that point, Chinese production engineers will further refine techniques for producing these products, and soon there will be few Americans who know how to do these nuts and bolts things because they have no industry to grow up in.
Not everyone can be Silicon Valley or RTP, and you simply can’t have a long-term successful high-tech industry without retaining a strong manufacturing base. Simply chasing after the next tech bright shiny thing using universities isn’t sufficient. States can only do so much when federal trade and monetary policy inexorably pushes domestic manufacturing offshore. Federal policy over the last several decades has caused us to eat our seed corn, we just happened to have not eaten it all up yet.
Reality Check
The United States manufactures more than any other country in the world (and that’s excluding military hardware).
Losing manufacturiing JOBS is not the same thing as losing MANUFACTURING.
goblue72
@Reality Check: Can I have whatever it is you are smoking?
Watching wingnuts like you freebase off your own fantasies is about as sad as listening to a meth head cackle over the latest scam to get his next score.
les
@Southern Beale:
This allegation may be horseshit; the allegation I saw, which was a model based on giving big tax perks to lure factories with low-tech, low-paid workers ain’t far off. Nobody says Nashville or Atlanta or where ever else has nothing; but when right to work, low corporate tax, big incentives won’t lure Toyota to Georgia because they don’t think the workforce is capable or educated enough, you got problems.
Monala
@Linnaeus: You and me both, Linnaeus. I grew up in Cleveland, now live in the Puget Sound region.
Davis X. Machina
@gene108:
Furniture too. Thomasville, High Point….
Monala
@Linnaeus: Ohio has been converting its dying glass industry into one that makes solar panels:
http://www.hivelocitymedia.com/features/Glass9_23_10.aspx
trollhattan
@Martin:
Good stuff!
Here’s a quickie summary on California exports. High points: 2008 total of $149B, of which $13B was agricultural:
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/04/17/3556660/what-does-california-really-export.html#storylink=misearch
Suck on that, Texas.
It’s easy enough to switch from high water use crops like alfalfa and still do very well, farmin’. All that would really be needed would be to charge market rates for federal water and there wouldn’t be any sort of “shortage” at all. But agribusiness doesn’t like to surrender their sweet subsidies, so instead they invite Hannity to stand in their fields and yap about “man-made droughts” and “junk science that has us favoring bait fish over humans.”
Also, too.
Climate change is the crazy aunt in the attic, but even that can be responded to, with the will to do so. Ha, I said a funny.
shortstop
@Jewish Steel: AWS is One of Us, One of Us? I did not realize.
@Spaghetti Lee: Now come on. There are quite a few of you seething libruls in DuPage, more all the time. A tipping point shall be reached.
georgia pig
@Reality Check: Reality check, Dr Pangloss:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/labor%20share.jpg
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2011/03/profits.png
gene108
@Davis X. Machina:
I knew I was leaving out something about industry in Western NC, but I couldn’t think of what it was…man I’ve been gone a long time…
@Georgia Pig:
I think issues are a bit deeper than just losing industry and struggling to attract new industries. The issues of poor education go back decades, in many rural parts of the country.
It didn’t matter as much, when most of rural North Carolina (South Carolina, Georgia, etc.) were working in agriculture. You had your farm and you knew how to run your farm. When factory jobs came from the Northeast, that was just an extra boost to the economies.
Big agribusinesses have taken over most rural places, since most Americans aren’t pursuing agriculture as a career option anymore. You don’t see too many people say they’re going to plunk down ‘x’ to start farm. They’ll plunk down ‘x’ to start a coffee shop, bookstore, or other business, but not a farm.
With agriculture not being the sort of industry people in rural America are participating in, compared to the past, the problems of poor education, etc. have just compounded people’s problems in terms of finding gainful employment.
Part of the reason Hyundai, BMW, etc. are building cars in the USA is because we buy a lot of cars. It is more cost effective to build cars here, than to build them in Korea, Germany, etc. and ship them here. You don’t have the added shipping costs to get your product to market.
Lower labor costs in non-union areas is also attractive, but I don’t think South Korean factory wages have exceeded U.S. wages yet (though I could be wrong), so it isn’t entirely linked to a race to the bottom with Vietnam or Cambodia.
Part of the demise in U.S. manufacturing is the imbalance in our manufacturing base, versus the rest of the world after WW2. I read somewhere that in the 1950’s, the U.S. had 80% of the world’s industrial capacity.
We are still the largest manufacturing nation on the planet, though I think China is nipping at our heels and may overtake us soon.
We just don’t have a manufacturing sector that’s as proportionately as large a chunk of our economy as it was in the past.
I’m personally not sure, if other industries would be scaled back, if manufacturing returned to the U.S. I just don’t see us being able to have the growth rates of India or China, to absorb large investments in one sector of the economy, without driving resources away from others.
OzoneR
@WyldPirate:
No, no they dont
Cacti
@Catsy:
I have strong personal connections to NC, and all of my Democratic friends will be supporting and voting for President Obama.
Wyld Bedford Forrest Pirate’s story, if true, can probably just be taken as evidence that his friends are dickheads too.
Jim
Martin thinks of Ohio and imagines a fat guy with a lawn he doesn’t deserve and wants a permanent job screwing bolts.
I think of New York City and imagine a fat cat with a line he reserves (at Scores, of coke) and wants a permanent job screwing people (or pushing buttons as an overpaid excel flunkie).
I think of California as the high-tech paradise which would be an apricot yard without Wall Street permanent bailout money, and the Pandagon.
Creative Crass indeed.
amk
@Culture of Truth: You’re a fucking idjit, aren’t ya ?
Jared
Let me know what you think of this map:
http://www.270towin.com/2012_election_predictions.php?mapid=O
I think it satisfies what you want.