Racism played big part in Obama MO loss

[Mesteryo]

A Saint Louis University professor believes Barack Obama lost Missouri because racism still exists in the state, especially in rural parts.

Ken Warren, a political science professor, said people tend to vote for candidates who look like them.

"Why did they vote for Nixon, (Chris) Koster, (Robin) Carnahan -- three white people -- and not vote for Obama? There's no question that in rural areas, they're not going to vote for a black guy," Warren said.



3 white Democrats win statewide elections but the black Democrat losing does look suspicious.

[MadHound]

1. Gee, same sort of racism that can be found, to a greater or lesser extent, in all 50 states

Just because a state went blue doesn't mean it's free of racism, witness PA, OH, IN, etc. etc.

What is this, pick on Missouri day around here?

Oh, and for your information, Missouri's election results aren't official yet. There's over 17,000 provisional ballots, from mostly urban KC and St. Louis areas. These, along with the 7000 absentee ballots won't be tabulated for another couple of weeks. Given that McCain's lead right now is under 5900, it is still quite conceivable that Missouri will eventually wind up going for Obama. Will that finally shut the Missouri bashers up, or contrariwise, will the Missouri bashing increase if McCain gets the Missouri nod officially. If so, this is going to be a long four years for any Missourian on DU as the rest of the board decides to take a collective dump on us. Gee thanks

[Mesteryo]

6. I live in MO too...

I'm not bashing the state.

[MadHound]

8. Cool, given your location, maybe you can tell me WTF happened to St. Charles County

That place was supposed to be wired for Obama, yet it went for McCain by five, six points. Really now, what happened there? Everything I was hearing coming out there was it was going to go Obama, yet it failed miserably

[Mesteryo]

10. St. Charles county..

Has alot of transplants from Republican areas of St. Louis county and also "white flight" transplants.

[Ghost in the Machine]

2. We can file this in the "DUH!" category....

Gee, ya *think* so, Professor Warren??

[Bluebear]

3. My NPR map still shows Missouri too close to call.

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/election2008/2008-elec...

[ben_meyers]

4. Anyone who didn't vote for Obama is a racist

and because he didn't get 100% of the vote proves that there is still racism in the US.

[MadHound]

5. Umm, pretty broad brush you're using there

Are you going to honestly call the African Americans who voted for McCain racists?

There are a myriad of other reasons why people didn't vote for Obama. Hell, I was going to vote for the Green party until McCain picked Palin. That's because despite the hype, Obama is not the great liberal hope, he is going to govern from the center, center left, center right, and will continue to be another in a long line of corporately compromised officials. I voted for Obama for one reason, he was the lesser of two evils. Go ahead and call me a racist, I dare you.

[ben_meyers]

7. I think I was pointing out the stupidity some of these posts.

n/t

[WiMu]

9. It may not necessarily be racism

I can remember back in high school my government teacher telling us he use to follow the model of voting for Republicans for the higher offices (President, Governor, Senators) because they were less likely to raises taxes but he would vote for lower offices (Representatives and local offices) because if taxes were raised he trusted democrats to spend the money wisely. This was back in 1993 and I have since heard this model of voting repeat a number of times. Now without knowing which office this people ran for, I can not state whether or not this model was the one used. It very well could have been racism, who really knows because we are not given any data other then the three people that won were white and that Obama was black. It just may happen to be that these three individuals happened to be well know and well like in the areas that they ran in and that was why the people voted for them. Did these three white democrats run against three white republicans or did they run against three African American republicans, if the they ran against three white republicans I do not know if that shows sings of racism in who was elected or not, but if they ran against three African American republicans then you might have a point that there was racism involved, but not necessarily so.