Logic Problems at Salon
Robby on Mar 12 2007 at 9:17 pm | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Louisiana Politics, Race, Robby's Page
The subtext of this Salon piece? People in Louisiana sure are stupid. Because everything that went wrong after Katrina was Bush’s fault, and yet the state is growing more staunchly Republican.
I’m going to just leave the “it’s all Bush’s fault” meme alone, except to express astonishment that anyone could make such an argument or have it taken seriously. Whatever your opinion of George W. Bush, Louisiana politicians have been out-incompetenting and out-corrupting the rest of the nation for 200 years. Also, they are incompetent and corrupt in a variety of amusing and colorful ways, which is the only reason we are able to tolerate them. Suffice to say that there is plenty of blame to go around, and I am uninterested in rehashing that discussion, mostly because I am lazy and don’t feel like tracking down a bunch of links. (Have at each other on the comments if you want to.)
The really interesting part of Schaller’s article is this section, in which he examines the impact of race on party identification and electoral success:
Louisiana is, at last, about to look a lot more like its Deep South neighbors politically. There has been something of an inverse relationship in recent presidential elections between the share of black voters and Republican performance. That is, the blacker the state, the bigger the Republican margins. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina are all states with black populations close to or above a third, the highest percentage in the nation — and not a Democratic senator, governor or, since 1992, Democratic electoral vote among them.
Along with Florida, Louisiana had been different, a state where multiracial coalitions propelled Clinton, Landrieu and Blanco to victories. In Louisiana, a black population of 32.5 percent made victory for Democrats possible. The post-Katrina question is whether the black population will remain large enough for Democrats to continue building such coalitions, especially if there is a backlash among white voters in the noncoastal portions of the state toward Blanco, controversial New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and state Democrats in general. Recent polls, however, are not promising, and they also show how resolutely racial party identification has become in the Deep South. The blacker the state, the more Republican the whites are.
Let me see if I can follow this logic. First he says, southern states with large black populations are more reliably Republican. In his words, “the blacker the state, the more Republican the whites are.” In the same paragraph, he says Louisiana’s pre-Katrina demographics (a higher percentage of blacks)Â ”made victory for Democrats possible.” And now that there are fewer black people in the state (because of post-Katrina migration), Louisiana is getting more Republican…because there are fewer black people! Wait a second…shouldn’t we be getting less Republican in that case? It must be because Louisiana used to be different (how? why? I don’t know!) but now we are the same–a “new Mississippi.” Ouch! Low blow.
I guess what they say about Louisiana schools is true, because I’m too dumb to figure that out.
Technorati Tags: Katrina, race, Louisiana politics
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[…] Were Schaller’s postulation correct, that the presence of large Black population induces Republicanism, we would expect these two states to be significantly more Democratic than they are. […]
This sounds like the time my political geography professor was lecturing on electoral geography, and tried to make the point that poor people voting for Republicans are irrational, as it goes against their basic self-interest. He didn’t seem to understand what “basic self-interest” meant, or that the poor might not want or care about welfare (or would rather earn their own money).
I heard that kind of thing as well, and often when I was in school. I recommend checking postpolitical’s trackback. He makes some good points as well. Good catch Robby.