Oddly enough on the same day the LA Times writes and exceptional expose on Virginia, USA Today has an article on Virginia’s importance to this year’s election. In an article filled with facts and data regarding ad spends and demographic trends common in most swing state analysis, author Raju Chebium begins to end his piece outlining the Battleground states identifying Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. All standard fare until completely unrelated to any sentence in the entire column he writes this unbelievable closing sentence:
Three of the states — Florida, North Carolina and Virginia — were part of the Confederacy during the Civil War. The other eight states that belonged to the Confederacy — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas — are all “red” states expected to support Romney this year.
What the hell does the Civil War have to do with an election 150 years later and the fact that most of the states today are Republican? As if the racist implications weren’t enough, the ignorance is beyond astounding as those were nearly all Democrat states for a century after the Civil War until Ronald Reagan’s “Southern Strategy” 130 years later began the generation long move of those states into the Republican column. Unbelievable.
