The Casey Belt
Posted on May 17th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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A similar pattern has emerged in a handful of Rust Belt and border states. With the exception of 1972 and 1984, West Virginia also voted for the Democratic presidential nominee from 1932 to 1996, and it hasn’t elected a GOP senator for generations. Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas and Ohio all went for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and for Bill Clinton twice. All but Ohio have been dominated by Democrats at the congressional and gubernatorial levels for decades. But all five went for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.
The reason: Casey Democrats. “Democrats’ difficulties with this group surely have a great deal to do with these voters’ sense of cultural alienation from the national Democratic Party and its relatively cosmopolitan values around religion, family, guns and other social institutions/practices,” blogged Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeira after the 2004 election. Just two years earlier, in their book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” Teixeira and John Judis had predicted that the party’s economic liberalism would bear the Democratic nominee to victory in such states. ~Mark Stricherz
For obvious reasons, I was very interested to read this article, since it ties together several of the states I have been discussing in recent weeks where there seems to be particularly strong resistance to Obama, and where there also seems to be significantly less resistance to Clinton. When a Democratic candidate wins these states, as they should by all rights given the strong Democratic local and state presence in all of them, he wins the White House. Without them, he fails.
Put simply, if all of the states (minus Pennsylvania) mentioned in this article go against Obama and Colorado and Virginia continue in their general post-1968 pattern of voting for the Republican, it would be extremely difficult for him to win the election. If Pennsylvania were lost it would be nearly impossible. If the GOP took all these “Casey Democrat” states, not including Pennsylvania, and also won New Mexico (while holding Colorado), the Democrats would still lose even if they won in Virginia. Likewise, Colorado alone wouldn’t be enough. Dem wins in Colorado and New Mexico wouldn’t be enough for an outright win, either, though in that latter scenario would result in a 269-269 tie and throw it to the House, resulting in a Dem win. Bottom line: based on how these “Casey Democrat” states are leaning right now, some combination of two of those three states have to turn ”blue” for Obama if he is going to win. Of course, if you include Pennsylvania in the Republican column, Democrats could carry Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia and it still wouldn’t matter. For Obama to win, it seems likely that at least one of these three states will have to vote in a way that it hasn’t voted in either 44 years (VA) or 16 years (CO), and possibly two of the three will have to do this. For McCain to win, he needs Virginia and Colorado to vote as they have done for four decades, and then it doesn’t matter what happens in New Mexico. If McCain continues to lead in places such as Wisconsin and Michigan, all of this won’t matter anyway, but the Democrats have chosen a good spot for their convention, since Colorado is going to become a more crucial and more hotly contested swing state than most.
Filed under: politics
McCain winning Wisconsin and Michigan? That’s very funny. Good luck with these predictions; at least in blogging there are no repercussions for being completely and utterly wrong.
Did I predict that he *would* win them? No, I made a conditional statement based on what is happening at the moment. And, in fact, he is leading in these places by very, very slim margins. Do I think those will last the entire year? Almost certainly not.
At least in blog commenting there are no repercussions for saying nothing of value.
I find the Casey-crat thing interesting. What is being describing as an abandonment could just as easily be described as a mainstreaming. As best I can tell from polling, it appears that upwards of 60% of Catholics will support the Democratic nominee. A lot of commentary on Catholics seems premised on widespread doctrinal agreement and solidarity. I guess I just don’t see it. Catholics were the big backers of Giuliani and McCain, neither of whom have been stalwarts in the pro-life community. And for all the talk on the Democratic side, they are siding with Hillary Clinton. I fail to see a compelling difference between Obama and Clinton, let alone one I could ascribe to specifically Catholic principles.
If you think the slim margins won’t last the entire year, why even write what you’ve written above? Who cares what would happen right now if you yourself don’t even believe that’s a good guide for what will actually happen in the election? What are you trying to add to the debate here?
McCain could defeat the political auguries as an experience maverick opposing a naïf.
Or this could be a year for a major political sea-change, and Obama could end up riding an avalanche.
It’s early days.
@Mobius:
The better question is what you’re adding to it. Focusing on one almost throwaway line that points to other difficulties Obama is having in the Upper Midwest is not a response to the bulk of what I wrote. I mention Wisconsin and Michigan because these are Democratic-leaning states that Obama ought to be able to win going away, and he isn’t doing that right now. That suggests that he is meeting significant resistance, and meanwhile McCain is running surprisingly well. That seems worth noting, even if McCain doesn’t end up winning Wisconsin, which is very difficult for Republicans to do. McCain’s chances in Michigan are better, given the Democratic failure in handling the primary and McCain’s relatively strong popularity in the state (a state he lost in the primaries only because of Romney’s strong personal connection to the state and immense spending effort). Michigan going Republican is nowhere near as far-fetched as your dismissive comment implies. I wrote the above sentence because it sums up a statement about the current polling that expresses the same thought as this paragraph of exposition–McCain has some chance to win these states, and if he does Obama is out of luck.
I am from Michigan. It will not go Republican. Let’s wager tacos on it.
How many tacos?
It depends, I think, on how you would like to collect. If all at once, it seems like a semi-small number is best. Depends also on your ability to consume tacos. I am really more of a five-taco kind of man, so that’s my initial offer.
I could go for five tacos. Let’s start with five tacos and increase the bet as the year goes on.
Hahaha, deal. Are you located in the greater DC area or will you be mailing me my tacos when I collect?
[…] That’s very much in line with what I was saying earlier this month. […]
[…] As Cost notes, the campaign has not been running ads in these states because these were states where Obama was particularly weak in the primaries. Three of them are in Appalachia, and four of them belong to what I once dubbed “the Casey belt,” because of the prevalence of so-called “Casey Democrats” in these states. The phrase refers to states that still tilt towards the Democrats in many local and state elections and continue to have greater Democratic than Republican registration, while their Democratic voters tend to be socially conservative. So it was no accident that Obama fared quite badly with white Democrats in all of these states and lost the primaries in four of them. There is tremendous resistance to his candidacy among many of these Democrats similar to the resistance Kerry faced, but as Cost observes the states where Obama is making unconventional ad buys demonstrated even greater resistance to Kerry. […]