Sectionalism in Auto Bailout Debate

Last night, while the House of Representatives was taking a vote on a procedural matter on the automaker bailout legislation, CSPAN played a clip of Republican Senators denouncing the possible bailout. The Senators who spoke were Shelby from Alabama, DeMint from South Carolina, and Coburn from Oklahoma. All three states were part of the Old Confederacy.

Sectionalism is nothing new in American politics. Since the beginning of the United States, there have been sectional disputes centered around the economy. During the Jefferson Administration New England politicians debated the idea of secession. During the Jackson Administration South Carolina talked about secession. Obviously, during the Lincoln Administration secession became a reality.

All of these disputes centered around economic issues, including slavery. While slavery was a moral issue for abolitionists, it was a big economic issue in the South. A lot of Southern plantation owners had wealth tied up in owning slaves.

So sectionalism in American politics is nothing new, and sectionalism based on economic issues is certainly not new. Given that fact, then how do you rise about sectionalism? You rise about sectionalism by pointing out how interconnected the American economy is and how that what happens to one section hurts all sections.

What those of us in Northern states need to point out is that millions of Americans losing their jobs hurts all of us. Interestingly, there is an article on the Forbes website that points out that Southern auto workers realize this fact. Here is a quote from the article:

"If they go under I don't know what's in store for us," said the 41-year-old employee at Nissan Motor Co. (nasdaq: NSANY - news - people )'s Smyrna assembly plant. "Everybody at Nissan is scared."

The worker being quoted works at a Nissan plant in Tennessee. She realizes that the failure of GM and Chrysler would cripple auto production because of the effect on suppliers.

There is also the fact that bankruptcy of Chrysler and GM would actually cost more than the cost of the bailout being debated. If there is a bankruptcy, then literally thousands of jobs will be lost, leading to an increase for things like unemployment, medicaid, and a loss of tax revenue for local and state governments.

Southern politicians need to understand that poking the Yankees in the eye may lead to vision problems for residents of their states as well.

GOP Proves It Can Win Elections in States of the Old Confederacy

So the GOP has won a run-off election in Georgia and has apparently won two congressional elections in Louisana, which were delayed because of Hurricane Gustav. The GOP Chair claimed that the election in Georgia, in which an incumbent Republican Senator managed to hold on to his seat in a state that Obama lost somehow shows that the United States is still a "center-right" nation.

The GOP Chair has his job to do and that is to make his party look good. Part of that job is to spin the facts and to try and get the national news media to accept that spin. So it is undertandable that he would try and put the best spin on the Georgia election.

There is, however, another way of looking at these elections, and that is the GOP has now proved that it can still win elections in the Old Confederacy. Frankly, we didn't think that was ever in doubt, but judgind from the fuss that the GOP is making over Saxby Chambliss holding onto his Senate seat, it must have been.

Far be it from us to point out that if the GOP is in the position that it can only win elections in the deep South, then it is totally screwed. No, we would never do that, would we?

Democratic Presidents and the Old Confederacy

There is this guy named David Leip who runs a website devoted to American elections, particularly presidential elections. He has the breakdown of every presidential race since the adoption of the Constitution with maps showing which states each candidate won. It is a very interesting site.

If you examine the election results for the 20th century, you will find that counting the election of 1900 there were 25 presidential elections between 1900 and 1996. Republicans won 13 of them and Democrats won 12. In the 12 that Democrats won, they carried at least four states of the 11 states of the Old Confederacy, and in most cases, they carried more than four. Indeed in the elections of 1912, 1916, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, and 1976, the Democratic candidate carried all 11 of them.

Although carrying all 11 of them, was no guarantee of victory, (see for example the elections of 1900, 1904, 1908, 1920, and 1924), no Democrat has won without carrying at least four "Confederate" states. The quesiton is, however, could that dynamic be changed in 2008?

At Leip's website, he has predictions based on polls of how Democrats could win in 2008 and lose every "Confederate" state. The calculations involve carrying Ohio, Missouri, New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa, and Nevada. These are all states that Bush carried in 2004. Those states would mean a pick-up of 57 electoral votes, as compared to Kerry in 2004. The two most important states in those six are Ohio and Missouri, which give you 31 electoral votes, which is more than Florida. Alternatively, if a Democrat could carry Florida and Ohio, he or she would pick up an additional 47 votes, again as compared to Kerry in 2004.

The 2008 election could be historic in many ways. We could see the election of the first woman president, or the first Afro-American president, and the first election of a Democrat who didn't carry a single state of the Old Confederacy since the end of the Civil War.