Dennis Haysbert as David Palmer, President

The New York Times has an article today called, “How The Movies Made a President,” (which includes a cool slide show). It examines various black archetypes in movies and TV and how they may have helped to prepare the ground for the ascendancy of Barack Obama. I had similar thoughts a few months ago but never got around to making a blog post out of ’em (I know, all the bloggers say that, right?). The article mentions Dennis Haysbert and the show “24” in passing — that was the starting point of my train of thought earlier.

I think the significance of that show is not only that it was popular and that the black President Palmer was a good guy, someone the audience is rooting for, but that Keifer Sutherland’s character Jack Bauer is a pretty Republican character, at core. He’s all about stoppin’ those damn terrorists by any means necessary. This wasn’t some lefty liberal show, at all.

I started thinking about this after seeing a Dennis Haysbert commercial for State Farm. He’s all calm, reassuring authority. I saw the commercial soon after some sort of political television — a debate, perhaps — and I thought at the time that it had to help Obama. There are just all sorts of resonances there. The phrases I transcribed from the commercial at the time were, “If this isn’t a recession, it sure feels like one,” (spoken wryly but seriously by Haysbert, standing in a grocery store) and then the standard State Farm tagline; “Are you in good hands?” Haysbert’s hands, the commercial clearly implies, are very good ones.

As of a year ago, Dennis Haysbert was willing to take some of the credit, too:

“As far as the public is concerned, it did open up their minds and their hearts a little bit to the notion that if the right man came along… that a black man could be president of the United States,” Haysbert, who believes that Obama is the “right man,” said in the January 21 [2008] issue of TV Guide. “People on the street would ask me to run for office… when I went to promote [24].”

[…]

“I think we both have a similar approach to who and what we believe the president is,” Haysbert said in another interview with the Los Angeles Times. “Barack doesn’t get angry. He’s pretty level. That’s how I portrayed President Palmer: as a man with control over his emotions and great intelligence.”

I don’t think anyone’s claiming that there is a direct line from one to the other; that if these black fictional representations hadn’t existed, Barack Obama wouldn’t have won, or that the fictional representations meant that any black politician could make it that far. Obama’s achievement is significant and singular. I do agree with Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, though, authors of the NYT article, that

The presidencies of James Earl Jones in “The Man,” Morgan Freeman in “Deep Impact,” Chris Rock in “Head of State” and Dennis Haysbert in “24” helped us imagine Mr. Obama’s transformative breakthrough before it occurred. In a modest way, they also hastened its arrival.

(Another thought I had while reading the NYT article — Michelle Obama is SO Clair Huxtable, isn’t she? Smart, polished, down-to-earth, nurturing, funny…. Is this not a total Clair Huxtable moment?)

T-shirt made by a bar in Georgia

I’m starting to see Obama being held up as an indication of how advanced America is compared to other countries when it comes to race relations. On the one hand that’s so awesome! Yay us! I do still get this little shock every time I realize that it’s actually true, and what it means.

On the other hand, it’s a bit too easy and pat. The fact that Obama was elected doesn’t mean that America no longer has any problems with race.

I took this photo of a voting information flier on the ground on election day.

I’ve been interested in politics forever but this election year was one for the ages. And all of that excitement wasn’t even crammed into a single election year — candidates announced that they were running for president about two years before election day (of the major candidates, John Edwards was first in December of 2006, and Barack Obama was last in February of 2007), and there was speculation and buzz well before anyone announced anything.

All told, this election cycle took up about three years of my life, with the intensity ratcheting up and up and staying at fever pitch from about the Iowa primaries (January 2008) through election day.

So perhaps it’s unsurprising that after the initial euphoria of election night, I’ve settled into a period of politics detox. I no longer obsessively click on the acronymed sites crowding my bookmarks toolbar (TPM, FR, DD, WM, 538) — several of them haven’t been touched since November 4th. I still read my daily New York Times but I glide over the politics and intrigue and pay more attention to the arts section and special sections like Science Times. The TV stays away from CNN and MSNBC and C-Span.

I believe this has been better for my mental health — but man, that was sure a fascinating election cycle.

I can sense that things are starting to change already. For one thing, I am so watching the inauguration. My daughter has the day off of school (hooray!) and we’re gonna make a day of it. That’ll invite CNN back into my living room, and I’ll want to see what Kevin Drum and Andrew Sullivan and Matt Yglesias and Hilzoy and everyone are saying about it. And I’ll disagree with some of it, probably, and write them emails and write stuff here and then see the counterarguments and that’ll probably be that. Detox completed, politics part of my brain re-engaged.

But for now, I’m still really enjoying ignoring politics in favor of things like the Science Times. Did you know that it’s been proven that lack of sleep is closely related to catching a cold? I thought so…

In TNR, Clay Risen revisited the question of voting patterns in the South in this year’s presidential elections, and responded to a point of criticism I raised here on his previous take. Being an incurable nitpicker, I’m still not altogether convinced.

In his previous take, Risen justifiably sounded critical notes about how the South was presented in some of the electoral analysis, which was all about how its “backward ways are increasingly irrelevant to the American scene”. He pointed out that hey, in much of the South Obama actually did better than Kerry had done, thank you very much. The “red splotches” on the electoral map that showed a shift to McCain only covered a specific band of counties stretching from Kentucky to Oklahoma, while “across the “Deep South” [..] the map is almost entirely blue.” Ergo, what the map showed was “not a waning South, but a fissured and rapidly changing one”, and “what is really surprising is not how stalwart the South is in its ways” but “that broad swaths of the region look just like the rest of the country.”

The former is certainly a good point. My own stab at electoral analysis here highlighted how the Gulf states and Atlantic states seem to be heading down different paths altogether. But the latter point has a problem or two.

Gallup has a new poll up already about the presidential elections of 2012. Which will be sure to either make you run off screaming, or sigh contentedly at the brief respite from post-elections detox.

It asked Republicans and Republican-leaners, “Now, thinking ahead to the 2012 presidential election, please say whether you would, or would not like to see each of the following Republicans run for president in 2012”. I turned the results into this graph:

Poll: Which of these Republicans would you like to see run for President in 2012?

I don’t know about you, but what struck me most about these numbers is just how disgruntled Republicans are right now about the choices they have at hand. There’s not one person in this list that is not dismissed by at least about a third of Republicans. Of the ten potential wannabees, just three at least enjoy a reasonably significant positive balance. 

There seems to be a broad rejection of both the recent and further past of the party. Poor Jeb Bush faces the second largest deficit of all, presumably mostly because of the burden of his family name. Newt Gingrich, painful to his renowned ego it may be, is rejected by a plurality of Republicans. Congressional veteran and McCain sidekick Lindsey Graham is the least popular of the lot. Even General Petraeus, so passionately defended by conservatives against his MoveOn detractors, is rejected by almost 40%. Republicans love a military bigwig to defend, but apparently really want to move beyond the associations with Iraq.

It’s maybe no coincidence that the top three choices – Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee – are all very much newcomers to national Republican politics. Huckabee was derided by practically the entire Republican establishment, including the traditional leaders of the religious right, but there he is, the third most viable candidate on the shortlist. Hell, in this context Rudy Giuliani merits a fifth place, even after his disastrous crash-and-burn primary campaign.

Notably, two of the top three are conservative hardliners, with little appeal to the middle-ground of US politics. Democrats will be glad: it seems that the road back to power will be long and winding for the GOP.

On the occasion of Veterans Day, Facing South last week had a post up about veterans in the South and veteran care. Part of the post was a list of the “10 Cities with Highest Percentage of Veterans”. Nine turn out to be in the South. 

It made me curious: Southern cities with a high percentage of veterans, those can’t have been the most promising locales for the Obama surge, can they? The lone non-Southern city was the conservative redoubt of Colorado Springs, after all.

Looking up the results for the counties in question yielded an unexpected mish-mash of votes, however.

First, here is the list of the top 10 cities and the counties they are in – note that in Virginia, the cities are their own counties. (For a methodological note, see footnote 1).)

Table 1: Top 10 cities with highest percentage of veterans in 2000

Now for the election results from 2004 and this year in those top 10 cities that had the highest share of veterans in 2000 (respectively the counties they are in). As said, it’s a very mixed picture:

Table 2: Top 10 cities with highest percentage of veterans in 2000 (resp. the county they are in): how did they vote in 2004 and 2008?

The other day I clicked to Comedy Central, just to see what was on. Barack Obama’s smiling face filled the screen. The camera panned to show fireworks behind him, then out to show that he was on a porcelain plate. The words “Change Has Come” in scrolly gold letters were lingered on lovingly. Everything was soft-focus and precious.

There were no captions and I squinted at the screen in confusion… was this some sort of Jon Stewart parody? What was going ON?

Eventually it became apparent that despite the insipid-looking white people gazing happily at the plate and the lo-budget schmaltz, this was the real thing. They’re actually selling porcelain plates commemorating Barack Obama’s victory.

This can be YOURS for the low, low price of $19.99!!

There is a whole site set up for selling these plates (and coins!), where you can watch the video (slightly altered from the one I saw — fewer insipid people, more coins).

I remember when I ordered my “ObamaMama” t-shirt, more than a year ago. It’s a very nice t-shirt, as t-shirts go; black with red white and blue lettering and an Obama logo.

I never seemed to make the decision to wear it lightly. I’m relatively new in town and I had serious concerns about whether wearing that t-shirt would close some doors for me.

When I did wear it, the reactions tended to be strong (especially once the primaries got started). I wore it to the Ohio State Fair in July and a young black guy grinned at me and said “I like your t-shirt…!” while a middle-aged white woman glared at me with such heat that I prepared to physically defend myself — she eventually moved on, though.

Residents of Blandville, USA raise a toast to the new president (seen, tinily, on a plate in the background)

This commercial somehow brought home for me that Barack Obama is not the risky candidate that I started supporting almost three years ago. He’s our President-Elect. Three quarters of Americans think he will be a good president. His face is on tacky porcelain plates, for chrissakes. This is real.

A toast to our President-Elect, Barack Obama.

… in Kenya, that is.

On election night, or rather the morning after as it was 7 AM in Kusumu by that time, reporter Shashank Bengali witnessed the local Luo erupt in celebration:

The young jobless men, the bike taxi drivers who may be Obama’s strongest constituency, the women who clean the place – all cheered and hugged each other. [..]

People are saying, “We won.” Talk show hosts are joking that the fish in Lake Victoria are getting stake because all the fishermen are watching TV. The radio is playing Obama songs in Luo [..]. “George Bush said only John McCain could lead America,” goes one particularly jaunty guitar-and-drum tune, “but the rest of the world said no.” [..] President Mwai Kibaki declared Thursday a national holiday.

But it’s a globalised world, as Bengali realised when watching Al Jazeera in the Kisumu fairgrounds and hearing the pundit say, “I can’t offhand recall how many electoral votes Indiana has.” And the consumer society works just the same the world around:

This is starting to get ridiculous.

Less than a week after the election, you can’t walk 10 feet in Nairobi without seeing Obama’s name. [Y]ou can buy Obama campaign buttons in the supermarkets, beaded Masai bracelets with “Obama” stitched into them [..], souvenir Obama hundred-dollar bills, mini U.S. flags bearing Obama’s face, [..] electronics at one store’s “Obama sale” (not sure what this means exactly) — and the list goes on.

I was at an opening Saturday in Nairobi’s Industrial Area for a talented young Luo artist named Kota Otieno. [..] Kota, 28, was exhibiting about a dozen original works. At least three featured Obama’s name. [..] The one at right is called “The Proffet.”

While I appreciated Kenya’s election-day euphoria as much as the next guy, with the inauguration still 10 weeks away Obama already risks becoming a cliche here — not unlike the endless Man U and Arsenal logos that plaster all the minibus taxis. This is what’s almost happened in South Africa to Nelson Mandela, whose family has tried unsuccessfully to keep his face off of every T-shirt and backpack going. Obama’s not there yet, but it’s coming.

Hey, it’s better than Che tees …

If you’re an election geek like us, you’ll have seen this electoral map from the NYT. It shows which counties in the US actually shifted toward McCain, in comparison with how they voted in 2004. (The map showing which counties shifted by how much to Obama is interesting too.)

Since the country as a whole saw a 9% swing to the Democrat, it’s just a small part of the country that moved toward McCain, obviously. Just 22% of counties, as the Times helpfully notes. But their geographical concentration is noteworthy, as apart from obvious bits in Arizona and Alaska, the candidates’ home states, most of the counties in question form a perfect arc in the Highland South, from Oklahoma eastwards to Tennessee and then upwards through the Appalachians.

Striking as the pattern is, however, it’s become fodder for some misinterpretation as it did the rounds on the blogs. Some of it may just be a matter of emphasis. Some of it, however, has to do with the way the differing racial demographic balances in red states cloak the true concentration of McCain switch voters.

In terms of general emphasis, I’d be a bit wary about impressions when these counties become dubbed “the McCain belt” — you’d almost think that these were the best counties for McCain, rather than just the ones that moved toward him most. For example, McCain won Alabama and Louisiana by about 20 points, a more ample margin than he got in Tennessee, Kentucky or West-Virginia. So what’s the real McCain Belt?

The more interesting point is about race. The NYT map showing the electoral shifts to McCain obviously does not take into account the role of race, it just maps the overall results. One thing, however, that distinguishes the Appalachians is that they have a very small black population. In the Deep South, on the other hand, you have some of the largest black minorities around. Those black populations turned out en masse for Obama — and so their extra votes for Obama effectively canceled out the shift to McCain among whites there.

Do Southern whites constitute the real McCain Belt?

Compare the Electoral Shifts map above, with its “McCain belt” stretching from the Oklahoma to the Appalachians, with this one:

How has the white vote shifted between 2004 and 2008? In this map, McCain getting 25% more of the white vote in a state than Bush got in '04 would colour the state a fiery red; McCain getting 25% less would make it the coolest blue. The map shows that whites in much of the Deep South swung to McCain, while whites in the Mountain and Pacific West, the Midwest and the Atlantic South swung strongly to Obama.

This map shows, state by state, how much the white vote, taken separately, changed since 2004. It looks very different, doesn’t it?

Continuing on the previous post, which covered basic demographic categories of gender, race, age, income, education and party ID, here are several other side-by-side comparisons between the exit poll data on the 2000, 2004 and 2008 presidential elections.

Among which groups has Obama done better or worse, and by how much, than Kerry and Gore did? A look at first-time voters, religious groups, married versus unmarried voters, union households and gun-owning households, urban, suburban and rural voters, and voters from the different regions of the country.

When looking at these charts, keep the overall, national data in mind. Gore got 48.4% of the vote, Kerry 48.3% and Obama 52.6% – so that’s the standard. If Obama gained 5% or more in a demographic group compared to Kerry and Gore, it means he made bigger advances in this group than on average; if he gained 3% or less, it means he “underperformed” in comparison with other demographic groups.

FIRST TIME VOTERS

Share of voters: 9% in 2000; 11% in 2004; 11% in 2008.

Yes, that’s one huge blue victory in 2008 – the contrast with previous cycles, in which the Democratic candidate already had the advantage, is enormous. It’s an advance that dwarfs all others in this overview.

PROTESTANTS

Share of voters: 54% in 2000; 54% in 2004; 54% in 2008.

Note that the increased turnout that Obama inspired among African-Americans (and, presumably, a corresponding decreased turnout among the white evangelical vote Bush mobilised so successfully in 2004) should have helped amplify Obama’s gains among Protestants.

MALE VOTERS

Share of voters: 48% in 2000; 46% in 2004; 47% in 2008.

—–

FEMALE VOTERS

Share of voters: 52% in 2000; 54% in 2004; 53% in 2008.

Compared to John Kerry’s vote, Barack Obama gained about equal ground among both men and women. But compared to Al Gore’s performance, Obama gained much extra ground among men, but little among women.

—–

WHITE MEN

Share of voters: 39% in 2000; 36% in 2004; 36% in 2008.

—–

WHITE WOMEN

Share of voters: 42% in 2000; 41% in 2004; 39% in 2008.

The same distinction noted above is even more apparent among white men and women. Obama won 4-5 points among white men compared to both Gore and Kerry, but won only 2 among white women compared to Kerry, and actually did less well than Gore did. Turnout among white women was also weaker in proportion to turnout among white men than it was in 2004 (i.e, it was still higher, but less so.)

—–

BLACKS/AFRICAN-AMERICANS

Share of voters: 10% in 2000; 11% in 2004; 13% in 2008.

Speaks for itself. Note also the effect of the high turnout on the share of black voters in the electorate.

—–

LATINOS/HISPANICS

Share of voters: 7% in 2000; 8% in 2004; 9% in 2008.

Obama’s surge among Latinos this year (who said Hispanics would never vote for a black man?) has pushed the Republicans back to pre-2000 levels of support. On a side note, Latinos were among the very rare groups where the Nader candidacy still registered in 2004, possibly thanks to his VP candidate Peter Camejo.

AP and NBC yesterday belatedly called North Carolina for Obama, making the state’s result the second last to come in. Only Missouri hadn’t been called yet. So how did it become so close? Facing South has a good summary up of the main strategical and political reasons. But I would like to look more specifically at the geography and demographics of the race.

For Obama to win the state required a 12.4% swing (that being the margin by which Bush was elected in 2004). He got a 12.6% swing. Which parts of the state pushed Obama over the line? Where did his efforts of persuasion fall short? What demographics were at play? An in-depth look.