
Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old - weinzierl
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/10/02/162163801/obama-s-secret-weapon-in-the-south-small-dead-but-still-kickin
======
brudgers
Considering that Obama was trounced in those states and thus won no votes in
the Electorial College, it is hardly a "secret weapon." Were it one, the
consistency of its Democratic lean in previous elections, would call into
question that it was his.

The article just promotes an ignorant sort of racial understanding while
missing the really curious relationship between agriculture and his campaigns.

Obama's secret weapon has been Iowa.

~~~
tosseraccount
Or money+incumbency

Roosevelt,Truman,Eisenhower,Johnson,Nixon,Reagan,Clinton,BushII all had plenty
of time to plan for 2nd term.

Of course so did Ford, Carter and Bush I.

There may not be enough samples to get a good p-value, but more often than not
the recipe of "just don't mess up too bad" gets a another term for a sitting
President.

~~~
vm
Paul Graham wrote an essay on this. The most charismatic candidate is elected,
every time: <http://www.paulgraham.com/charisma.html>

~~~
aamar
The theory does accord with the last several general elections, but it doesn't
seem to accord with primaries. For example, Herman Cain, Howard Dean, and Mike
Huckabee all lost out to less charismatic candidates. Since primaries are now
decided on a similar basis to general elections--debate performance,
fundraising, retail politics--it seems like these data points ought to be
included.

------
rayiner
I think this is a great answer to people who ask why we still need things like
affirmative action. Here you have a continuing demographic phenomenon that can
be traced directly back to slave ownership patterns hundreds of years ago. It
should be noted also that the black belt is also a terribly poor stretch of
the country.

Unfortunately, it appears that socioeconomic patterns are imprinted more
deeply than anyone would want, and more deeply than a lot of people would like
to admit.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
The problem with affirmative action is that it is based on race. It is racist.
In fact it isn't just based on race, it is based on skin colour - since some
mixed black-white people with white skin can be discriminated against.

America needs to put race on the sidelines and start thinking in terms of
class. You should help the disadvantaged or poor regardless of their great
great grandparent's struggles.

Affirmative action should exist; but it should be entirely based on parental
income, growing up in a poor area, or other disadvantaged indicators. Not
race, not ethnicity, and not gender. These things don't prove you're poor or
disadvantaged.

~~~
rayiner
The justification and rationale for race-based affirmative action is somewhat
different from anything favoring people of low socioeconomic class generally.
It has to do with correcting specific and massive historical wrongs in which
our government was complicit, not lifting up disadvantaged people generally.
Conflating the two is a little silly. If I destroy your house, you're not
going to be happy if I make amends through a general program of urban renewal
in your neighborhood.

A lot of people don't believe that Americans of today should be liable for the
actions of Americans then. But none of us today were alive at the time America
consented to the Constitution, just as none of us today were alive at the time
America imported millions of blacks into slavery. Yet we are nonetheless bound
by the agreement our forefathers made in 1789! The document attesting to that
agreement is also the document that protected and enshrined slavery in America
for several more generations. I believe we are bound by that too. I believe
the government created in that document, which still exists today, is bound by
the obligation created by its sanctioning of slavery just as it is bound by
treaties entered into at the time or treasury bonds issued at the time.

It is of course impossible to try to remedy all the mistakes of the past. But
that doesn't mean it is pointless to try and remedy any mistakes of the past.
And this is a big one that still has lasting and major effects today.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
Let's accept that rational; but that does leave one question: when does this
end? If we have no way to measure the damage then how do we measure the
resolution of the damage? Do we continue this for 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 years?
Or do we simply never end it?

Do we try to "correct" it so there are literally no poor people of a
particular ethnicity? How realistic is that?

~~~
arrrg
How about until there no longer is any significant racism that systematically
disadvantages black people?

~~~
clarky07
Instead we have a system that systematically disadvantages non black people.
Just stop discriminating. Either way. No reason to have one or the other have
an advantage.

We just had a black man elected to his second term as president, so I think
that's a pretty good sign we aren't that racist. This wouldn't have happened a
few decades ago.

~~~
danilocampos
> We just had a black man elected to his second term as president, so I think
> that's a pretty good sign we aren't that racist.

Sir, I say this with as much respect as I can muster: Absent significant
study, it is absolutely not the place of someone who is a member of the racial
majority to declare the extent or impact of racism. You simply have no idea
what you're talking about.

A mixed race man was, indeed, elected to high office. He was elected over the
objections of people who claimed him to be, among other things:

\- A Kenyan

\- A secret muslim

\- A liar inelegible for the presidency under the terms of Section I, Article
II of the United States constitution

These claims have been made and repeated for over four years. They are made,
in part, because Barack Obama _looks different from the men who have
previously run the country._ They are repeated because that fact scares the
absolute shit out of a certain subset of the country.

Racism – far from vanquished – has proven to be a politically expedient tool.
(Though, thankfully, one with toxic side effects.)

Have we made progress since the civil war and the civil rights movement? Yeah.

But racism is an ugly, nasty force that persists in both overt and subtle
ways. It's not over. And for the people who must still grapple with its
effects, it's a big problem.

~~~
jpiasetz
> Absent significant study, it is absolutely not the place of someone who is a
> member of the racial majority to declare the extent or impact of racism. You
> simply have no idea what you're talking about.

The opposite is also true: "Absent significant study, it is absolutely not the
place of someone who is a member of the racial minority to declare the extent
or impact of racism." Why not say simply it is not the place of someone to
declare the extent or impact of racism without study?

Also I believe you are assuming the race of the parent. For all you know they
could be a member of a racial minority.

More to the point what is our goal WRT racism? To eliminate associating traits
with a person purely based on their race that are not backed up by a
correlation? If that's the case affirmative actively works against that goal.

~~~
danilocampos
> Also I believe you are assuming the race of the parent. For all you know
> they could be a member of a racial minority.

You believe incorrectly. I did my homework.

[http://geekpolitics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/12/derekclar...](http://geekpolitics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/12/derekclark2.jpg)

But the rest of silliness about white people having it harder than minorities
was the giveaway.

> The opposite is also true: "Absent significant study, it is absolutely not
> the place of someone who is a member of the racial minority to declare the
> extent or impact of racism." Why not say simply it is not the place of
> someone to declare the extent or impact of racism without study?

Being a minority can be a graduate level course on the extent and impact of
racism. In America, most blacks and hispanics have had ample time to study up,
sadly. And if you're from anywhere in the vicinity of the Middle East, god
help you.

~~~
jebblue
>> But the rest of silliness about white people having it harder than
minorities was the giveaway.

I grew up poor, light skin (white?) part Scottish descent small part Native
American Indian. I trained myself to get into the profession I love, buying my
own books and writing code in several languages for a dozen years on the side
while maintaining a full time job and family, before I started writing code
for pay.

No one person in America deserves more than any one else based on the color of
their skin.

~~~
cdmckay
Right, but you're light skinned. Imagine that, in addition to all the
hardships you probably had to overcome, you also had to deal with systemic
racism because you had dark skin.

------
andrewtbham
I live in Birmingham AL and the existence of the black belt is common
knowledge here. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Belt_(U.S._region)>

As a kid, I assumed it was called the black belt because of the black people,
not knowing it's because the soil is black.

~~~
pavel_lishin
A neighboring town's motto was, "The blackest soil and the whitest people."

Despite people's assurances that "white" in this case simply means "good", I
always had mixed feelings about it.

------
arethuza
I've been fascinated with geology ever since I realised that it is really
history on an epic scale (living in Edinburgh also helps) - one book that
really opened my eyes to the subject is Richard Fortey's _The Earth: An
Intimate History_ :

[http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Intimate-History-Richard-
Fortey/...](http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Intimate-History-Richard-
Fortey/dp/0375706208)

~~~
praptak
There is a book that connects large-scale geology with the human-scale history
by arguing how the former affects the later. It's
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel> "Guns, Germs and Steel"
by Jared Diamond.

~~~
curiousdannii
This is a great book. It's fascinating to consider how much of world history
has been influenced by where wheat was first cultivated.

------
kitsune_
This article is nothing more than blog spam. Yeah, it provides a link back to
the original post, but that's about it. Even most of the images are lifted.

~~~
mattdeboard
"blog spam" aka packaging and reporting a story from elsewhere, a basic part
of journalism. People around here really try too hard to be indignant.

~~~
smacktoward
A part which made more sense in the days when you could only read your local
newspaper, so you didn't have easy access to the original story.

When the original story is just a click away, a repackager only adds value if
he/she expands on the original in some material way -- coming at the story
from a different perspective, say, or adding facts or background information
that were not present in the original.

This post does none of that. It's a straight-up rewrite of the original, with
no new contributions to the story. It makes the same points and even uses the
same illustrations as the original. It does cite the original and link to it,
but there's nothing in the new piece that would make it a more authoritative
version of the story than the old one.

I generally don't oppose people posting links to blogs, but in this case it
really does seem like sending people straight to the original post would have
been the classier thing to do.

~~~
DanBC
> but in this case it really does seem like sending people straight to the
> original post would have been the classier thing to do.

I think the poster has said it was an oversight; that the links to the
original article were missed.

In this case it would have been nice to post to the original article, but as
you say they're pretty similar.

I think it's much worse when some document is released, and then eight
different tech blogs have a minimal but opinionated write up which each get
posted to HN, and then people don't reply in the threads but on their own
blogs, and then the tech blogs pick up each other's coverage.

------
wallawe
How is this Obama's 'secret weapon'? There is an electoral college, and he
lost these states by a landslide.

------
username3
_The Republican Party (also called the GOP, for "Grand Old Party") is one of
the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with
the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854, it dominated
politics nationally for most of the period from 1860 to 1932._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_\(United_States\))

------
brown9-2
I would like to see the red-blue county map compared with a map of how
populous those counties are.

Focusing on just the geography of which counties are which color can be very
misleading when some counties have a million residents and some have
thousands. The focus on county as a unit makes it easy to mistake size of
county, and the resulting size of each color, as indicative of the overall
vote total.

------
m0skit0
Wow, fascinating. I was about to stop reading when you said it's because of
plankton... I'm glad I didn't!

------
flxmglrb
How exactly is this a "secret weapon"? Obama did not carry any of the states
in this region except perhaps Florida (it's still being counted), which is not
even among the states with these swatches of ancient plankton deposits.

Also, if you look at the map it's clear the blue patches are clustered around
major highways and rivers, which is where the population centers will
obviously be. As we've seen before, the Democratic / Republican divide is very
strongly along the lines of urban vs. rural. There doesn't seem to be any
mention in the article of how that factors into this. Obviously there is a bit
of chicken & egg thing going on with population and highways, but you would
think there could at least have been some discussion of this.

~~~
impendia
Plausible, but it turns out to be mistaken.

Look at this map of results in South Carolina:

[http://www.politico.com/2012-election/map/#/President/2012/S...](http://www.politico.com/2012-election/map/#/President/2012/SC)

County population is negatively correlated with voting for Obama.

------
ctingom
Obama didn't win any of those states, so how is it a secret weapon?

------
Tipzntrix
I find it pretty funny that it sounds like the author's implying black people
will vote for Obama.

Then again, he did win somewhere from 90% to 98% of their vote [1], so the
assumption is based in truth somewhere.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2229225/Presidential...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2229225/Presidential-
election-2012-Record-number-Hispanic-voters-head-polls.html)

------
patrickgzill
Summary: a lot of black people voted for Obama, giving him the edge in certain
states.

~~~
gsibble
Actually, he didn't win any of the states discussed in the article.

He did however get a huge majority of the black vote which probably propelled
him to win in the swing states of NC and OH.

------
tzs
Interesting how this got no attention when it was posted 9 days ago, and takes
off this time: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4714274>

------
tapertaper
This is more about slavery than plankton.

Fertile land does not equal Obama votes.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Fertile land in the south did definitely correlate with Obama votes, as the
article made clear.

~~~
dkrich
Yeah, just like slabs of thick bedrock in lower New York correlate with Obama
votes, since it enabled large highrises to be constructed in a small, densely
populated area. How far back are we willing to go to draw these correlations?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
IT was more than a correlation. He traced the connection. What has bedrock to
do with New York voters? I'd be interested to hear that story.

~~~
drharris
Exactly, it's a story at best. The article claims that Plankton -> Soil ->
Slaves -> Black People don't move -> Obama support. The first 2 connections
are obvious, but the second two do not necessarily connect in any rational
way. It's like saying Bedrock -> Highrises -> ???? -> Obama. The first
connection works, but the other two would be pure speculation at best.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
You read it as more than a storey. Ok.

What's mysterious about people staying in the same place for generations? My
people have been in Iowa since the Civil War too.

~~~
drharris
Well, it not only implies that black people don't move, but white people DO
move. Either that or it assumes that the ratio of black to white was much
greater than it likely was. It also assumes a lot of other things.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Was it Samuel Clemens that observer, what a harvest of speculation you get
from a little statistics?

------
ekm2
_The problem with affirmative action is that it is based on race_

The problem with the need for affirmative action is that it was the outcrop of
slavery,which was based on race.

------
stretchwithme
More supporters living in some areas doesn't change the number of supporters.
So not sure how this is a secret weapon.

------
debacle
Obama's secret weapon this Tuesday was Mitt Romney.

John Huntsman, had he have won the primaries, would have won the election.

------
allenwlee
i don't know about this. this band basically traces the southern coastline. to
me the simplest explanation is that coastlines (because they are richer) are
largely white, so that inland populations in the south will be more black.

------
njharman
Reminds me of "Connections" TV show.

------
scorby
The butterfly effect in full effect!

------
xmpir
this is great!

------
readme
Pseudoscience

------
AUmrysh
I guess the conservatives get to reap what their racist, pro-slavery ancestors
sowed.

~~~
gadders
Wasn't it the Republican party that ended slavery, and the Democratic party
that supported it?

~~~
Karunamon
The Republican and Democratic parties have shifted their ideals greatly over a
few centuries. The founders of the republican party would not recognize (and
would likely be repulsed by) the platform and behavior of the modern
Republican party. I'd wager the same is true for Democrats.

~~~
gadders
I wasn't making a serious point, just highlighting how fatuous the parent
comment was.

------
stevoski
After an election there are so many stories like this explaining why certain
voting patterns were pre-determined, or at least extremely likely.

Strangely, people don't write so certainly _before_ the election.

I'd be far more impressed with this type of story if it was published before
the election.

~~~
Swizec
October 10, 201212:49 PM

A month before the election.

