A while ago, while perusing the election results, I happened upon South Dakota. South Dakota is one of those states which everybody writes off as inevitably Republican. Yet nobody has a really good explanation for why Democrats can't win it; it's kind of like Indiana that way. Few people know this, but Bill Clinton twice came within four percent in the state.
Barack Obama lost South Dakota by 8.41%, a substantial but not overwhelming margin (I bet he could win it).
There is an extremely strong correlation between Indian reservations and Obama's share of the vote in South Dakota.
Apache County, Arizona is home to portions of the Fort Apache and Navajo communities, and was estimated to be 73% Native American in 2007. The Voting Rights Act and its subsequent amendments have had quite an impact in this county. Below, we see a crude measure of turnout - number of voters divided by total population (estimated between census years).
Click to enlarge.
There has been a steady increase in crude turnout in Apache County as one barrier to voting after another has been removed. At the same time, the share of the votes won by Democrats has generally increased.
This week President Obama promoted his much-needed economic recovery package in a prime-time news conference and a trip to economically depressed Elkhart, Indiana, where the unemployment rate has topped 15%. Cities and towns like Elkhart are bellwethers for where the nation as a whole could be headed without swift and bold governmental action.
As the President said in Elkhart, "That is not only our moral responsibility - to lend a helping hand to our fellow Americans in times of emergency - but it also makes good economic sense. If you don't have money, you can't spend it. And if people don't spend, our economy will continue to decline."
There's another bellwether even closer to home for the nation's first black president. Unemployment among African Americans rose in January to 12.6 percent, nearly double the current, already high rate of unemployment (6.9 percent) for white Americans. African Americans struggled throughout the 1960s, '70s, and '80s to gain equal access to manufacturing jobs, only to see those jobs evaporate with the advent of globalization. With the weak economy, their inroads into other sectors like education, healthcare, and construction are faltering as well.
What is a daunting economic recession for most of the nation is a crushing Great Depression for many of America's communities of color. Black male unemployment in New York City, for example, was a staggering 49% before the current recession. The Native American unemployment rate on reservations is upwards of 80%.
Being the sole Democratic candidate for President with executive branch experience, voters can evaluate Bill Richardson from the unique stand point of an actual record of implementing policy on key issues, not merely the speeches he has given.
On the issue of climate change, Richardson has offered the most aggressive plan of any candidate, proposing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2050. But will Richardson be true to his word if he's elected President? Richardson is proving by his actions as Governor of New Mexico on global warming that the answer is yes.
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