If significant numbers of white democrats really do cross party lines, you better believe they will be pegged as racists and largely blamed for Obama’s downfall… especially considering the circumstances. The political climate overwhelmingly favors the democrats (unless you believe the whole “conservative America” thing) and they cannot possibly justify support of the republican party. We are not coming out of the Carter-era, quite the opposite actually. Obama should be embraced as a Reagan-like figure by the entire country but has somehow fallen short. It’s not as if he’s a bad communicator or isn’t personable and charismatic. There is something hidden under the surface that everyone has been dancing around… that is, until the results of this poll were released. Tribalism cuts both ways… just as many blacks will vote for Obama because he’d be the first black president, many whites will vote for McCain because they perceive it as a racial struggle for power. They will side with their race over their party in a vain attempt to preserve Anglo-Saxon power.

Obama has yet to open up a substantial lead in the polls even though he should’ve long ago. If he were white, one would assume that more whites would “trust him”. If Barack Obama was Barry O’Brien, a white populist from Missouri, he’d be running away with this thing… simply because one-third of white democrats wouldn’t harbor “deeply-seated misgivings” towards him. Forget about flaky younger voters, forget about the large African-American turnout… middle-aged whites vastly outnumber both of them and will render both demographics irrelevant if there is any significant break towards McCain.

You better believe that if racism does manifest itself on election day and a significant number of white democrats break for McCain, the media and the republican spin doctors will begin an all-out blitz on the African-American community with buzzwords like “Lincoln’s party” and the “democratic confederacy”, etc.. in an effort to lure them over to the other side. They’ll play off anger, fear and resentment like they always do and will try to turn it into a positive for themselves. Expect them to take low blows and point out that the Ku Klux Klan was founded by democrats or that segregation was largely instituted by the party as well. However, they will fail to mention that the party’s flip-flopped social platforms decades ago. Most Southern democrats left the party after FDR’s “New Deal” and the rise of Eisenhower and the rest of the holdouts were snatched up by Reagan during the Conservative Revolution of the early ’80′s. It’s true, the republican party was once the party of social liberalism but that was long, long ago. Every single meaningful piece of Civil Rights legislation in the modern era was signed into law by democrats. So if racism rears it’s ugly head on election day (which I have a bad feeling that it will… I am a pessimistic realist) and republicans start banging the “republican abolitionist vs. democratic slave-trader” drum (which they undoubtedly will), you’ll know that’s more of a reflection of their own party than anything else. The party of Bush is not the party of Lincoln… sorry. Notice the old confederacy is solidly red? Republicans will try to expose the democratic party’s historical skeletons but will fail to realize that those skeletons now reside in their closet.