One of the Supreme Court’s most anticipated decisions this term is likely to deal with the constitutionality of part of one of the landmark laws of the 20th century, the Voting Rights Act of 1965; this may be the most important of a series of cases the court will tackle this term considering civil rights. In this post, I’m going to try to dissect the case from a few perspectives; since it’s longer than the usual OTB fare, I’m going to put most of the post in the “extended entry section.”

A brief summary for the impatient: the Supreme Court is looking at a particular section of the Voting Rights Act, “Section 5,” which deals with preclearance, authorizing the Justice Department and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to delay (and in some cases nullify) actions of state and local governments in certain parts of the United States that might have an adverse effect on voting rights. The Court is unlikely to strike down all of the Voting Rights Act, and may not even strike down all of Section 5, but I think it is likely that the Court will at least narrow the interpretation of the VRA to either (a) allow jurisdictions other than counties, states, and independent cities to “bail out” of Section 5 coverage or (b) restrict Section 5’s application to only elections to federal office, where Congress arguably has broader powers to regulate elections. In particular, the Court will almost certainly retain Section 2 of the VRA, a more general provision which provides for all of the relief authorized in Section 5 (except the preclearance procedure) but which applies nationwide. Finally, even if the Court strikes down Section 5, Congress would probably be within its powers to adopt a notification requirement that would in essence be a modified version of preclearance.

A necessary disclaimer: my expertise is in voting and Southern politics, not the intricate details of Voting Rights Act jurisprudence, and I am not a lawyer.

Background: Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as the culmination of a series of civil rights laws beginning late in the Eisenhower administration and continuing through the Kennedy and Johnson years that gradually increased the role of Congress and the executive branch in enforcing voting rights, primarily among African Americans in the South. While the judiciary had been active in striking down some measures that discriminated against minorities, including the “white primary” laws and grandfather clauses, these acts had limited effect on improving black voter registration and participation rates in the South, where local election officials continued to be authorized to employ literacy and understanding tests and the poll tax to legally exclude “undesirable” persons from the voting rolls, and often employed these and other tools (such as limited registration windows designed to coincide with times when the working poor would be expected to be planting or harvesting) in a blatantly discriminatory way.

In response, Congress passed a number of civil rights bills, including the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, which included authorizing the executive to exercise increased oversight of local election practices and limitations on the use of various devices such as the literacy test and poll taxes; the 1964 Civil Rights Act in particular legally mandated that completion of the 8th grade would be considered sufficient to prove “literacy” and abolished poll taxes in federal elections (the poll tax ban was made permanent in federal elections and extended to state and local elections by the 24th Amendment). However, these actions had a limited impact on the 1964 elections in the South, and continued attacks on civil rights protesters by white mobs (most notably in Selma in early 1965, a protest directed specifically at voting practices in Alabama’s black belt counties) led the Johnson Administration to propose a separate Voting Rights Act, which was debated by Congress that summer and passed into law.

For our purposes, the two key provisions of the VRA were Sections 2 and 5 of the law (Sections 3 and 8 are also significant in that they authorize the DoJ and the courts to monitor election practices in covered states, but the importance of these activities has diminished since the 1960s). Section 2 provides that private citizens and the DoJ can bring suit against any election practice that is discriminatory in either its intent or impact; this provision was made permanent in the 1982 renewal of the Voting Rights Act, and applies nationwide. Section 5, which is more controversial, applies only to certain “covered jurisdictions” defined by criteria in Section 4 of the original act and subsequent amendments; effectively, these areas are most (but not all) of the southern states, Alaska, Arizona, and certain counties and townships in North Carolina and a few other states outside the south.

The 1982 amendments also allowed covered jurisdictions to “bail out” of coverage; all of the jurisdictions that have done so thus far are counties and independent cities (which carry out the functions of counties as separate subdivisions of the state) in Virginia.

Constitutionality of the VRA: The Act as a whole, and Section 5 of the Act in particular, was controversial from the get-go. However, the Supreme Court in South Carolina v. Katzenbach (383 US 301) upheld the VRA, including Section 5’s provisions that “froze” election practices in covered jurisdictions until reviewed by the DoJ or D.C. Court, in an 8-1 ruling authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Warren argued that the VRA was a valid exercise of Congress’ enforcement powers granted by the 15th Amendment and that Section 5’s “uncommon exercise of congressional power” was justified because:

Congress knew that some of the States covered by 4 (b) of the Act had resorted to the extraordinary stratagem of contriving new rules of various kinds for the sole purpose of perpetuating voting discrimination in the face of adverse federal court decrees. [footnote omitted] Congress had reason to suppose that these States might try similar maneuvers in the future in order to evade the remedies for voting discrimination contained in the Act itself. Under the compulsion of these unique circumstances, Congress responded in a permissibly decisive manner.

In short, Congress had resorted to adopting Section 5 to combat attempts by the states and their subdivisions to employ what we might call a “Whac-a-Mole” strategy of filibustering efforts to enforce the VRA by replacing provisions declared unconstitutional with other, barely distinguishable provisions that more than likely would be no more constitutional but remain in effect until DoJ or other plaintiffs could challenge them in court.

The Case Before The Court: The case before the Supreme Court this term was filed by Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One (NAMUNDO), which sounds like it would be a mediocre Latino boy band but is actually a political subdivision of the state of Texas that provides local utility services in suburban Travis County. NAMUNDO contends that it should be allowed to “bail out” of coverage as a “covered jurisdiction” even if Travis County remains covered (the county does not appear to have any interest in bailing out itself, and has filed a brief in opposition to NAMUNDO’s position); however, the Justice Department contends that only states and state subdivisions that register voters are eligible for the “bail out” provision of the VRA. NAMUNDO also argues that the Section 5 coverage formula is no longer constitutionally justified, as the extraordinary circumstances of “Whac-a-Mole” challenges to federal authority no longer exist and Section 2, along with the activities of the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division and various organized interest, is sufficient to deter formerly covered jurisdictions from attempts to limit minority voting rights in the future.

The Merits of the Case: My reading of the relevant laws and regulations suggests that the court could go either way on NAMUDNO’s “bail out” argument. The simplest ruling that would make most everyone happy would be to allow any subdivision that conducts elections to “bail out” of coverage; while NAMUDNO would probably take advantage of this provision if it could (it has spent plenty to litigate the case to this point), I am uncertain whether most cities, towns, villages, sewage districts etc. would be willing to expend the money to do so themselves for the convenience of avoiding preclearance. Given the Court’s current predilection for strict reading of statutes and Roberts’ efforts to make questions as narrow as possible, there’s a good chance the decision will simply grant NAMUDNO’s request on this point and not reach the constitutional argument.

If the Court were to reach Section 5 as a whole, I think there is a tougher question at work. If Section 2 did not also exist, it would be very difficult for the Court to strike down Section 5; however, the only advantage Section 5 offers over Section 2 is the “freezing” of existing laws and procedures prior to review. Given that most actions in covered jurisdictions these days are precleared with little controversy–and even controversial actions such as the mid-decade redistricting in Texas and Georgia’s voter ID law have been precleared only to face Section 2 challenges–there is a fair argument to be made that Section 5 is no longer narrowly tailored to accomplish the objective in question and represents an aberration in the relationship between federal and state authority. The enforcement powers granted to Congress by the various voting rights amendments (15th and 19th as of 1965, along with the 26th today) are broad, but not plenary, otherwise Congress would have had the authority to abolish poll taxes and extend the right to vote to 18-20 year olds in state and local elections without constitutional amendments.

There is also an argument to be made that Section 5, to remain constitutional, is not broad enough; arguably, the jurisdictions that historically discriminated against ethnic and linguistic minorities have made their peace with voting rights (and many are now majority-minority in nature, making it unlikely that their election officials will deny voting rights to fellow minority members). On the other hand, jurisdictions not covered by Section 5 have become more ethnically diverse due to further northward migration by Hispanics and increased immigration by Asian-Americans to regions other than the Pacific coast; it is possible that local officials might seek to marginalize votes by citizens from these groups in areas of the country that historically were ethnically homogeneous.

However, I do think Congress does have the power to impose something like preclearance on state and local actions that impact federal elections, per Article I, Section 4 of the constitution which allows Congress to “by Law make or alter” “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives.” The Court could thus argue that actions by political subdivisions that do not impact elections to Congress are not coverable by Section 5 of the VRA; NAMUDNO and other local subdivisions that only conduct elections with state or local impact independent of federal elections would thus be “bailed out” but Section 5 would remain intact for at least any election procedure that has implications for federal elections, including decisions by counties on polling place locations etc. in covered jurisdictions. For most elections that “matter” Section 5 would remain in effect, but this would effectively give NAMUDNO the relief it seeks without dismantling Section 5 in its entirety.

Even if Section 5 were to be struck down by the Supreme Court in its entirety, I believe Congress does have the authority (either directly or by tying the requirement to federal aid) to require states and other jurisdictions of its choosing to notify the federal government of any action that affects procedures for federal, state, and local elections in advance of their going into effect; while this would not have the automatic injunctive power associated with the current Section 5, the Civil Rights Division and/or any organized interest that monitored these notifications would have ample notice to request an injunction from a federal court under Section 2 (which applies nationwide and is permanent) of the VRA prior to the action becoming effective.

Last but not least, there is virtually no prospect of the entirety of the VRA being struck down; none of the litigants or amici have argued in favor of that position, and Section 2 in particular is clearly within Congress’ 15th Amendment power to enforce that amendment. Given the vibrant health of the organized interests that litigate in voting rights cases (as demonstrated by the number of amicus briefs from those organizations) even if Section 5 is struck down–something I think is relatively unlikely to happen–there are unlikely to be any notable adverse effects on minority voting rights as a result of this case, no matter the outcome.

Constitution of the State of Alabama, 1901

The voters this month sued several state officials in Jefferson County Circuit Court’s Bessemer division, claiming they violated voter rights by failing to ensure that Alabama’s 108-year-old constitution is valid. State historians say the 1901 referendum on the document was plagued with voter fraud.

The lawsuit is the latest approach at forcing reform of a lengthy state constitution that is riddled with racist language, offers little power to local governments and imposes a tax system that critics call immoral. Efforts to change it at the legislative level for years have been unsuccessful.

“All I’m asking is that the constitution of Alabama be the constitution of the people, which it is not right now, because they didn’t vote for it,” said Ed Gentle, the attorney for the plaintiffs.

Wayne Flynt, a retired Auburn University professor who has written extensively on Alabama history, said the constitution never passed. The official election results showed black voters supported it – but such support was unlikely, since a vote for the document was a vote to disenfranchise blacks, he wrote in an affidavit attached to the complaint.

While I’m highly sympathetic to arguments—made often by friend-of-OTB Steven Taylor—that Alabama’s lengthy, detail-oriented state constitution, which is still laced with (inoperative) racist provisions, is in need of reform to make it more streamlined and coherent (much as similar constitutions from the same era in southern states are in need of reform), I’m not sure that the plaintiffs have a very good chance of winning their case.

While there is compelling evidence presented of voter fraud in Flynt’s affidavit, primarily in the “black belt” counties where the level of support for the constitution strongly indicates ballot-stuffing took place, given that these facts have been been known for decades (the primary source Flynt relies on was published in 1955), it seems a little late to be raising this issue in court. Some of Flynt’s data in his affadavit seem to be inaccurate as well; while he claims that 5,326 votes in Lowndes County in the Black Belt were cast for ratification, these returns from the Alabama state archives only indicate 1,390 votes were in favor of the new constitution (and, indeed, a majority of votes were opposed in that county, consistent with a non-fraudulent outcome there at least).

Furthermore, even if they are successful in their challenge, presumably the 1875 Constitution — which was ratified by a quite “fraud-proof” margin and reflects a similar philosophy of centralized government with limited powers — is the legitimate constitution of Alabama. And, as a matter of general principle, at some point key provisions of laws, constitutions, and legal acts of dubious origins become accepted and essentially irrevocable, such as the disputed ratification of the federal constitution’s 16th Amendment, the annexation of Puerto Rico, or the severing of West Virginia from Virginia.

Via Rick Hasen’s Election Law blog and How Appealing.

Are Southern senators arguing against a federal bailout of Detroit on free market grounds hypocrites? Mike Lillis thinks so:

Yet this argument — that the government has no business interfering in free markets — ignores an increasingly frequent tradition among Southern states, which have fronted billions in local taxpayer dollars in the past two decades to attract foreign auto plants. Those incentives, arriving in the form of tax breaks, training for new employees and even land, have enticed BMW to South Carolina, Mercedes to Alabama and Nissan to Tennessee. The result of the government subsidies has been the steady emergence of the South as an auto-manufacturing powerhouse. Some are dubbing it the “New Detroit” – a region where real estate is cheap and the labor’s not unionized.

Not only that, Matt Yglesias argues, but Southerners are bringing down the economy.

This is, of course, but a small slice of the larger southern politics tradition which has always insisted since the end of the Civil War that cheap labor and a low-tax, low-service, high-inequality social and economic system are the key to prosperity. This approach left the South perennially poorer than the rest of the country, but over the past couple of decades this made-in-dixie failed approach to economic development has come to dominate national policy. Not coincidentally, during this period the United States has begun to fall behind high-wage, high-service, low-inequality northern European countries in terms of average living standards.

Now, first off, there’s a substantial difference between offering a federal taxpayer bailout of failing companies and states offering incentives to businesses who might bring in new jobs.   As with publically financed sports stadia, there’s a legitimate debate to be had as to whether it’s worthwhile to spend taxpayer money to attract business.  But Alabama was competing with several other states to attract Mercedes and the incentives were part of a winning bid.

The South is poor for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with relying on agriculture and mining much longer than their counterparts in the West and Northeast and the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow.  But it’s been growing for decades, mostly at the expense of the Rust Belt.

Further, the United States is still, by far, the most prosperous country on the planet despite having always been a low tax, high inequality, low service society.  We’re a gigantic, continental landmass and we’ve been well behind the Western curve in transferring wealth through government coercion for social purposes.  It’s far from clear how giving $15 billion to keep failing manufacturing firms afloat another few months is going to increase our standard of living.

Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss easily won his runoff against Democrat Jim Martin, 57.4 to 42.6 according to the current uncertified totals. NYT notes,

Senator Saxby Chambliss and his wife, Julianne, celebrating his victory on Tuesday in Atlanta. (Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times)

The margin was far greater than the three percentage points that separated the two men in the Nov. 4 election, when neither won the required 50 percent. Many of the Democrats who turned out last month in enthusiastic support of Barack Obama apparently did not show up at the polls on Tuesday. “For a lot of African-American voters, the real election was last month,” said Merle Black, an expert in Southern politics at Emory University. “The importance of electing the first African-American president in history generated enormous enthusiasm. Everything else was anticlimactic.”

A little more than two million people voted in the runoff, compared with 3.7 million on Nov. 4. In heavily black Clayton County, just south of Atlanta, Mr. Martin’s vote was less than half what it was in the earlier election. Only 9.2 percent of registered Georgians cast early votes in the runoff, compared with 36 percent in the general election.

Mr. Chambliss, 65, a pro-business conservative, campaigned in the runoff on a platform of limiting Mr. Obama’s ability to pass legislation in a Democratic-controlled Congress. Calling himself the “41st senator,” he told a cheering crowd of supporters in his victory speech that the runoff was the first race of 2010, signaling a new wind for Republicans. “You have delivered tonight a strong message to the world that conservative Georgia values matter,” he said. “You have delivered a message that a balance of government in Washington is necessary, and that’s not only what the people of Georgia want but what the people of America want.”

Well, that’s a stretch. After all, Americans voted for a Democratic president and to extend the Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. I’m dubious that even swing voters in tight Senate races were generally swayed by the need to prevent Democrats from invoking cloture.

Electing Saxby Chambliss, though, is very much what Georgians wanted. They only failed to do so last month because a third party candidate took away enough votes to keep him under a majority. The fact that Georgians had to spend a substantial amount of money to re-run an election that most of them weren’t interested in participating in, though, is a pretty good case for instant runoff voting. The outcome would have been the same in this case but the numbers would have more accurately reflected the will of the state’s voters. And they’d have saved a lot of money.

Nate Silver adds, “Obama is looking fairly smart for staying away from the state.” True enough, given the margins. This, after all, is a state he lost.  If, however, it had been razor close, he’d have come under sharp criticism for staying away and failing to rally African American turnout.

Thomas Schaller,  the author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, argues that the notion that Barack Obama has a good chance of winning Southern states because he’ll energize black turnout is based on fallacious reasoning.

The first myth is that African-American turnout in the South is low. Black voters are actually well represented in the Southern electorate: In the 11 states of the former Confederacy, African-Americans were 17.9 percent of the age-eligible population and 17.9 percent of actual voters in 2004, analysis of Census Bureau data shows.

And when socioeconomic status is held constant, black voters go to the polls at higher rates than white voters in the South. In other words, a 40-year-old African-American plumber making $60,000 a year is, on average, more likely to vote than a white man of similar background.

My guess is that this is largely a function of the enormous influence of black churches, which do an amazing job of getting their congregations motivated to vote and have an infrastructure in place to get them to the polls.

The second myth is that Democratic presidential candidates fare better in Southern states that have large numbers of African-Americans. In fact, the reverse is true, because the more blacks there are in a Southern state, the more likely the white voters are to vote Republican.

He cites the case of Mississippi, where Bush beat Kerry by 20 points in 2004, and shows that even a massive increase in black turnout would not do the trick unless he could simultaneously get a 50 percent increase of white voters over Kerry.  Ignoring the Bob Barr factor entirely, Schaller contends the same dynamics hold true in Georgia and North Carolina.

The one reasonable target, then, is the Old Dominion, where “a huge influx of upscale non-Southerners, who have taken over the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia” could make him viable.  This, despite the fact that the “black population in Virginia is, as a percentage, among the lowest in the region.”

Stacy McCain agrees wholeheartedly, except to point out that, “this trend applies generally nationwide. Even in Northern states, the larger the black population, the more heavily the white vote tends to shift toward Republicans.”

Jonathan Martin notes that Schaller isn’t telling us anything that V.O. Key didn’t know in 1949, when he told us “departures from the supposed uniformity of southern politics occur most notably in those states with fewest Negroes and in those sections that are predominantly white.”

Dan Riehl, meanwhile, thinks, “There is a very good chance that the media, liberals and Blacks will be expecting to wake up to the first Black POTUS one November morning, only to be shocked by the result. Think of it as the OJ verdict in reverse.”

Rather than taking the lesson that he might as well just give up on the non-Virginia South, though, Obama and his strategists would be served to double down on their efforts to avoid running as “the Great Black Hope.”  If he runs as “the black candidate” and has surrogates constantly charging “racism” every time he is challenged, he’s going to have a hard time making inroads in any state Kerry didn’t win in 2004.  Then again, all he needs is to peel off 18 Electoral Votes.  Virginia, with its 13, wouldn’t do it.  Ohio, with 20, would.  Or Virginia plus Iowa or New Mexico or Colorado.  Or simply Iowa plus New Mexico plus Colorado.

Schaller’s right, then, that Obama can win the presidency without competing in the South.  But campaigning in such a way as to give himself a chance — or make McCain spend money in — the South will likely help himself in those other states as well.

Thus far, he seems to be doing just that, including making a big play for Evangelicals.

Story via memeorandum. Photo credit: The Trail/AP.

Senator Jim Webb, touted by many as a vice presidential candidate who would help shore up Barack Obama with Southerners and those uncomfortable with his lack of national security experience, has an “affinity” for the Confederacy, Politico’s David Mark reports breathlessly.

He has suggested many times that while the Confederacy is a symbol to many of the racist legacy of slavery and segregation, for others it simply reflects Southern pride. In a June 1990 speech in front of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, posted on his personal website, he lauded the rebels’ “gallantry,” which he said “is still misunderstood by most Americans.”

Webb, a descendant of Confederate officers, also voiced sympathy for the notion of state sovereignty as it was understood in the early 1860s, and seemed to suggest that states were justified in trying to secede.

“Most Southern soldiers viewed the driving issue to be sovereignty rather than slavery,” he said. “Love of the Union was palpably stronger in the South than in the North before the war — just as overt patriotism is today — but it was tempered by a strong belief that state sovereignty existed prior to the Constitution and that it had never been surrendered.”

This line of attack is somewhat ironic, given that Webb is a Senator today partly because his erstwhile opponent, George Allen, was painted as a Confederate sympathizer, which paved the way for the “Macaca” incident to stick. It’s also, as James Fallows — who elsewhere persuaded me that Webb would be a poor VP choice — observes rather silly.

First, this is hardly a secret or news. The dignity of ordinary Confederate troops and their battlefield leaders, as opposed to the evil of the southern slaveholding system, was a major theme in Webb’s widely-noted and generally-praised book Born Fighting, published four years ago.

In addition to that book, the main documentary proof of Webb’s “problem” is a speech at the Confederate war memorial in 1990. That memorial, by the way, is in Arlington National Cemetery — not in Richmond, Charleston, Natchez, etc.

Slavery was the key issue absent which the Civil War wouldn’t have been fought and the resurgence of the Confederate battle flag in the 1960s was mostly about segregationist defiance. It’s easy to understand, therefore, why expressing pro-Confederate sympathies is politically problematic. But Webb’s admiration for the against-all-odds fighting spirit of his ancestors, most of whom fought for reasons having nothing to do with slavery or, frankly, political considerations of any sort, is understandable, too. In a complex world, one can simultaneously admire Robert E. Lee’s character, J.E.B. Stuart’s generalship, and the courage of those who charged up Little Round Top while damning the institution of slavery.

And after all: we’re discussing scenarios in which the first black major party nominee might choose Webb as his running mate. Somehow this would “have the potential” of conveying a pro-Confederate tilt? I don’t think this is the right job for Webb, but his respect for his Confederate ancestors is not the reason why.

Indeed.

The Democrats have picked up their second Deep South congressional seat in as many weeks, with Travis Childers defeating Republican candidate Greg Davis by a substantial margin in the special election contest to replace Roger Wicker, now serving as the interim junior senator from Mississippi, in the House of Representatives:

The seat had been in Republican hands since 1995, and the district, largely rural and stretching across the northern top of Mississippi, had been considered one of the safest in the country for President Bush’s party, as he won here with 62 percent of the vote in 2004. …

Merle Black, a Southern politics expert at Emory University, called a Democratic victory potentially “a huge upset, and an indication of a terrible year ahead for the Republicans.” He added, “In theory, this should be an easy win for them.”

Mimicking a strategy that proved successful in 2006, Democrats ran staunch conservatives in both this and the Louisiana race, forcing their Republican opponents to attack national party figures as surrogates.

While Childers’ victory is somewhat surprising, despite Mississippi’s reputation as a “deep red” state it has never returned a Republican majority to the House since Reconstruction–the closest the GOP has come to any form of dominance is parity from 2003 (after the 2000 census led to a court-ordered redistricting plan that left Democratic incumbent Ronnie Shows as the odd man out when the musical chairs stopped) through Wicker’s resignation in late 2007, holding two seats against the Democrats’ control of the majority-black 2nd District (currently held by Bennie Thompson) and the south Mississippi 4th District held by yellow dog Democrat Gene Taylor.

I remain skeptical that Childers will survive in the strongly Republican 1st District past November, when he will face reelection on a ballot headed by John McCain and longtime incumbent Wicker after serving six months in a Democrat-controlled House, but stranger things have happened. And, as Ole Miss professor Marvin King observes the GOP’s “go-to” strategy of associating Childers and similarly conservative Democratic candidates with the national party (in particular, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama and speaker Nancy Pelosi) isn’t working, as NRCC chairman Tom Cole tacitly acknowledged Tuesday evening.

U.S. Representative Geoff Davis has started a huge blogospheric outcry for allegedly using a racial slur directed at Barack Obama. Oliver Willis, among others, has described this as a “bigot eruption”. Here’s the offending remark:

Congressman Geoff Davis, took the criticisms of Mr. Obama a few steps further, likening the change slogan to the pitch of a “snake oil salesman.” He then relayed to the audience that he had taken party in a “highly classified, national security simulation” with Obama.

“I’m going to tell you something: That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,” Mr. Davis said. “He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country.”

The offending phrase here is the use of the term “that boy”, because in the South the word “boy” was often employed in the past as a degrading form of address for African-Americans.

That being said, I think that the claim here is a bit overblown. The context of the remarks that Davis made, while not particularly dignified, weren’t racially directed. Indeed, the primary complaint that Rep. Davis made about Obama was his naivete–race wasn’t mentioned at all. Additionally, as far as I can tell from a quick Google search of Rep. Geoff Davis, he doesn’t appear to have been associated with any type of derogatory racial remarks in the past.

So, given the context of both Rep. Davis’s remarks and his history, I don’t think it’s fair to say that Rep. Davis intended to make any kind of racially insensitive or racially derogatory remarks regarding Senator Obama. That said, being a Republican politician from Kentucky, he should probably know to watch his mouth a little better than that, because given the history of the region, it’s pretty easy to take offense at what he said.

Context is everything, people. You can’t judge a person or their meaning by one sentence or paragraph or word. You have to consider the context in which a particular statement is made, and the overall history and character of the person uttering it.

To the surprise of virtually no one, Barack Obama has won the Mississippi Democratic primary, the last contest before Pennsylvania’s primaries in late April. To even less surprise, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain also prevailed in his party’s contest.

Perhaps more interesting than the primary victory are the exit poll numbers, which may suggest some serious problems for the Democrats if Clinton does emerge to be the eventual nominee. For starters, only 51% of Democratic primary voters said that Clinton was “honest and trustworthy” — and, even among that group, Clinton only prevailed 55-44%:

As in Texas, Clinton may also have benefitted from the “Limbaugh effect”: her support in the primary clearly came from conservatives in the Magnolia State, who are unlikely to vote for any Democratic nominee when November rolls around:

These exit poll fundamentals put aside the numbers that have attracted the most attention among the commentariat:

The rift in the party widens: Obama voters by and large would NOT be satisfied (55%) with Clinton as their nominee, while 7 and ten Clinton voters would NOT be satisfied (72%) with Obama as theirs.

It’s going to be a long six weeks for the Democrats in Pennsylvania…

UPDATE (James Joyner): It’s a little early in the morning for math but I’m at a loss as to how Clinton won did as well as she did. Her margins with conservatives of 14 and 10 percent are smaller than Obama’s with liberals of 44 and 28 and even his 19 percent among moderates. Either the exit polls are not reflective of the actual vote or conservatives absolutely dominated the turnout.

Radley Balko finds lard of a different nature than pork spending on the menu of the Mississippi legislature: a state legislative bill sponsored by two Republicans and one Democrat that would effectively ban all restaurants in the state from serving the “obese.” Lest you think the sponsors are kidding, blogger Sandy Szwarc contacted the main sponsor of the bill (a Republican from the Memphis suburbs) and he’s quite serious:

He kindly took a moment to answer my question while the legislature was in session. He said that while, regrettably, he doesn’t believe his bill will pass, this is serious. He wrote it, he said, because of the “urgency of the obesity crisis and need for government action.” He hopes it will “call attention to the serious problem of obesity and what it is costing the Medicare system.”

I am literally at a loss for words.

The Civil War might have ended 143 years ago but the Confederate battle flag refuses to die as a political issue.

The Republican presidential candidates on Thursday moved to appeal to different types of conservative voters before the South Carolina primary, with Mike Huckabee using colorful language to declare the Confederate flag a states’ rights issue and Senator John McCain embracing a supply-side tax cut proposal.

“You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag,” Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, told supporters in Myrtle Beach, according to The Associated Press. “In fact,” he said, “if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole; that’s what we’d do.”

At a news conference on Thursday night, he said, “It is not an issue the president of the United States needs to weigh in on.” Mr. Huckabee, who did not say whether he considered it offensive to fly the Confederate battle flag, made his remarks as he toured the state with David Beasley, a former South Carolina governor, who had angered some conservatives by removing the flag from the Capitol dome in Columbia and displaying it elsewhere on the Capitol grounds.

And a radio advertisement paid for by an independent group used the flag issue to attack Mr. McCain, of Arizona, and praise Mr. Huckabee. “John McCain assaults our values,” it said. “Mike Huckabee understands the value of heritage.”

[...]

The Confederate flag issue — while not as prominent as it was in 2000 — has continued to surface. Fred D. Thompson, the former Tennessee senator who is staking his campaign on a strong showing here, said at a debate in November that “for a great many Americans, it’s a symbol of racism” and added that he was “glad that people have made a decision not to display it as a prominent flag symbolic of something in a state capitol.”

Mr. McCain, who has cited his own equivocations on the issue in 2000 as one of his failures of political courage, was met at several stops by flag-waving protesters. Asked about the flag at an event on Wednesday in Spartanburg, Mr. McCain said, “My answer, sir, is that I could not be more proud that the overwhelming majority of the people of this state joined together taking that flag off the top of the….” And his answer was drowned out by the cheers of supporters.

Fox has videos of Huckabee’s statements here.

Here’s the anti-McCain ad:

Huckabee and the commercial are right on three points:

• The average guy with a Confederate battle flag on his pickup truck in indeed saying nothing more sinister than “I’m proud to be a Southerner.”
• For most of these guys, it’s about respect for heritage and values rather than race.
• This issue is none of the federal government’s business.

McCain’s right, though, that South Carolina did the right thing in deciding to stop flying the flag over the state capitol. The state has a large black population which, for good reason, sees it as a symbol of slavery, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, and other ugly parts of our past.

Not all that long ago, I agreed with Huckabee on the issue, finding the “heritage” argument dispositive. Hardy Jackson, my Southern History professor — and a proud Southerner — convinced me to change my mind with an elementary point: A core element of Southern culture (or, at least, its ideal) is civility. If flying the flag is deeply hurtful to a third of your population, it’s just downright rude to keep doing it. Let alone over your state capital.

So, Huckabee’s right that it’s not within the president’s power to tell South Carolina what to put on its flag. But McCain’s right that it’s a would-be president’s duty to speak out on issues that divide the country. There are all manner of things that are outside the scope of the president’s job where he can nonetheless lead by use of the bully pulpit.

Jeffro2pt0 of the Weblog Tools Collection blog reports that some significant number of WordPress developers are irritated by the software’s practice of greeting users of its interface with a “Howdy” in the upper right hand corner.

It seems as though the word Howdy, is not liked by many people in many places. I’ve been monitoring an ongoing discussion taking place in the WordPress hackers mailing-list about the subject of the word Howdy being used in all instances of WordPress, despite the locality of the end user. The discussions have ranged from “Not everyone greets each other by saying Howdy” to “Whats the big deal about the word Howdy anyways, it’s not like it breaks WordPress”. The good news is, because WordPress is open source, there is generally someone out there who has the skill and know how to put together a solution for even the most mundane problems.

So, now, there’s a No Howdy! plug-in to localize the greeting. Its designer, Ozh, did it fully tongue-in-cheek, calling the controversy “quite pointless” and the installation of a plug-in to handle something so minor “total overkill.”

Since I actually employ the greeting with some regularity, I shan’t be availing myself of this one. It is a rather amusing controversy, though.

Virginia has long been considered a Republican hotbed — the last Democrat to win the state’s Electoral College vote was Lyndon Johnson in 1964 — it has now elected two Democratic governors in a row, has a Democratic Senator and may be about to have two. Last night, Democrats gained four seats to take control of the Virginia Senate.

Democrats wrested control of the Senate from the Republicans in yesterday’s legislative elections, picking up the four seats they needed to give them a majority of at least 21 to 19 and end a decade of GOP dominance in the chamber.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) claimed victory in a celebration at Tysons Corner. The Republicans retained control of the House, but the Democrats also gained seats there. The party’s surge will help the governor advance much of his agenda during his last two years in office, including investing more in education, health and the environment.

[...]

The Democratic gains offered further evidence of a closely divided electorate as both parties gear up for next year’s presidential and U.S. Senate races. Although Democrats made advances in rapidly changing, diversifying Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, the GOP held on to several Senate seats in more rural parts of the state.

[...]

For most of the year, Republicans have been worried President Bush’s unpopularity could become a drag on their candidates. Several Democratic candidates, particularly in Northern Virginia, sought to make their race in part a referendum on GOP policies in Washington. The message appeared to be particularly effective in Hampton Roads, where Democrats won two seats over conservative Republicans.

[...]

The victory in the Senate marks the largest gain in that chamber by one party since 1991, when Republicans picked up eight seats during the administration of former governor L. Douglas Wilder (D).

Despite attempts to nationalize the election, most contests were fought on local issues: taxes, roads, and growth. Still, this is obviously a worrisome trend for the GOP.

The Commonwealth’s senior United States Senator, John Warner, is retiring. Popular former governor Mark Warner, a Democrat, is the odds-on favorite to succeed him (53%-37% over former Republican governor Jim Gilmore in one recent poll). A recent Rasumussen survey shows Rudy Giuliani barely edging out Hillary Clinton, 46% to 43% — within the polls’ margin of error.

Part of the explanation is that Virginia Democrats have done an excellent job in recent years of recruiting moderate candidates who are less vulnerable on the “family values” and crime fronts. Virginia Democrats, like Southern Democrats generally, have long been much more conservative than their national counterparts but that trend has continued.

Mostly, though, the trend is a function of the explosive growth of Northern Virginia, the suburbs and exurbs of Washington, D.C. This part of the Commonwealth is much wealthier, more urban in its thinking (mostly owing to traffic issues that the rest of Virginia largely escapes), and more beholden to the federal government for their livelihood. Despite the routine victories of “slow-growth” candidates (mostly Democrats, ironically enough) this shows no sign of abating.

Kevin Drum, citing reports that the “Barack Obama is a secret Muslim” story has gotten some (very minor) legs is South Carolina and reminding readers that there were some rather ugly smears against John McCain there in 2000, asks, “What is it about South Carolina, anyway?”

This, perhaps predictably, brings forth some spewing of venom and counter-venom among commenters about ignorant Southern hicks and their hatred of the negro.

It strikes me, though, that a much less sociological explanation is more likely (leaving aside the small ‘n’ problem): South Carolina hosts the first significant primary outside the media decampments of Iowa and New Hampshire. Because the courting of voters in the latter two states is so prolonged and “retail,” they are flooded with press for months on end looking for even slightly nuanced variations of the same tired reports. Dirty tricks are simply going to get found out in that environment, probably early enough to backfire. The South Carolina primary, by contrast, is largely ignored by the national media until the week or so before the campaign. It’s simply more fertile ground for skullduggery.

The federal district court for the Northern District of Mississippi last month ruled in favor of state Democratic Party officials who wanted to close their primaries to non-Democratic voters, much to the irritation of many of the party’s own officeholders who are warning of a return to racial bloc voting in the state:

Republican-leaning voters in Mississippi have long been able to cross party lines in primaries, voting for centrist Democrats in state and local races while staying loyal to Republican candidates in national races. But political experts here say that by limiting these voters — almost all of whom are white — to Republican primaries, the ruling will push centrist Democratic candidates to the other party, simply in order to survive.

Most black voters in Mississippi are Democrats, and black political leaders have been pushing for years to prevent crossover voting in Democratic primaries. Black leaders say they want to end precisely what white Democrats here seek to preserve, a strong moderate-to-conservative voice in the Democratic Party, and in the process to pick up more state and local posts. …

The Democrats’ dominance at the local level may now be threatened by Judge Pepper’s ruling.

“If they are required to re-register, the Democratic Party will be a shell of its former self because I just don’t think you’ll see those conservative whites re-register as Democratic,” said Jere Nash, who is white and a veteran consultant and onetime chief of staff to former Gov. Ray Mabus, a Democrat.

R. Andrew Taggart, a white lawyer who succeeded Mr. Nash when Kirk Fordice, a Republican, was elected governor, agreed. The ruling was “very far-reaching,” Mr. Taggart said. “He has essentially ruled our entire primary structure must be changed.”

“If forced to make a decision,” Mr. Taggart added, “a plurality of Mississippi voters will identify themselves as Republican.”

Black Democrats who pushed the lawsuit that led to the ruling seemed to view the potential hemorrhaging of white voters with equanimity. One of their leaders is Ike Brown, a state Democratic executive committee member who was recently found by another federal judge to have systematically violated voting rights of whites, through intimidation and other means, as party boss in his home county, Noxubee, in the eastern part of the state.

Welcoming Judge Pepper’s ruling, Mr. Brown said in an interview: “We are tired of being abused by the white Democrats in Mississippi. We have just had enough. We want the Republicans out of our party.”

Democrats here have recently made other efforts to rid their party of Republican leanings, trying, for instance, to force the state’s conservative insurance commissioner, George Dale, off their primary ballot because he voted for Mr. Bush. A judge put Mr. Dale back on.

A correspondent of Rick Hasen asks, “How is this distinguishable from the White Primary Cases?” Most obviously, because there are no rules limiting party registration and primary voting to members of one race, which was not the case under the white primary as practiced by state Democratic parties across the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So long as blatant thuggery, like that alleged to have taken place in Noxubee County at Brown’s behest, is kept in check the risk of a new “Black Primary” emerging is small.

Tactically, however, one has to wonder about black Democrats’ tactics. If moderate-to-conservative whites are systematically driven into the GOP’s waiting arms by the closed primary rule, it is true that many white moderate-to-conservative Democrats in the legislature and local office will be replaced by blacks (or more liberal whites).

However, at least some of them will be replaced by Republicans, and much of the power that black Democrats have today in Mississippi politics is due to being part of the majority party in the state House of Representatives–a majority that only persists due to the conservative Democrats Brown and his allies want to drive out of the party. Due to simple demographics, a state house purged of conservative Democrats will be a state house with a GOP majority–and no black committee chairs. Such a chamber will hardly be sympathetic to the policy preferences of black voters, even if they get a few more seats in the chamber filled by black faces.