Yes there is a red and blue America
by digby
A more complete analysis shows that being male, low-income, less well educated, Southern, white and Republican are related to reporting a lower level of offense at the Confederate flag. In contrast, being younger, non-Southern, Democrat and white are associated with reporting a lower level of offense at the gay pride flag.
And that explains:
… the initial hesitation of Republican presidential candidates to support removing the Confederate battle flag from the capitol grounds in South Carolina. Only once nine people were murdered during Bible study in a prominent Charleston AME church did the candidates respond to national public opinion, which is strongly weighted against the flag, and call for its removal.
Hey you can’t really blame them too much. It wasn’t all that long ago that many liberals’ favorite candidate was campaigning by saying that he wanted the guys with confederate flags on their trucks to vote for him too. Indeed, it took until an African American ran for president that the Democrats stopped furiously strategizing how to get back those confederate men. For a long time they seemed to be the Holy Grail to every national politician.
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