Warning moment of truth breaks out momentarily on network tv the villagers don't no how to react

SULLIVAN: If Virginia and Florida go back to the Republicans, it's the confederacy, entirely. You put the map of the Civil War over this electoral map, you've got the Civil War.

IFILL: I don't know. (LP: Gwenn apparently doesn't want to challenge her seat at the table. She gets to meet a lot of important people and has a great lifestyle.)

STEPHANOPOULOS: You're rolling your eyes, George. (LP: professional Disney hack who is on tv weekly to deny the obvious)

SULLIVAN: Am I wrong?

Let's put it on the map. Apparently not.

(CROSSTALK)

WILL: You are, and I'll say why.

(LAUGHTER)

Democrats have been losing the white vote constantly since 1964, so that's not new. (LP: Will is actually right about that. They've been losing the white vote in the south when the anti-MLK vote switched from the Republicans, to the third party candidate George Wallace. Then to Republicans)

IFILL: John Kerry lost the white vote.


1968 map. You have George Wallace taking the deep south after abandoning the Democratic party over civil rights.

By 1988 the transformation is complete. The south has converted solidly Republicans. It didn't hurt that Reagan kicked off his campaign in Cleveland Mississippi where three Civil Rights workers were murdered. Reagan gave the South the old wink, wink, nod, nod...we're all for state rights you know

WILL: Here's -- right. Here's what we're trying to talk about. 2008, from Obama, gets that many white votes. This time, the polls indicating may get this many. We're trying to explain this difference. Now, there are two possible explanations. A lot of white people who voted for Obama in 2008 watched him govern for four years and said, "Not so good. Let's try someone else." The alternative, the confederacy hypothesis, is those people somehow for some reason in the last four years became racist. (LP: it is also  that the racist strain effects more than just the south and their is a backlash by believed to be disenfranchised whites and foreigners. The natural advantage a person gets from just being born white is actually being threatened.)

SULLIVAN: No, that's not my argument at all, George.

WILL: It sounds like it.

SULLIVAN: Please. No, no, no. I'm just pointing out the fact that the white people who've changed their minds happen to be in Virginia and Florida. And if you actually look at the map... (LP: In that there is enough of them to tip the election map. Plus do not, discount the old chestnut of using the modern Jim Crow laws to make sure you're side can vote and the other side can't, Southern whites had a solid one hundred years of that.)

Old Jim Crow

As is this.

WILL: But that is not true.

SULLIVAN: ... they were the only two states...

(CROSSTALK)

SULLIVAN: Let me just point...

(CROSSTALK)

SULLIVAN: ... Republican Party. They were the only two states in 2008 that violated the Confederacy rule.

WILL: Andrew has made an empirical statement that is checkable and false, which is that the people moving -- or the white people moving away are in those two states.

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: And a lot them were Republicans.

(CROSSTALK)

SULLIVAN: Which Confederate state is for Obama right now?

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... this could be Ohio, because that's where President Obama is focusing on now, the white male vote in Ohio. We'll see if that holds up. We've got to take a break. We're going to talk about the Senate when we come back.

The modern Jim Crow law