Thomas F. Schaller argues that Barack Obama is wasting his time in North Carolina.
In a guest column in The New York Times today, the author of "Whistling Past Dixie" writes that even vastly increased black turnout will not be enough for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to win Southern states.
He argues that black voters actually already vote at a higher rate than their white peers, while the higher percentages of black voters in Southern states makes white voters more likely to cast their ballots for the Republican candidate.
"Mr. Obama can write off Georgia and North Carolina for the same reasons that Mississippi is beyond his reach — although the math in those two states is slightly less daunting," he writes.
The one exception is Virginia, which has seen a "huge influx of upscale non-Southerners."
That's true in North Carolina — been to Cary lately? — but perhaps not in large enough numbers to make a difference here given the other factors cited by Schaller.
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