'Rednecks for Obama' sign of times

President-elect Barack Obama in Union, Mo., Wednesday, July 30, 2008. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

by Frank James

I haven't had a chance to read as much of the day-after election coverage as I would've liked since I was traveling from traditionally Blue Illinois to nouveau Blue Virginia.

But one anecdote that stuck out in all the coverage I pored over today was in the New York Times' story about how President-elect Obama's campaign team ran a near perfect effort to win.

It was in what journalists call the "kicker" of the story.

Evidently, in recent weeks, people in the Obama and McCain campaigns saw whites who had revealed some racial bias in their survey responses start to shift to Obama.

Here's the great kicker:

In Mississippi, Stuart Stevens, a longtime political strategist who had worked for both Mr. McCain and Mitt Romney in the primaries, was surveying polling data for a Republican client. He was picking up on an unexpected shift for Mr. Obama, even among white voters. As he put it in an interview: If a house is on fire, the owner does not care what color the fireman is.

"He transcended race," Mr. Stevens said. "At the time of crisis, it became particularly irrelevant."

Back in Washington, Mr. Belcher, the pollster, was finding something similar. Mr. Obama was showing strength even among white voters Mr. Belcher had identified as having racial biases. It was a phenomenon captured in a photograph he shared last week of a homemade sign with the Confederate flag. It read: "Rednecks for Obama. Even we've had enough."