womzilla | Yeah, my feeling exactly

Courtesy, of course, of

sarah_ovenall, who, as far as I'm concerned, won the damn state for Obama. [ETA: She points out that credit for the graphic goes to her friend and fellow Obama campaigner Mark Johnson. She's too modest to actually take credit for delivering the state, but we all know better.]

Because Helms was the public face of North Carolina politics for so long, it's easy to overlook the fact that it's not a solidly red state. Here's a comment I left somewhere about North Carolina and its purpleness:

There is more to a state's politics than just who it gives it Presidential votes to. North Carolina has a long history of voting in Democrats for statewide office, even after the Republicans adopted the "Southern Strategy" (i.e., becoming the party of racists). The governorship switched back and forth between the Dems and Republicans all through Jesse Helms's life, as did the Senate seat not held by Helms. (No Senator has held the NC Class Three seat for more than one term since Sam Ervin retired in 1974.) Kay Hagan, of course, just took the Class Two seat, which has been held by Republicans since 1973 (first Helms, then Liddy Dole).

NC's Class Three seat ("class" here refers to the election cycle in which the seat comes up for election) was held by John Edwards, who, while not as liberal as Bernie Sanders or Paul Wellstone, is reasonably far to the left of the current American political spectrum--further left in goals, I would say, than Obama, though clearly not as good an administrator and certainly not as good a speaker.

North Carolina, as noted, just put a Democrat into the Senate, and elected a Democratic governor again. But it hadn't gone Democrat for a president since before I started voting. It's good to see it wake up.