"He Won It in the Suburbs"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So said Chuck Todd this today on Morning Joe. Consider my hometown Exhibit A.I live in Edina, Minnesota, a quintessential suburb. Southdale,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2008\/11\/05\/he-won-it-in-the-suburbs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""He Won It in the Suburbs"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So said Chuck Todd this today on Morning Joe. Consider my hometown Exhibit A.I live in Edina, Minnesota, a quintessential suburb. 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{"id":1172,"date":"2008-11-05T08:21:41","date_gmt":"2008-11-05T14:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2008\/11\/he-won-it-in-the-suburbs\/"},"modified":"2015-03-13T17:08:45","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T22:08:45","slug":"he-won-it-in-the-suburbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2008\/11\/05\/he-won-it-in-the-suburbs\/","title":{"rendered":""He Won It in the Suburbs""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/span>So said Chuck Todd<\/a> this today on Morning Joe<\/a>.\u00a0 Consider my hometown<\/a> Exhibit A.<\/p>\n

I live in Edina, Minnesota, a quintessential suburb.\u00a0 Southdale<\/a>, the first-ever enclosed shopping mall was built here in 1956.\u00a0 During that same era, when my mom was growing up here, Edina was a \u201cSundown Town \u2014 non-whites were ~~required by law to be out of town by sundown<\/strike> kept out of town by real estate covenants and supposedly asked to leave town by sunset.<\/p>\n~~

~~Edina is 94% White and 0.13% African American.\u00a0 That means there are 752 Whites for every Black person in my town.<\/p>\n~~

~~The median household income is $66,000, versus the Minnesota state average of $47,000.<\/p>\n~~

~~Edina is represented by Republicans in the state legislature, state senate, and U.S. Congress.<\/p>\n~~

~~Get the picture?\u00a0 Edina is a rich, white, Republican suburb.<\/p>\n~~

~~Barack Obama won Edina 55% \u2013 43% (17,399 \u2013 13,669).<\/b><\/p>\n~~

~~And Obama won~~ ~~my polling place<\/a> 52% \u2013 46% (916 \u2013 813).<\/p>\n~~

And maybe the most noteworthy statistic is that 95%<\/b> of the registered voters in my precinct voted yesterday.<\/p>\n

~~What happened in Edina?\u00a0 Was it a referendum on Bush 43?\u00a0 An anti-war vote?\u00a0 Fear of the economic downturn?<\/p>\n~~

Probably all of the above, but I think it was primarily something else: Barack Obama ran the most effective, impressive political campaign in history.\u00a0 His calm overwhelmed the Clinton machine; his embrace of Internet fundraising literally shifted the balance of power from big money donors to 3.5 million individuals giving an average of $83 each; and his caucus strategy (in Minnesota, for instance) will be studied for years.\u00a0 Edina is simply indicative of Obama\u2019s brilliance as a politician and, we can hope, as a leader.<\/p>\n

As I write this, Cokie Roberts is talking on NPR about \u201cthe white vote,\u201d which is the Republican stronghold, particularly white men.\u00a0 But thankfully, that demographic (of which I am a part) is now a minority in our country.\u00a0 And, even so, we voted for Obama.<\/p>\n

~~It\u2019s a new day in America.<\/p>\n~~

~~Know Hope.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"~~