Good news, Fake America—we've marginalized The South! The New York Times reports today that based on the totally conclusive 2008 election results, no longer will The South have any impact whatsoever on National Politics, and we can safely ignore them. Here, look at this map: it is the counties that voted more Republican in 2008 than in 2004, versus the counties that voted more for Barry Obama than John Kerry. As you can see, most of the country decided they liked Obama more than they liked Kerry, except for this mysterious belt in the old Confederacy that found something... unappealing about this Obama character. What's up with that? After the 2004 elections, a website called "Fuck the South" became popular among us liberal godless coastal elite types. It is a long rant about how the fat idiots who voted for Bush are stupid fat idiots, with some "facts" about how America is basically a giant welfare system whereby New York's money is redistributed to Mississippi for some reason. It was a nice bit of angry post-election catharsis, even if it is indefensibly classist, because, you know, these states we're ranting against are often full of terribly impoverished people and no one has done anything at all to help them since LBJ, basically, and look how well that worked out for him. But! Four years later, the Democrats won the presidency! The electoral map was totally different this time, too! So the Times declares the end of Democrats having to be Southern, or having to hate Welfare. The end of The Southern Strategy too! The Southern Strategy was Richard Nixon's cunning plan to convince racists to support him, helped along by LBJ's cunning plan to be less racist, which lost the South for Democrats for a generation. Now it doesn't matter! The Republicans are finished, forever! Right?