Continuing on with our (unplanned) theme on what's eating southern voters, we refer you to Paul Krugman's post "Bubba Isn’t Who You Think" at his new NYT blog. Krugman has an important addendum to the op-ed on race in southern voting he published in yesterday's Grey Lady. Says Krugman:

In fact, if you look at voting behavior, low-income whites in the South are not very different from low-income whites in the rest of the country... It’s relatively high-income Southern whites who are very, very Republican.

...Income levels seem to matter much more for voting in the South. Contrary to what you may have read, the old-fashioned notion that rich people vote Republican, while poorer people vote Democratic, is as true as ever – in fact, more true than it was a generation ago. But in rich states like New Jersey or Connecticut, the relationship is weak; even the very well off tend to be only slightly more Republican than working-class voters. In the poorer South, however, the relationship is very strong indeed.

An important distinction, and Krugman links to statistical sources to prove his point. More and more, it appears that Dems can benefit from better understanding the diversity of the South, instead of dismissing it as hopeless territory.