That's a fair enough point - I could cite as many stats as I want, but when it comes down to it my opinions are going to be influenced by my experience up here in New England.

Holy God. The dude went to Harvard Law - just because he's not retarded and realized that Federal student loans mature at a rate slower than inflation (thus, you make money via the time-value) doesn't mean that he's Joe Sixpack. This continues to blow my mind every time I hear it.

Well, consider it blown. I'm glad I could do that service for you. He still had to take out loans which is more than I can say for most of the politicians lately. I'm sure that I'd vote for him over McCain even if he'd had his daddy pay for college.

The average annual return on the S&P is 10%, Federal Stafford Loans have around a 6% interest rate. It's smart to pay for school with federal loans and not pay them off early if your other alternative is spending money you would otherwise be investing.

I read that article too, and in some of the "red" states, it's been my experience that race, and not income, informs political leaning. Think about Mississippi. It's one of the poorest states, yet it still delivered 60% of its votes to Bush in 2004. Roughly 65% of its population, however, is white; since we all know that African-Americans are the most reliable Democratic voters, it's safe to surmise that a good chunk of those who voted for Kerry are black. Are the wealthiest Mississippians (many of whom aren't wealthy by Coastal Californian/NYC/Boston/DC/Chicago standards) going GOP? Probably, but there are still a ton of poor people, most likely white, voting Republican there.

I'm probably just shooting from the hip here at this point, but race probably has a stronger correlation with income AND political stance in the "red" states than it does on either coast, which indicates why "poorer" whites are voting Republican there.

I thought the same thing but since I posted so much about race in Georgia in the other thread, I didn't want people to think I was obsessed.

One would have to be able to tease out other demographic factors to see how much income really matters. Party loyalty, I think is a self-perception and world view thing as much as an income thing, and other factors that contribute to self-perception and world view may matter a lot more than income at the time of a particular election.