The community of Joplin and Jasper County as a whole should applaud The Joplin Globe’s decision to endorse Barack Obama for president.

Contrary to naysayers, the Globe has not “lost its way.” Rather, the newspaper has exhibited new-found courage in this bold decision to break with its centenary “business as usual” endorsement of a Republican for president.

That, however, is not my purpose for addressing the Globe’s readership today. I want to explain the reason Missouri lost its bellwether status in picking a president in this election cycle. After endorsing William Jennings Bryan in 1900, only once in the 20th century did Missouri fail to vote for the winner of the presidency. That occurred in 1956 when Missourians voted for Adlai Stevenson over Dwight D. Eisenhower. What happened during the 2008 election cycle?

If you listen carefully to Missouri voters and read their editorials in the Globe and in other newspapers around the state, the explanations as to why voters rejected Obama by a narrow margin in the Show-Me state range from the laughable to the ludicrous. Such justifications include: Obama is just another corrupt Chicago politician like Rod Blagojevich; Obama is too liberal; Obama is a socialist; Obama is a Muslim; and Obama isn’t even an American are most of the most popular reasons the first black person to receive his political party’s nomination for president and win was rejected by Missouri’s voters at the polls.

Looking carefully at a county-by-county breakdown of the vote, you discover a probable cause for the state losing its bellwether status. Many Missouri voters made their decision to reject Obama based not on the “content of his character,” but rather on “the color of his skin.” Clearly, there is substantive evidence in the numbers pointing to race as a pivotal factor in Barack Obama losing Missouri by a razor-thin margin in the total votes cast, signaling the end of “the bellwether streak.”

The end of the “streak” appears to be a political oddity until you consider the fact Obama and Jay Nixon exchanged endorsements early on in the primary campaign. Given their mutual support for one another, only Buchanan, Boone, Jefferson, St. Genevieve, Washington, Iron and urban Jackson and St. Louis counties went solidly for Obama and Democratic gubernatorial Jay Nixon alike by a substantial margin of the popular vote.

Strange as it might seem, the rest of predominately rural Missouri endorsed McCain-Palin in addition to Democrat Jay Nixon, meaning a large percentage of the Missouri electorate split their tickets voting for the Republican ticket for president and the Democrat Nixon for governor.

Ticket splitting in and of itself is not unusual until you carefully analyze the state in its entirety on a county-by-county basis. For example, every county south of the Interstate 44 corridor, except the western half of the 7th Congressional District, went for McCain-Palin as well as Jay Nixon by similar margins. Across the political landscape in Missouri, Democrats and Republicans obviously split their tickets on a massive scale.

Across Missouri’s farm country and in most Southwest Missouri communities, with the exception of a thriving Hispanic minority, the state remains frozen in time both politically, socially and culturally.

To their credit, school districts across the state admit and teach minority students in accordance with federal law, though local education and county courthouses are controlled by dominant “white,” authoritarian majorities. Surprisingly, south of the I-44 corridor, only Springfield R-12 has made a conscientious effort to recruit minority teachers and staff to reflect contemporary, multi-racial American society.

As one might expect, Republican voters in the western half of Southwest Missouri are going to argue race had nothing to do with their decision to vote solidly for McCain-Palin and political lightweight Kenny Hulshof for governor. They will contend they were consistent and based their decision to reject Obama based on his liberalism. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You should know not once, but three times, Missouri Republicans throughout Missouri rejected Reagan Republican Alan Keyes, a conservative Evangelical, pro-life black for their party’s nomination for president of the United States. In his run for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, black Kansas City moderate Congressman Alan Wheat, a Democrat, didn’t stand a chance in 1994 against John Ashcroft. And at last report, if Missouri Republicans have their way, Michael Steele, a staunch conservative who coined the phrase, “drill, baby, drill!” during his convention speech in Minneapolis will never be elected chair of the Republican National Committee.

To determine what Missouri’s Democrats and Republicans are ideologically saying is a difficult task. Ticket-splitting Democrats are closer to being Strom Thurmond Dixiecrats, Jeffersonian Democrats, or George Wallace Democrats than they are to being Truman Democrats. Republicans are even more puzzling. By pandering to the whims of big business and the religious right, their total disregard for civil liberties and the environment, and their disturbing belief in racial purity, Republicans are similar in ideology to Libertarians, Wal-Mart Republicans, Herbert Hoover Republicans, John Birchers, or, in a few isolated cases, National Socialists. Call them anything you like, but do not call them Lincoln Republicans.

Is that to say these Missouri voter are bad people? They are not! It is to say, however, that good people often make crucial political decisions based on blind party allegiance, misinformation, demagoguery and their deep-seated prejudices and fears.

Jean W. Griffith lives in Carthage.