What The Hell Staten Island?

First off, I'd like to congratulate our fifth borough for electing Mike McMahon to Congress, adding yet another Democrat to caucus and making New York City's delegation completely blue. With that, why the hell did the island go for John McCain and Sarah "nutjob" Palin? I know Staten Islanders are generally more conservative, but registrations have moved significantly for Democrats and on top of that, voted for Gore. So what's going on here?

From The NY Times:

“You see that kind of voting there because Staten Island has a lot of Republicans and the people we used to call Reagan Democrats,” said John H. Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

“You have a large group of Italian-Americans and German-Amercians, people from blue collar backgrounds,” Mr. Mollenkopf said. “And they are used to crossing party lines to vote for one way for one office and for another party for another office on the ballot.”

In fact, Staten Island, the smallest of the city’s boroughs, is vastly different from its counterparts. The island is physically separated from the rest of New York City; no subway runs from other parts of the city to the island and it is reachable by car only by a single bridge or a boat.

It is overall the most suburban of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also the whitest of the boroughs, with about 77 percent of its 477,000 residents being white. Hispanic Staten Islanders make up about 12 percent of the population and black residents make up about a tenth.

Yeah, yeah, the place is different, I get that. Yet is it just because there are more white people that determined the borough's vote? Indiana and Iowa went for Obama and Iowa is way more white than Staten Island. Perhaps it is the "Reagan Democrat" effect, or more bluntly a nastier side of the American electorate that thinks that they'll do better if only those that look like themselves get a leg up. That ugliness popped up on election night when a group of thugs attacked Ali Kamara for being a black muslim, mentioning Obama as they beat him. It may only be one incident, but can you imagine that happening in Manhattan? I think not.