Bush won 14 former slave states and 16 free states. Kerry took two former slave states. So much for near perfect alignment.
A guy from 'Bama is proud of his confederate heritage? That hardly makes him a racist. The fact that the guy rang his black neighbor's doorbell might be an indicator he's not a racist, to anyone other than this South-hater.
But, if you really think attachment to 19th Century causes is an indicator of racism, how about the Democratic Party, which supported slavery in the Slave States before the Civil War and supported segregation until after WWII???
The map supports what the author's Alabama source was trying to tell him - this has more to do with cultural conservatism. When the Dims split over Vietnam and abortion in the 1970's, they pushed both national defense and cultural conservatives out - the bedrock of Southern politics. Today's map reverts to a much older pattern of sectional alignment, with the South and West allied against a Northeastern based party.
free dixie,sw