Up Next: The War of the Regions?

Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill have an important article in New Geography:

To succeed as president, Obama must find a way to transcend his own very specific geography – university dominated, liberal de-industrialized Chicago - and address the needs of regions whose economies still depend on agriculture, energy and industry. In the primaries, most of these went to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The geographic concentration of manufacturing prepared by Praxis Strategy Group presents a particular complex roadmap for the new president. Although Indiana and Wisconsin top our list of states most dependant on manufacturing employment, the next four are either in the Great Plains, Iowa, or in the south, Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi. In fact eight of the top 13 industrial states on a per capita basis are located in the South; only one of these manufacturing hotbeds, North Carolina, supported the new president.

You'll want to read the entire article to understand some of the larger regional issues of the day.