My interest in politics and elections cannot be contained by the porous boundaries of our campaign seasons. Herewith a few picked-up pieces relating to the 2008 election.
After Bush won in 2004, there was a lot of talk about how Democrats had a southern problem. Kerry was shut out in the states of the old Confederacy. So was Gore. You put all the electoral votes of that region in the R column and the Ds only chance is to draw to an inside straight--so said wise men on CNN. Then Obama won and the new story line concerns the R's problems, which you might call triregional. There are now 18 states, with 245 electoral votes, that have gone Democratic in five straight presidential elections. These states seem to divide naturally into three geographical groupings. There is the northern Atlantic seaboard, from Maine to Maryland, less New Hampshire but plus Vermont--ten states with 110 electoral votes. Then there are four states of the upper midwest with 58 electoral votes--Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. And then there are four states of the Pacific rim that, mainly on account of California, total 77 more electoral votes. You might say that Bush drew to an inside straight twice in a row, but it's probably best to dispense with the card-playing metaphors and just say that the country is divided along regional lines and that for awhile now the outcome of presidential elections has been determined around the edges of these regions--Florida, Ohio, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada.
Speaking of a southern problem, and division, here's something I was startled by while examining who voted for whom: Obama got just 11 percent of the white vote in Mississippi, which is slightly better than he did among whites in Alabama, where he got 10 percent. Yet Obama broke through in the south by winning Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. What gives? Obama did well among a younger, wandering set of new southerners who have landed in the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia or around Research Triangle in North Carolina. Mississippi and Alabama don't have such places. Race is part of it, yes, but age, educational level, and the distance from your house to the nearest Starbucks are now reliable indicators of party preference. Some will say I am only revealing my own preferences, but still it is true, that the attractive, thriving parts of the south are trending Democratic.
The modern Republican party is on the wrong side of a demographic curve. The opposition of nearly all Republicans to any reform of the health care system isn't going to help their cause.
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