Both Kevin Marks and Marijo Cook point out, in comments below, that there are lots of “blue” voters in red states and vice versa. Kevin writes: “If you look at CNN’s county by county maps, you see that each state is intermingled red and blue blotches, with lots of pallid mixed counties. Most states were close.”
Well, yes. But our system, until it is reformed, remains a state-by-state, winner-take-all model. So that recurring election-to-election patterns of majorities, even when they are small majorities, have significant and persistent political meaning. “Red states” are effectively “red,” even if they have very substantial “blue” minorities, as long as they consistently hand their electoral votes over to a “red” candidate. From the candidate’s point of view, that’s all that matters.
Sure, it’s unfair to make assumptions about individuals within the particular states — each of whom is, in any case, a complex bundle of beliefs and thoughts despite the simplicity of an “either/or” ballot choice. We’re divided across the nation; we’re divided within our states; we’re divided in our cities and counties and our neighborhoods; and often we’re divided within ourselves.
That’s all interesting, but the only level of division that matters in presidential elections, the only unit whose behavior matters, is the state — that’s how the Constitution’s written. And so generalizing about the behavior of states, and seeing patterns across the map that recur from election to election, is what the art of political alignments is all about. There were Republicans in the old Democratic “Solid South,” too. But it took the divisions of the civil rights movement and Nixon’s “southern strategy” to build a Republican majority in the south. That’s called realignment.
Karl Rove took the fruit of that realignment, wedded it to the burgeoning numbers of Bible-Belt style fundamentalist voters, and forged a majority. That was smart. Democrats need to be equally smart and think creatively about how to shift a few states into their column by turning their minorities in those states into majorities. Until and unless the Electoral College is reformed or abolished, this is the fundamental mechanism of presidential politics in America — and that’s why the whole “red vs. blue” map, however over-simplified it might be in terms of the panorama of human individuals, remains a powerful model for presidential politics.
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