Horizon

There have been a couple of more believable map theory posts at the Volokh Conspiracy. Bryan, Wilson, Truman, Nixon, and Bush all have the South and West in common.

There's also the rather more interesting purple map which likewise slaps down the American Civil War theory. Comparing the maps there, the result appears more to do with geography and population (I especially like the odd blue hill slap in the middle of some red plains). It also seems to highlight why the electoral college system seems rather flawed: those blue counties in states which overall went red must be furious.

Although I don't think it explains everything either, the Bush=Bryan comparison does seem to get closer to the heart of the matter. The connection between the South and Midwest is not slavery: it is evangelical populism. (This of course still leaves the question: why are the most traditionally isolationist states voting for a candidate with an interventionist foreign policy?)

Thanks for the map link!

You write:those blue counties in states which overall went red must be furious

I live in a blue county in a red state, and really suspect that you'd find more fury in very-blue counties in mostly-blue states that went for Kerry. If fury over electoral results is largely a function of lack of contact/empathy with your political opponents, you'll probably find more in San Francisco, or Boston that you would here. In Austin, everybody knows that driving an hour in any direction will put you solidly in Republican country, and business or family may draw an Austinite to those parts occasionally.

Alan write: Why are the most traditionally isolationist states voting for a candidate with an interventionist foreign policy?

That's a very interesting question. I think that the core of isolationism isn't an opposition to foreign intervention or imperialism, though both may be present. Rather it's the opposition to foreign entanglement -- which explains suspicion of the UN and scorn for foreign opinion.

Unilateralism is one of many possible responses to corrupt, ineffective or self-interested members of multinational bodies. It's certainly a valid one, but an isolationist would view it as a desirable, normative, and ideal response.

Some points well taken -- and one of the BOP site's commenters did raise that Kansas point -- but then a lot of the closest votes *were* in border states, weren't they? Yes, OK, not New Hampshire, not New Mexico. But Ohio and Pennsylvania certainly.

About evangelical populism -- if so, it's a particular generation of evangelical populism, not the whole U.S. history of it. Northampton, Massachusetts was once the home of Jonathan Edwards and the center of a fire-and-brimstone religious revival. I was there two days after the election. The local Valley Advocate's front-page headline was "Arrggh!"

Well, sure: I'm not denying the existence of Cotton Mather. But by the time that the modern political character of the United States had developed, the centre of evangelicism had shifted south and west to the areas that are now the Republican "heartland".

The midwest connection to slavery is completely misleading. While the unincorporated territories of the Louisiana Purchase might theoretically have been left open to slavery, in practice there was no chance that any of them would adopt slave-tolerant constitutions upon statehood. The Southern states were well aware of this; which is why they were increasingly fatalistic about the long-term chances of the peculiar institution within the United States, and were encouraged to follow the desperate path of secession.

If fury over electoral results is largely a function of lack of contact/empathy with your political opponents, you'll probably find more in San Francisco, or Boston that you would here.

That's certainly true around here. I keep hearing stories (though haven't personally witnessed it) of people bursting into tears in the grocery store, and suddenly naive people keep telling me the election went to Bush because of fraud.

suddenly naive people keep telling me the election went to Bush because of fraud

That's another aspect of what I'm talking about. If you're a liberal with no contact with anyone who voted for Bush, supported the Iraq invasion, or thinks Kyoto is a bad idea, the actions of the government take on an air of illigitimacy they wouldn't in a situation where you and your friends joke about "cancelling each other's votes again". It's just hard to figure out where all these wrong-headed people come from.

I think that the same thing was at work with the whole gay-marriage thing, and will still operate regarding the FMA. If you're in Nebraska and don't know a soul who supports gay marriage, the actions in VT, MA, and SF probably make you feel like it's being crammed down a unanimous country's throat.

A powerful minority imposing its will on the nation through subversive means -- whether it's "unelected judges creating law" or some PNAC-sponsored voter intimidation scheme -- becomes more believable than the idea that there are millions of Americans just like you who disagree with you. After all, if there really are, why haven't you met any?

Well said.

I myself am not sure yet just how much of a disaster this will end up being, but one thing's for sure I find these hysterics to be pretty revolting. Democrats around here keep blaming the "red states" as if the election were some crime perpetrated on them.

Question from the outside looking in: would the result have been different for Kerry if, instead of focusing on the key swing states, more campaign effort had been made in the states which are 'purplish-blue' on the princetown map? I.e. in chasing after Ohio and Pennsylvania were other potential voters in states like Iowa and Nevada (both with a

(of course, as a British person, I struggle with the notion that red=conservative rather than red=labour so if I make some fundemental mistake in the colours, I apologise)

doh...it didn't like my < sign. That should read:

...(both with a <5% margin in the final calls) left behind?

To answer Mags' question partially, all the many California left and liberal groups that have me on their mailing lists were sending constant appeals to join canvassing road trips to Nevada, and I knew Californians who were planning to do voter rights work in Colorado. meanwhile people from Massachusetts were traveling north to New Hampshire and New Yorkers blanketed Pennsylvania. I don't know about Iowa -- better ask someone from Chicago.

Don't forget the electoral college vote count, Mags. Ohio and Pennsylvania together are worth 41, Iowa and Nevada only 9.

The conventional wisdom on tactics right now seems to be that Kerry overdid PA to the detriment of his OH campaign.

Well, um, there's an argument to be made that the sense of all being in the same boat is kind of essential before people will support typically Democratic programs such as publicly guaranteed retirement and disability benefits. More generally speaking, the notion that society has a responsibility to the individual is pretty much dependent on people feeling that they and their neighbors and the folks across town *are* all members of the same society.

Slavery was this incredibly divisive thing in our history that we are all still living down whether we remember it in those terms or not. Some places were more deeply cursed by slavery than others before we (more or less) gave it up, but we're all living with the curse no matter where we're from. Living with the history of slavery means living with an "us vs. them" dynamic *inside* one's own home town, home state, or for that matter home country -- the knowledge that there's a huge mutual mistrust, stemming from this evil old history of absolute power on one side and simmering rebellion on the other, *inside of* one's society whether one personally shares it or not. It means members of the majority being afraid to vote for public benefits for fear that the beneficiaries will be not only their own grandmothers, but the grandmothers of "Them" as well. It means majorities being afraid to reduce criminal penalties for fear one of "Them" will go free too early.

We pay the price of slavery at every election. In California we paid it again on Nov. 2: a majority of voters, disproportionately in rural, inland parts of the state, defeated Prop. 66, which would have reduced the number of third-strike crimes subjecting offenders to the drastic "Three Strikes" sentencing. But enough of us just couldn't trust our fellow citizens enough to do that.

We just aren't going to have the kind of social policy that results from mutual trust until we do manage to achieve more mutual trust, and to do that we have to get farther past slavery than we have yet.

So, yes, our history of slavery does have something to do with a loss by the party of the welfare state.

Living with the history of slavery means living with an "us vs. them" dynamic *inside* one's own home town, home state, or for that matter home country

There's no history of slavery (with)in Europe, but I can assure you that there's certainly a history of "us vs. them". I don't buy the idea that areas of the United States that were longstanding free states or predominantly settled by free staters have been especially influenced by slavery. Industrial class difference, for instance, has always played a much bigger role. Far too much attention paid to race when it comes to division within this society, IMHO.

I'm not clear what the benefits of the college system are. I get the idea of it, just not whether this is a more proportional system than the "first past the post" system ("the popular vote" to use US parlance).

I'm not clear what the benefits of the college system are.

Short answer: there aren't any. The Founders originally intended it to be a patrician safeguard against the excesses of the mob: the idea was that the people would elect the electors, who would in turn elect the President. This system broke down almost immediately and the electors just became hacks who (almost always) vote according to the party slate. The justification for the system has more recently become that of geographical diversity: the argument is that, because the smaller states are overly represented in the college, candidates must campaign on a truly nationwide basis rather than simply concentrating on a few populous states. The reality is that (a) campaigns remain narrowly concentrated in a few key swing states regardless of the college, and (b) if you do the maths small states are actually hurt more than helped by the current system - there was a series of articles in Slate recently that demolished that old canard. Problem is that the small states haven't been convinced of this (yet), which is why any attempt at reform is almost certainly doomed to congressional inertia.

Short answer: there aren't any.

I disagree. The electoral college system makes close elections a bit cheaper to conduct. Especially in 2000, all the attention and expense of recounting was just within a single state. If we'd gone by pure popular vote count, we might have been contesting results in every precinct of the nation.

Of course this economy comes at the expense of accuracy.

We pay the price of slavery at every election.

Which is why the 2004 election was no more influenced by the legacy of slavery than any other, and that map is just another hyperbolic way for Democrats to avoid addressing the success of Republican populism.

I'm very sorry to hear that the 3-strikes initiative failed. I'd been rooting for that one from afar, and hadn't thought to check up on it since the election.

I'm not sure about that, Ben. Gore won the popular vote by a 500,000 margin - slim, but not razor-thin. I don't think that the Republicans would have considered it politically wise to mount a sustained challenge on a nationwide scale. I also think that deemphasizing the importance of certain key states would discourage potential vote-manipulators from trying anything funny.

Well, um, there's an argument to be made that the sense of all being in the same boat is kind of essential before people will support typically Democratic programs such as publicly guaranteed retirement and disability benefits.

But programs like Social Security were (and still are, AFAIK) very popular among even rural white southerners.

OT, but since you're here Gene, I want to apologize because I think I was a little rude to you in one of the threads over at Harry's Place. This is why I've come to prefer blogging at my own site - I can edit or retract things said in the heat of the moment. (I'm going to continue being rude to Martha, of course, but since after all these years we're the Internet equivalent of Archie and Edith Bunker, I don't think that really counts).

OT, but since you're here Gene, I want to apologize because I think I was a little rude to you in one of the threads over at Harry's Place.

Seriously, Alan, I don't take our disagreements (even the more heated ones) personally. In fact I appreciate your tough challenges to my posts because I know you're not trolling or trying to provoke me (unlike some other HP commenters).

But, Gene, the folks in the White House are plainly trying to spoil the entire New Deal, including the retirement guarantee. Country people aren't stupid. Surely they can see that?

the folks in the White House are plainly trying to spoil the entire New Deal, including the retirement guarantee. Country people aren't stupid. Surely they can see that?

I suspect that country folks simply disagree with your assessment, and see the proposals to put a part of Social Security contributions into the market as an attempt to preserve and strengthen a program likely to run out of money sooner or later.

Personally, I disagree with those proposals on the grounds that we'd end up with a Japanese-style entanglement of the government and the stock market, and that nobody's every explained where the shortfall would come from. But if I were a retiree who'd been warned before every election that the other candidate plans to cut off my check, I'd be a bit skeptical by now.

There's another effect of the electoral college--no doubt some would think of it as an advantage--in that it makes it extremely difficult for third party candidates to win.

There's a long article by someone obviously pro-EC over at the Federal Election Commission website. Interesting in that it's written by someone who clearly wants to defend the system.

Ben is right about Social Security. The Democrats' warnings about Republican plans to eliminate/cut SS have taken on a "cry wolf" character. If the Republicans were stupid enough to actually propose cutting benefits, it would certainly change votes, even among rural southern whites.

Well, no, they're not going to say bluntly, "I want to take your pension away." But all the presidents from Reagan to the current occupant have managed to sell almost any cut to benefit programs with "personal responsibility" rhetoric -- which contains the not especially subtle message that hardworking "we" shouldn't have to carry an undeserving, shiftless "them." If Americans all loosely thought of each other as members of the same community it wouldn't be like that. For one thing we'd have national health.

Aren't Social Security and Medicare different from other programs in that every American above a certain age can recieve benefits, regardless of assets or income? This is what makes the "us vs them" rhetoric non-applicable for it, whereas that rhetoric has been very effective in eliminating or reforming programs targeted specifically at "the poor."

Social Security and Medicare won't be imperiled until people who fit some definition of "wealthy" no longer qualify as recipients.

If Americans all loosely thought of each other as members of the same community it wouldn't be like that. For one thing we'd have national health.

I posted at Harry's Place last year about a survey suggesting that most Americans do feel a sense of shared responsibility about health care. Translating that into political reality is the hard part.

If Americans all loosely thought of each other as members of the same community it wouldn't be like that. For one thing we'd have national health.

This is all a bit bluntly prescriptive, isn't it? I mean, can't reasonable people agree to disagree on the practical application of broad principles without it being assumed that they're fools or knaves?

Man, I just have to say, I am already getting sick of everyone accusing everyone else of accusing everyone else of stupidity. I realize a certain amount of meta-conversation is inevitable and salutary at a time like this, but really. It's getting so as a liberal can't express an opinion anymore.

I gotta go buy a latte.

Dumbass ;-)

Stop repressing me, fascist.

Now you see the Archie Bunker inherent in the system...