>From As Long as Everyone is a Pundit Today:
But we need to consider carefully what all that red means. (Keep in mind, of course, that a lot of that red tide is an illusion caused by the fact that many Bush states have large areas but very small populations. I'm seriously thinking about advocating not only abolishing the Electoral College, but also the Senate. What we need is a unicameral legislature, based solely on population.) Jon Johanning
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I agree with this, but only as far as it goes. The correspondence between the distribution of red and blue within states, county by county, and in the nation as a whole, mirrors population density. This is one of the oldest divisions of all, the division between town and countryside. The weighted power advantage of the countryside was built into US political institutions by those lovable old slave owners from the very start. And it has worked once again.
There is really no need to nuance this any more than that. Suburban and rural communities are more conservative in their social mind set than urban dwellers. The US political structure was designed to privilege that mind set by creating the Senate and the Electorial College, and it has.
Further, you can de-construct `moral values' accordingly. The issues of race, gender, ethnicity and homophobia are likewise deconstructible along similar lines that match population density distributions of town and country. The only slightly changing demographic seems to me to be composed of the various trajectories in suburban areas, how old they are and therefore how diverse they might be, what they were before they were suburbs, and who is moving there, and so forth.
People move to the suburbs and less developed rural areas to get away from city life, to get away from life period. The city is a symbol and a concrete representation for all that is difficult, contentious, and disruptive of any fixed social or moral mind set, not at all unlike the world at large. To live in a city is to be in a constant confrontation with different social minds, races, different cultural profiles, different classes, and many almost unrecognizable and completely unintelligible people.
The political conclusion seems pretty simple to me. About 51% of the US is still composed of a rural and suburban white mass who loath and fear the other 49% who are composed of just about everybody else in the world and mostly live in cities.
Toss in a Texas chain saw President, a French bicycle riding contender from Boston, run it through the slave owner's modifications to a Republic and there you have it.
CG