[lbo-talk] only five red states left

James Straub rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com
Fri Jan 30 15:18:23 PST 2009



>>
>
> And not only are there only five, but none of them are in the South.
>
> In contrast, only five states had solid or leaning Republican
> orientations in 2008, with Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska in the
> former group, and Nebraska in the latter.
>
> This doesn't seem to make any sense. McCain won lots of states that
> are
> counted Democratic here -- like, again, the South.

Yeah, that poll/graphic/headline makes no sense. It's got Oklahoma, the most conservative place on the face of the earth, as 'leaning dem'.

I think the explanation might be that w.va, oklahoma, and the old confederacy all have strong local 'democratic' parties at the state level, which are fairly conservative (not as conservative as the local republican parties!) and popular, but are far from the us dem mainstream. And this poll analysis was about party affiliation.

People right now are waaaay overstating the degree of repub collapse. It is dangerous. They are by no means whipped. Progressive triumphalism be damned. Frankly, I think as far as the voting population of this country goes, it is still a basically center-right populace, at least in comparison to the rest of the industrialized world. We have yet to move the middle decisively leftwards, in even the slightest degree. Everything is still to be done.



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