| The Red State/Blue State Blarney
Nothing epitomizes the Versailles polarization myth better than the code of "Red States/Blue States." And, of course, we cannot mention the formulation without also mentioning David Broooks's influential article in The Atlantic, "One Nation, Slightly Divisible" [subscription required), and the classic takedown thereof, by Sasha Issenberg, "Boo-Boos in Paradise", which includes these fine paragraphs, indicative of, you know, actual reporting:
In January, I made my own trip to Franklin County, 175 miles southwest of Philadelphia, with a simple goal: I wanted to see where David Brooks comes up with this stuff. One of the first places I passed was Greencastle Coffee Roasters, which has more than 200 kinds of coffee, and a well-stocked South Asian grocery in the back with a product range hard to find in some large coastal cities: 20-pound bags of jasmine rice, cans of Thai fermented mustard greens, a freezer with lemongrass stalks and kaffir-lime leaves. The owner, Charles Rake, told me that there was, until a few years back, a Thai restaurant in Chambersburg, run by a woman who now does catering. "She's the best Thai cook I know on Planet Earth," Rake said. "And I've been to Thailand."
I stopped at Blockbuster, where the dvd of Annie Hall was checked out. I went to the counter to see how Scott, the clerk, thought it compared to Allen's other work. "It's funny," said Scott. "What's the funny one? Yeah, Annie Hall, that's the one where he dates everyone -- it's funny."
"In Montgomery County we have Saks Fifth Avenue, Cartier, Anthropologie, Brooks Brothers. In Franklin County they have Dollar General and Value City, along with a plethora of secondhand stores," Brooks wrote. In fact, while Franklin has 14 stores with the word "dollar" in their name -- plus one Value City -- Montgomery County, Maryland, has 34, including one that's within walking distance of an Anthropologie in Rockville.
It gets worse:
As I made my journey, it became increasingly hard to believe that Brooks ever left his home. "On my journeys to Franklin County, I set a goal: I was going to spend $20 on a restaurant meal. But although I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu -- steak au jus, 'slippery beef pot pie,' or whatever -- I always failed. I began asking people to direct me to the most-expensive places in town. They would send me to Red Lobster or Applebee's," he wrote. "I'd scan the menu and realize that I'd been beaten once again. I went through great vats of chipped beef and 'seafood delight' trying to drop $20. I waded through enough surf-and-turfs and enough creamed corn to last a lifetime. I could not do it."
Taking Brooks's cue, I lunched at the Chambersburg Red Lobster and quickly realized that he could not have waded through much surf-and-turf at all. The "Steak and Lobster" combination with grilled center-cut New York strip is the most expensive thing on the menu. It costs $28.75. "Most of our checks are over $20," said Becka, my waitress. "There are a lot of ways to spend over $20."
The easiest way to spend over $20 on a meal in Franklin County is to visit the Mercersburg Inn, which boasts "turn-of-the-century elegance." I had a $50 prix-fixe dinner, with an entrée of veal medallions, served with a lump-crab and artichoke tower, wild-rice pilaf and a sage-caper-cream sauce. Afterward, I asked the inn's proprietors, Walt and Sandy Filkowski, if they had seen Brooks's article. They laughed. After it was published in the Atlantic, the nearby Mercersburg Academy boarding school invited Brooks as part of its speaker series. He spent the night at the inn. "For breakfast I made a goat-cheese-and-sun-dried-tomato tart," Sandy said. "He said he just wanted scrambled eggs."
And people are still repeating that Brooksian nonsense.
Where Have All The Red States Gone?
But that was before the Bush Administration went so far off the tracks that even their sychophantic press corps couldn't save them. In other words, before the Spring and Summer of 2005, before Terri Schiavo, Cindy Sheehan and Hurricane Katrina were through with him.
In part of a diary series in November, 2005, Chris wrote "Current Public Opinion Myths, Part Two" in which he said:
Of course, the notion that both parties are to blame for the existing polarizing in America is nonsense. The first, and perhaps most obvious, reason that Democrats and Republicans are not engaging in an equal amount of polarization comes from the fact that polarization and base turnout was the main strategy in the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, while it most certainly was not the strategy for Democrats in 2004....
He went on to offer documentary support, then turned to another line of argument, drawing on the data chart from Off-Center that I presented in the pervious diary. He then summarized:
So, Republicans are actively engaging in a base turnout / polarization strategy, and Democrats are not. Republicans activists are pushing their party much further to the right than are Democratic activists, who are actually pushing the party ever so slightly back toward the center (at least as of 2002). What is the result of all this? Republicans have pulled away from Independents entirely. Now, in all fifty states, Democrats are closer to Independents. In most cases, they are closer by wide margins:
He then linked back to another diary he had written on August 17, 2005, two weeks before Katrina, "Democrats Closer To Independents In All Fifty States"
Here is an eye-opening fact about the Survey USA 50-state tracking released today: in every single state, Independent approval of Bush was closer to Democratic approval of Bush than Independent approval of Bush was to Republican approval of Bush. That was the case in every state. Fifty out of fifty. Massachusetts and Utah. California and Alabama. New York and Idaho. In every single state in the country, Independents were more in line with Democrats than they were with Republicans.
In fact, in thirty-three states, the difference between Democratic approval of Bush and Independent approval of Bush was less than half the difference between Republicans and Independents. In twelve states, the difference was three times as great. Nationwide, Democrats were more than 25 points closer to Independents than were Republicans. The enormous gaps are not just in the Kerry states either, as you can see on this map:
(Yellow states = Independents less than two times closer to Democrats; Light blue = Independents more than two times closer to Democrats; Dark blue = Independents more than three times closer to Democrats; Black = Independents more than four times closer to Democrats)
There isn't a single corner of this nation where Democrats are not more in line with Independents than Republicans. That's a fact. That's fifty-state potential. That's a tidal wave.
Indeed, it was a tidal wave, and there every reason to believe that things haven't changed very much, beyond some severe disappointment with the failure of Democratic leadership in opposition.
And that's political geography, folks! All that hidden purple you see here:
But not here:
just itching to come out.... and turn itself blue. |
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