Kermit the Frog Talks Politics

[subplotkudzu]

As promised, here's the next round of my political thoughts.

Some time ago Cambias and I were talking politics and upon hearing the GOTV strategy of trying to politically engage people in the supposedly "safe" areas so as to prevent your losses there from ovewhelming your wins in the areas that support you he indicated that he thought this was a really good idea. I agree. Not just from a "here's how you win" stance, or a "hey, that's completely legal" stace, but such mobilization prevents that polarization of people that I discussed earlier - the Big Sort as it's called. We all do better as citizens when we have to actually engage the people we disagree with in person as people rather than just their worst selves over the internet or the straw men we construct for ourselves.

So I get frustrated with the "red state/blue state" iconography - it only makes sense in relation to electoral votes being awarded on a winner take all basis, and it serves as an artificial wedge between "red" and "blue". So as an experiment I took the voting patterns in this election (the % of Democratic presidental vote in a state as of today from CNN.com) and broke that down into the entire spectrum - a Rainbow Connection of the USA. I'm a product of the old school, so I included Indigo. I do that. In the name of the preceived partisan differences I slotted the extra percentage point into Red (Highest Republican %) and Violet (Highest Democratic %), with everyone other color getting 14% of the vote.

Here's the breakdown:
Red (1-15% Democratic votes): 0 states

Orange (16-29% Dem ): 0 states

Yellow (30-43% Dem): 14 states - Utah, Oklahoma, Alaska, Idaho, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee, Mississippi, West Virginia.

Green (44-57% Dem): 24 states - Texas, Arizona, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Georgia, Montana, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon

Blue (58 to 71% Dem): 11 States - Maine, Washington, Connecticut, California, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont,

Indigo (72-85% Dem): 1 state - Hawaii (and I strongly suspect favorite son status for Obama moved this up a color)

Violet (86-100% Dem): 1 district - Washington DC

Some observations:

1) There aren't any Red States or even Orange States, the one Indigo state is highly suspect and the one Violet area has a governance pattern that has been basically messed up for decades. One party rule does that, and DC voted 93% Democratic this year.

2) We're a Green Country, with a high plurality of our states falling into a 14% voting difference in the middle. (If I shift things to put those two extra percents from the ends into the center then Green captures 28 states.) For all the Red/Blue talk as if it's a vast gulf in most cases it's really not.

3) It's not easy being Green. In order to make our Green-ness work we have to actually engage our neighbors who disagree with us. That's hard. it's much more comfortable to stick with the people we know are on our side in all arguments, or to fly under the radar rather than start an unpleasant discussion over coffee.

So my advice to you is to go Green this week and go actually talk to someone from the other party about politics. In person, in a polite, civil tone. You might be surprised, but even if you aren't you'll at least be a little better informed.

I'll have one more round of this in the next few days - what I'd like to see out of the Republican party's current internal discussion - and then I'll be off politics for a bit. Maybe.

I can stop any time I want.

Comments

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

There may not be red or blue states, but there do seem to be counties. To me it looks like urban v. rural, as it has been since we had cities.

[thecoughlin.livejournal.com]

I would sort of agree, except that over 50% of America lives in the middle ground between cities and urban -- and it was a percetage shift of less than 6% of the voters in that demographic that really tipped the scales......

Basically, it was middle class and upper middle class voters deciding they couldn't chance a continuation of the last 8 years Economics......... this happened in several rural counties as well, particularly in VA.

When you really dig in, the "white working class" that Hillary carried in the primary seemed more willing to trust a son of a single parent then the husband of an heiress.

And a lot of the Republican base, that didn't care for Obama, just didn't seem passionate enough AGAINST him for FOR McCain to get out and vote. It was an election of 2% -- 2% more Dems deciding to vote, 2% less Republicans, and the Independents fall where they may....

But then....I've been wrong before. A lot.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Virgina is a weird case from what I've seen (and Chadu can speak more to this as he lives there). The corner of the state near DC has become strongly Democratic, and that is spreading into the rest of the state. The Democrats have won the governorship twice running, senate seats and more and more house seats. The response of the VA Republican party has been to double down, claiming that they're losing votes not because they are making unpopular policy arguments but because they aren't making those arguments forecfully enough - if only they were more strongly for tax cuts, against abortion and against Gay marriage people would flock back to them. And so they put forward more and more extreme candidates and lose again.

This specifically played out in their senate primary, where they changed the rules to prevent a moderate Republican from winning the primary over a more rightward one. And lost. This reminds me a lot of how some Democrats in the 80s decided that if only the American people were _smarter_ they would naturally vote for Democrats. It's not that the Dems were bad at making policy arguments or putting forward unpopular policies, but that people were stupid. There's a segment of the Republican party who are doing the same thing today, replacing the idea of 'intelligence' with 'morality' and 'patrotism'. You don't win by telling everyone who lacks your ideological purity that they are stupid, immoral or traitors.

As for the 2% in the margins, the Obama camp really did do a stellar job of making the pie bigger by enrolling more voters. I suggest you go to fivethirtyeight.com and read Sean Quinn's posts under the "on the road" tag, since all I'd be doing is paraphrasing him. Or take a look at the quotes from the political leaders in Indiana, who werre thrilled that the Democratic party hadn't just written off the state again.

My hope is that both sides keep doing this, since even the most reliably Republican or democratic parts of the country still have opposition voters who make up 1/3 to 2/5ths of the electorate. We have to stop self-sorting ourselves with ideas of ideological purity, especially when no areas as are pure as people like to think.

[thecoughlin.livejournal.com]

I have a friend in VA that felt the same way as the spokeman from IN....and felt enfranchised for the first time in years.

If nothing else, perhaps we need someone to start a grass roots Pragmatist party. It certainly would enliven the conversations and the grass roots portions of the campaigns.

Yours (and Sean's) points on what the Republican's did badly, amusingly was probably best said by the 3-time Miss Virginia quoted in his blog:


"What offended me and made me sad about those comments," said Glakas, a resident for many years in northern Virginia, "is that I've been to every county, every part of this state. What's best about Virginia is its diversity. The people, the geography. We have every class, every race, an amazing immigrant population... Virginia is the birthplace of America. To say that part of Virginia is not part of the real America is just offensive."


Maybe the watershed point highlighted in this election year is that everyone needs invited to the table for dialog -- it it is a lesson we carry to years other than this one, the real winners in this election were the American People.