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Both Kevin Marks and Marijo Cook point out, in comments below, that there are lots of "blue" voters in red states and vice versa. Kevin writes: "If you look at CNN's county by county maps, you see that each state is intermingled red and blue blotches, with lots of pallid mixed counties. Most states were close."
Well, yes. But our system, until it is reformed, remains a state-by-state, winner-take-all model. So that recurring election-to-election patterns of majorities, even when they are small majorities, have significant and persistent political meaning. "Red states" are effectively "red," even if they have very substantial "blue" minorities, as long as they consistently hand their electoral votes over to a "red" candidate. From the candidate's point of view, that's all that matters.
Sure, it's unfair to make assumptions about individuals within the particular states -- each of whom is, in any case, a complex bundle of beliefs and thoughts despite the simplicity of an "either/or" ballot choice. We're divided across the nation; we're divided within our states; we're divided in our cities and counties and our neighborhoods; and often we're divided within ourselves.
That's all interesting, but the only level of division that matters in presidential elections, the only unit whose behavior matters, is the state -- that's how the Constitution's written. And so generalizing about the behavior of states, and seeing patterns across the map that recur from election to election, is what the art of political alignments is all about. There were Republicans in the old Democratic "Solid South," too. But it took the divisions of the civil rights movement and Nixon's "southern strategy" to build a Republican majority in the south. That's called realignment.
Karl Rove took the fruit of that realignment, wedded it to the burgeoning numbers of Bible-Belt style fundamentalist voters, and forged a majority. That was smart. Democrats need to be equally smart and think creatively about how to shift a few states into their column by turning their minorities in those states into majorities. Until and unless the Electoral College is reformed or abolished, this is the fundamental mechanism of presidential politics in America -- and that's why the whole "red vs. blue" map, however over-simplified it might be in terms of the panorama of human individuals, remains a powerful model for presidential politics.
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I'm sitting here waiting to watch Kerry's concession speech. I'm going to jot down some thoughts before wandering out onto the Net and checking the pulse of the rest of the universe.
First thought: On NPR this morning they were talking about Bush now claiming a "mandate," though it was unclear for what. It seems to me that this sort of result for an incumbent -- a squeaker of an electoral college win based on a thin margin in Ohio, and a 51-49 popular vote win -- is only viewable as a "mandate" if you apply the same scale that judged the even thinner Bush win in 2000 as a mandate. That scale, of course, is exactly what Bush and Cheney applied.
Bush did better this time around, and those of us who dislike him and his policies have to deal with that. But there is still just about half of this country that opposes him and what he stands for. We're Americans, too. We have jobs and kids and beliefs and values, and we're not going away.
What's disturbing is how clearly split the country is geographically. The red/blue split first noticed in 2000 looks less like an anomaly of a tight election and more like a long-term alignment of the American people: The coasts, the Northeast, the Midwest -- almost anywhere that people are gathered in big cities -- for the Democrats; the West and the South for the Republicans. The last time the nation faced this kind of split, in the mid-19th century, we ended up shooting one another. I don't think we face an actual civil war this time around, thankfully, but we do face something like its cultural and political equivalent.
So let's remember that we've just lost a big battle, and that hurts, but it's not the end. Richard Nixon won a gigantic landslide in 1972 and was out of office two years later. Ronald Reagan swept the board in 1984 but we survived and regrouped and recaptured the White House in the 90s.
The good news is that the country's split still leaves the Democrats within a stone's throw of winning an election. The bad news is, we couldn't win it -- even with a stagnant economy and Americans dying abroad in an ill-conceived war. Now the important thing to do is figure out why, and learn from our mistakes.
Bonus link: Sid Blumenthal's reflections on the dark fears that fueled the Bush victory.
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Well, it's been a disappointing night so far, and it appears that the electoral vote is simply going to hang on Ohio, and the Ohio Secretary of State has said, on several different networks, that those votes aren't going to be counted for 11 days.
So it seems like a reasonable time to go to bed.
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