I’ve been hearing a bunch of gloating from those on the other side of the aisle about how they’ve turned certain red states blue. In the narrowest possible sense, that has happened; several states which picked Bush electors in 2004 instead picked Obama electors in 2008.
But the broader implication of the claim, that several states that were once reliably conservative are now reliably liberal, are false. Obama won a large tactical victory at the national level, but he hasn’t changed the strategic landscape of the electoral college. The key aspect of his victory was that he outperformed Kerry’s share of the two-party popular vote by 4.4% (running in a more Democrat-friendly climate, running a much stronger campaign than Kerry, and with an opponent who was running a weaker campaign than Bush). Move 4.4% of the electorate from Obama’s column to McCain’s (an 8.8% swing), and Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Nebraska’s second congressional district turn red again.
Those states may vote blue again in 2012, or they may turn red again. It depends how Obama governs, and on how the outcome of his programs are perceived. In the comments thread of an earlier post, CosmicConservative observed that the Democratic base sees Obama as a liberal firebrand, while much of the middle sees him as a pragmatic moderate. I think he’s right, and if he is, that means Obama will find it very hard to govern while sustaining both the enthusiasm of his base and the support of moderates — his policies will need to break one direction or the other, which risks alienating the other half of the coalition that elected him.
The real problem with the “turning states blue” claim is the core problem with the red state/blue state divide. There are some states that are solidly red, and some that are solidly blue, but most are purple. Every state that switched columns between 2004 and 2008 and quite a few that didn’t are among the purple states. Obama ran a strong campaign, and his campaign staff and volunteers deserve to feel proud of their victory, but they should be honest with themselves about what they’ve accomplished.
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The persistence theory is remarkably tenacious.
Its adherents make a remarkable number of assumptions:Â that all voters are as motivated as they are, that once a voter has voted Democratic they’ll never vote otherwise, that demographic patterns will remain constant, and that particular demographics will always vote the same way.
In the comments thread of an earlier post, CosmicConservative observed that the Democratic base sees Obama as a liberal firebrand, while much of the middle sees him as a pragmatic moderate. I think he’s right, and if he is, that means Obama will find it very hard to govern while sustaining both the enthusiasm of his base and the support of moderates — his policies will need to break one direction or the other, which risks alienating the other half of the coalition that elected him.
He’s gotta go moderate. It’s his only hope of holding onto his Presidency in ’12 and his party holding onto the Congress in ’10 and beyond. Scott Rasmussen has an article in the WSJ today pointing out that voters believed Obama over McCain on who would cut taxes by 3:1 . If he breaks left then he loses that edge (and really it was a close election) and his presidency is a failure.
That is my take on the matter as I try to put an optimistic spin on the new President.
Pretty much correct; there are solidly "red" states, and solidly "blue" states, and there are swing states. Important swing states went Democratic this year. Arguably Republicans deserved to lose at least as much as Democrats deserved to win, and frankly, this is how the system is supposed to work.
At the moment the Democrats have much to be optimistic about, but then, that was absolutely true in 2004 when Republicans won a resounding victory. As many pointed out at the time, including Karl Rove, there are no permanent electoral majorities in American politics.
David Frum (I think) also had one of the more astute observations back then, which is that every President since Truman who’s had a second term had a lousy second term. He predicted Bush’s would be awful. Not bad, actually. Going back and reading what various conservative and liberal pundits were saying just four years ago, or eight, gives one perspective on how the course of political history really flows. True massive-change elections are maybe a once-in-a-generation event. Was that what we saw this year? Signs say "no" to me but hey, we’ll see.
By the way, while I use the metaphor myself so I’m really not being critical of others who do it, but, in general isn’t the "red" vs. "blue" thing a little weird? I guess I like it a little better than just saying a "Republican State" vs. a "Democratic State," because it acknowledges that just because a state that goes one way in an election that state is not purely one party’s or another.
Mostly it seems odd to me I guess because it’s only been around like this for about 8 years, but it’s absolutely ubiquitous. Historically, red has not particularly been a Republican color, nor has blue particularly been a Democratic color. Maybe you saw a little of that here and there but both parties prominently used both colors (along with white), and it was not at all unusual for television broadcasts and newspapers to use blue to represent Republicans and red to represent Democrats, or to even use other colors entirely, like green or something. Somehow it came to pass that the trends all coalesced on just those two colors, each for those specific parties.
I guess it’s one of those things like catch phrases and slang that sort of all by themselves become ubiquitous and then accepted. So maybe it’s not "unusual" so much as "one of those things that just occasionally happens."
I just cannot remember anyone talking this way prior to 2000, and now everybody does it. Remarkable.
Here is an interesting discussion of the red vs. blue terminology:
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/1430/
Apparently the (sadly) late Tim Russert gets a lot of the credit for making this a popular term during the 2000 election, although he himself didn’t claim to be the inventor.
Of course, if Obama reaches Bush level approval ratings, than all the states turned blue will quickly revert back to being red.
However, in a generic democrat vs republican matchup, demographic trends are favoring democrats in several states. And demographic categories, such as race, are far more resistant to switching political support due to poor performance. The black vote will go 90% for democrats regardless of how poor a job they do.
The hispanic vote, which has a solid tradition of going for democrats, will make Nevada and New Mexico states that will lean democratic for the foresable future.
Virginia and Colorado are states democrats should feel optimistic about, but they shouldn’t be taken for granted.
The interesting thing about the "state colors" is that blue used to be the standard Republican color and red was the Democrat color. I remember watching the returns come in when Reagan won in 1980 and the commentators saying "the country’s filling up with blue like a swimming pool".
After 1984, the networks switched colors since red was too suggestive of Communism and the Dems didn’t like it.
foobarista’s last blog post..Political discussions, trust, and logical argument
The problem, of course, is that we don’t have red or blue cities (or even swing cities).
All major American urban centers are dark blue. All normal and natural political ebb and flow has been choked off by Democratic machine politics.
A good guy named Sam Katz almost won the Philadelphia Mayoral race recently, but lost out to the machine. Of course, Rudy and Dick Riordan of LA were recent exceptions to the general rule. Perhaps, Bloomberg too.
If Detroit votes in a Republican as Mayor to provide some "change" to its citizens, I’d be happy to support Obama at the National level.
HB
Nonsense.
Read this exit poll
These districts all (but one) swapped from Republican reps in the House to Democrats, but across the board align themselves with conservative principles.Â
The electorate did not embrace liberalism, progressivism, the hard left, none of it. They voted for "change" and apparently only really cared about the party they were voting for. The fact that the politicians they voted for do not embrace their values was apparently a non-factor.
I would say that Virginia has pretty much swapped, in large part to demographic changes.
Since 2001, Democrats have won the Governor’s mansion twice (Warner and then Kaine), both Senate seats (one with an incredible margin), a handful of once safe Congressional seats for Republicans and now a solid win in the EC. The state used to be reliably Republican.
Even though their margins are similar, Ohio and Florida are better examples of true swing states, because the demographics don’t trend out to favor Dems in any special way and the electorate seems far more open to persuasion. Meanwhile, North Carolina seems like a real outlier. I don’t think another Dem could have or will take it anytime soon.
I expect (cannot find anyone who actually looked at it) that any changes in the urban vote was strongly influenced by the non-white vote.
If the Dems field a white-bread candidate in the future, it is presumptous to anticipate the same voter response.
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