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Sabato’s Crystal Ball: NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS
This week, the Crystal Ball publishes another installment in our intermittent series of observations on the 2008 campaign and the politics of the day. We offer these musings as a supplement to our usual essays focusing on one subject, which will still appear regularly. Jefferson aficionados will find the title familiar, and they know he penned just one book in his lifetime, Notes on the State of Virginia. As a salute to the man from Monticello, here are a few more modern tidbits, including some thoughts on the 2008 contest to pick Jefferson’s White House successor.
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9 Responses to “Sabato’s Crystal Ball: NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS”
[...] Mine Sabato’s Crystal Ball: NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS » This Summary is from an article posted at The Moderate Voice » Domestic and international news [...]
I wonder what all of the political pundits are going to do once the Republican party collapses and there is only one political party. Will analyzing the few open seat elections really generate enough work.
I guess we can look at how political types study elections in Maryland, Mass, of Chicago, places where the general election is a pointless exercise to affirm what already been decided in the primary.
I hope the Democrats move the primaries from January to May once they are the one dominate party.
[...] Clark Sabato’s Crystal Ball: NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS » This Summary is from an article posted at The Moderate Voice » Domestic and international news [...]
The GOP (all too often Dems Lite) will not completely collapse because sooner or later the Dems will overreach, and the Dems continue to carry dirty baggage from liberalism’s errors and wrongful ways of the past. (That’s even if it has made many former Democrats already look less askance at the GOP.) The GOP remains the “other” party, the (often-just-lightweight-Dem) so-called “opposition.”
Don’t forget that despite the Dems’ advantage when it comes to Social Security and health care (a.k.a. “ownership”), people tend to become more conservative as they become not only older but also wiser. Reaction to Democratic overreach, if anything, one day could be more pro-GOP than in 1994. (That’s despite post-1994 GOP corruption in Washington.)
P.S. SD, entitlements are the Dems’ strongest point, but (as after the 1960s-1970s) the taxpaying public, those paying the bills, aren’t all corrupted by and dependent on entitlements.
Also, if you worry more about demographics than the entitlements, the issue isn’t as bleak as you may believe. With Hispanics, for example, things change with time. (Also see “Related Publications” on that page)
I guess we can look at how political types study elections in Maryland, Mass, of Chicago, places where the general election is a pointless exercise to affirm what already been decided in the primary.
SD — you aren’t a closet dinosaur liberal, by any chance, are you? Only dinosaurs actually still believe that liberal Northeasterners define the norms for this nation. That ended by 1970.
The future, which affects how our nation really will be defined, will depend on how people feel in the states now and in the future that are vital and more important, not only economically already, as well as culturally, but politically. That means a shift (as is happening with population and relative importance) south and West, toward the Sunbelt and less liberal states.
Oh, with migration there (as with “spinoff” of many from California elsewhere in the West, and these days beyond the West) you’ll see more liberalism where currently there is less. (And a stronger Democratic Party — consider the effects of not only large white but also large black migration in the eastern USA to the South in the years to come.)
But it’s hardly going to be “New Deal-Great Society stasis except for post-1968 radicalism at times” old-line Cyanide Nation stuff.
The South and West, anti-Northeastern-liberal, are vital and growing. The oldest Rust Belt places are dying, along with (Hemoglobin Nation) Great Plains locales. The Northeast continues to grow, but only pitifully compared to the South and the West. With the Northeast it’s little more than an analogue of “population momentum” — admittedly there are many who don’t want to leave the Northeast (I liked it when I lived there, in Rockville, MD, notorious Montgomery County, despite the political nonsense), but many have left it.
Consider population growth since 1970 or 1980 — that tells you how and where things are headed.
(Related issue: If the federal government were to be relocated, which makes a great deal of sense, to plan for the future and put it near the future center of population in this country, it would be located in Oklahoma City, site of anti-federal-government right-wing terrorism and solid Bible Belt country.)
DLS,
I was using places like Maryland as example of a place with only the Democrats win elections. If you notice, Sabato is in “Virginia where there are still districts that can swing between the two parties. That does not happen in Maryland, Mass, Chicago, etc. In addition, in places like Maryland, once a Democrat wins election, they get to hang around until they decide to leave. and usually never face a competitive opponent again. After a quick look, studying political science and government in such areas are a study in graft, corruption, and empire building.
The growth in the sunbelt is due to Hispanic birthrates and immigration. both of those groups are not going to vote Republican.
The Republicans are not non-competitive in any state wide election north of North Carolina (it used to be Virginia but now that state is safely blue).
Is there any question that someday Texas will be solidly blue as the hispanic population grows adn the middle class whites leave.
Well, there are Democratic and Republican “safe” districts throughout the nation. (This is yet another argument in favor of proportional representation, with Congressional House seats [in states with at least five seats] and state legislative seats treated on an “at-large” basis. An alternative is to redraw district boundaries rationally, using county lines, obvious political or cultural boundaries, and sets of contiguous ZIP code areas and US Census districts.)
As to your characterization, yes, that is true for much of the Northeast and more rotten pockets in the Midwest — it is arrested in time (1950s-1960s) where you have robotic hordes of Democratic voters and politicians whose solution to every problem is to arrogantly raise taxes — their only concession to modernity is that they’re less ambitious and likely to implement all-new programs. They (politicians) treat their little governments as fiefdoms, and yes, there is a huge amount of corrupt behavior (in every sense of the word) and dysfunctionality. I have lived not only in Montgomery County, but also in Upstate New York; the fiefdoms are well-defended (consolidation, to reduce costs and complexity in New York government, is savagely fought), and the word “dysfunctional” routinely is used to refer to Albany.
Symbiotically with this is the attitude of so many people there, who seem to believe it may actually still be 1939 and FDR and the Democrats are not only the only conceptual thing for them, but they wait for the Democrats to tell them what to do (a dependency phenomenon). I’m not sure how much of this is by true choice and how much of it is to retarded development and progress in that part of the country (since 1960 it has been California and the Sunbelt which has been developing and progressing, while the older places have stagnated and in fact declined). How much of the retardation is due to obsolescent, failed old liberal Democratic policies (much indeed is due to this) is anybody’s guess.
It’s the politics and culture (in some ways four decades or more retarded, and often failed, when not degenerate) which is really the issue with such places. (You can see them on the “purple states” map because they’re so blue; Blue Nation really is, in this sense, Cyanide Nation, representing not only brain death but complete death, necrosis, with many communities that have decayed and even fallen apart, in some cases in bankruptcy or receivership, with major exports being people and the jobs that go with them.
The good news is that the modern, progressive, developing areas are far removed from the dinosaur mold.
(purple states map) You can see where the blue “areas” are as well as quite-blue minority spots. You will see that even in the Northeast it is not a single hue but varies depending on location.
No argument about Democratic voting tendencies in Hispanics and immigrants, but California (nor the Southwest) does not define the Sunbelt. In fact, so much growth over the past several years has been from “native” population migration. This is going to continue. Now, you can argue that future relocation of blacks to the South will increase Democratic Party power in the South, but hordes of whites will also relocate to the South, many preferring the GOP (as do many of us, not truly preferring it, but viewing it as a lesser evil or a way to defuse if not punish the Democrats).
Parts of Virginia are still “red,” but yes, Democrats have more power there than before. That portends what may happen elsewhere in the South, though I don’t believe it will make the South “safely” blue.
Oh, yes, I question it. I suggest you go there and see for yourself. Large parts of that state won’t go blue. Particularly the more rural and sparsely populated areas (yes, I know the Dems’ numbers will get better) — if you look at that “purple America” map you’ll see the most rural places (other than where there are heavy minority populations) are the reddest.
One of the biggest political issues nowadays (which is often neglected on this site in favor of mindless Bush-and-Iraq-war-bashing) is health care, and the Des Moines Register today has indicated that the Edwards plan (as would be true with any serious “individual mandate” program, despite any claim that “it’s not a government program,” as Hillary Clinton has said before) will definitely have teeth in it, which reasonable people should expect.
The Register’s article is here. (Wages of non-poor could be garnisheed; children could be enrolled if found to be uninsured at school or at libraries)
It’s actually refreshing to read a report like this compared to today’s criticism of Obama’s plan by Democratic Party hack Paul Krugman at the New York Times. His latest piece of junk comes complete with extremely childish and effete kiddie language, “um,” which in truth deserves what I read described by someone else as follows, about similar people on NPR: “Lisping ‘S’ mandates John Deere hat, flannel shirt, big ol’ belt buckle, black shitkicker boots, jeans with Copenhagen in left hip pocket – and, whack, Whack, WHACK with Louisville Slugger.”