The RNC’s Two Americas: Small towns vs. big cities

It's an interesting campaign strategy, and one aspect of it is clearly in the mold of Rove, Bush, et al - that being it's divisive nature, which can be contrasted to the Obama campaign's appeal to unity. There is a critically important (and obvious) message in that difference, and the question each of us must ask ourselves is: Do we believe in "divide and conquer" or "united we stand, divided we fall"? The republican insistence on it's failed philosophy of end justifying means is tearing this country apart. It begs the question of whether or not the R base has even been paying attention these past several years, or blindly cheering and running interference for their "party". And by the way, I grew up in a small town.

Hey. I know this wasn't your point, but I love the linked paper in which the author provides maps revealing how little pure blue or pure red the nation truly is. It only appears that way when minorities (as in electoral) equal zero in a color coding scheme. Your image is included in this paper.

Linked paper

The 3-d map is much better in that it shows margin of difference. In most of those blue counties, the Republicans are not competative and do not spend a dime. Obama will get at least 1.25 million more vote in Chicago than McCain. The differences in Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philly, NYC, DC, will exceed the 100K mark. Yet, there are few places where the Repubicans exceed the Democrats by more than 100K votes (Phoenix, Orange County, Dallas).

The 3-d map shows the demographic avalanche that will eventually bury the Repubicans. A good rule of thumb is that any county where less than 50% of the children in public school are white is a swing county and where the public schools are less than 40% white is a lock for the Democrats.

Nice to see you embrace the idea that diversity will favor the party with the better message, and as much as I would wish for that "avalanche", I'm afraid it's a much exaggerated prediction.

JS - you don't think that the real Obama strategy is to take all the blue cities and states, build an insurmountable lead, and ignore the red and small towns? I haven't heard much from him that is not directed straight at the left core.

Then perhaps you're not listening closely enough. I travelled about 400 miles this weekend through the Michigan countryside (think rural) and saw at least as many Obama yard signs as I did McCain signs.

The start of this thread is highly superficial, stereotypical and wishful, and off the mark. This nation is now a mainly _suburban_ nation. Older central cities are mainly Democratic (and a number of college towns, which help the Dems but aren't large enough to be dominant), but they have lost their importance except as mere totals of numbers for decades, and they often are stagnant and even _declining_ numbers: many inner cities have been losing population. (In the case of the core of the Democratic Party outside the Northeast and West Coast, the industrial belt called for decades the Rust Belt, whole legions of people and jobs have migrated elsewhere. Bear this in mind as you read on.) The rural areas are typically Republican, but far from always, as anyone who has actually lived and traveled throughout this nation, as I have, already knows.

The main objective for attack aside from exploiting economic misery in general across the USA for the Democrats remains what has been paramount since the 1980s in earnest -- for the Democrats effectively to absorb or eat metropolitan areas from the central-city inside and inner-ring suburbs outward. (Call it like a growing tumor if you wish, heh, heh.) On a larger, nation-wide scale, what needs to be done by the Dems is for them to establish themselves in traditionally Red states in the long-growing South and West, as many with more liberal than average politics have migrated to the South and West. (The Great Plains and other smaller regions that have been Red are a smaller-payoff objective, though Obama hasn't neglected these places this year.) Consider the relocation of so many people to the southeastern USA from the Northeast and Midwest for retirement, and how even before retirement, so many black Americans, who are 90+ per cent Democratic and loyally so since FDR (not merely LBJ), are "going home" "back" to the South.

Finally, I'll repeat posting links I've posted before of the more "complex and nuanced" (to better use two words misused so much by lefties) picture that is our nation (in a number of ways).

[NOTE: The following page has links to numerous years, not only 2004.]

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/


[Note cartograms that intentionally distort the shapes as well as colors of states in order to instruct, not to deceive.]

http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~sara/html/mapping/ele...

http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~sara/html/mapping/ele...


http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/

*** BONUS BONUS BONUS BONUS BONUS ***

(Editors, you can remove this part of this posting if [when, as should happen] you start a new thread).

Bush and GOP undermine Obama

"President George W. Bush said he'll withdraw as many as 8,000 troops from Iraq by February and simultaneously send additional forces to Afghanistan. ..."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087...

Michigan is a blue state. Expect a lot of Obama signs there, as well as, say, on Long Island. (There were plenty of Clinton as well as Lazio signs there during her campaign to become Senator and "represent" New York from her springboard position for the Presidency we all knew was why she was seeking it.)

Jspencer,

Considering that Michigan is a blue state that has two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor, I would assume that you would see more Obama signs than McCain signs. That the Republicans think they can win in Michigan shows you delusional they have become.

Diversity favors the Democrats because they favor pandering to non-whites. There is no way that the more conservative party can ever appeal to the non-majority ethnic groups when the non-conservative party is willing to pander. If there was a way that the Republicans could hold onto most of their current voters will attracting Hispanics, they would have done it. However, the cost of each additional black or Hispanic vote for the Republicans is 10 white voters. The Republicans are caught in a demographic trap from which there is no escape (See the amnesty debacle for an example).

Note a gauge of Palin's popularity will be if you see an increase in McCain (now McCain-Palin) signs and stickers, especially if Palin's name is frequently also mentioned.

pacatrue: Thank for the link to the study. I came across a couple of the maps on their own a couple of years ago randomly on the Internets and couldn't find the original source at the time.

Superdestroyer: Michigan is not a guaranteed state for Obama, particularly now that Palin's selection makes many non-liberal voters (some of whom must have been at the speech McCain gave at Warren, that got only pitifully weak applause) now take McCain and his campaign seriously as an alternative (if they push the reform idea). Palin's selection has deflated Obama's strong lead and makes McCain viable in blue states, particularly when people worried about jobs consider what pro- versus anti-business tax and economic policies would mean for those jobs.

(Side note: McCain could strike Obama's class envy and taxation goals by recalling George Bush the Elder's plight when the luxury tax was enacted. Even Democrats began -- because a Republican was in the White House -- to decry the tax because it put people out of work. And if Obama levies new Social Security taxes on higher incomes, will he raise these people's benefits, as he should? Whether he does or not, it won't rescue Social Security, just postpone deficits for a few more years.)

Also,

"Diversity favors the Democrats because they favor pandering to non-whites."

Well, in a more broad sense, the Dems have gone beyond merely the modern welfare state (1930s) and learned to openly and brazenly buy votes with lots of handouts (1960s).

They also perpetuate the myth of the Republicans being the Exclusionary Party, a wealthier white males' "closed club" as I call it (the kind of "exclusive club" conjectured among class warriors and the envious), even lies about "oppression" that go back to the Sixties, as well as more general Sixties sloganeering, the Big Bad Older White Male, what Obama was aiming at when he made remarks about not being like the people we see on the nation's currency.

"They also perpetuate the myth of the Republicans being the Exclusionary Party, a wealthier white males' "closed club" as I call it "

Yes, yes, the 93% white delegate count at last week's RNC... a myth.....

DLS, as usual you burn up a lot of words, perhaps in the hope that sheer quantity will somehow make them more meaningful. Good luck with that.

SD, Michigan had a republican governor (John Engler) for 12 long years until 2003 at which time our current governor inherited a huge mess. Also the VERY partisan MI legislature has been republican. Also John McCain won the 2000 R primary here. The state is considered to be up for grabs, although I have faith reason will prevail.

As far as "pandering to non-whites" goes, that's nonsense. The democrats have more appeal to diverse groups going back to the civil rights era. And all those southern democrats from the 60s? They changed into republicans when they realized their dreams of segregation were collapsing.

Michigan is a key state and the watchword is Reagan Democrats. Palin is Ronald Reagan in a skirt.

Wait for the polls later this week with the Macomb County numbers. You’ll know how they turned out by the shortness of breath in the Obama camp.

Jspencer,

If is hard to argue that the Democrats do not pander to minorities when they just passed a meaningless apology for slavery so that a white jew could win relection in the only district where a white represents a majority black district.

Democrats have supported forced busing, separate and unequal hiring standards, separate and unequal college admission standards, and have even gone to the point of putting quotas for elementary school magnet programs. If you add in 8a set asides and racial gerrymandering compliance with the voting rights act, the Democrats always pander to minorities.

Black voters are not even concerened about open borders and unlimited immigration because they know that the Democrats in the federal government will make put the difference with more pandering.

SC, going back several decades more and more people became convinced democracy and it's advantages were intended to apply to all citizens, including those who had been traditionally and deliberately sidelined. This meant grappling with difficult problems instead of ignoring them as some folks (apparently such as yourself) would have preferred to do.

Jspencer,

How did sorting out applications to the UC-Berkley medical school by race and ethnicity grapple with the problem of slavery. How did having a white wait list, an Asian wait list, and a black wait list differ from having a white water fountain and a black water fountain?

If the Democratic Party in its heyday has decided to stop discrimination, the U.S. would have been much better off than continuing governmetn sponsored bigotry and discrimination.

Also, the the top of the Democratic Party would have shown some leadership instead of sending their kids off to lilly white private schools and living in very expensive, all white neighborhoods, then the Democrats would have some credibility when discussing diversity.

SD, as I said the problems are difficult and the attempted solutions haven't made everyone happy. Count yourself as one. Of course the struggle is ongoing, and new solutions can take the place of old. Get involved if you don't like it.

Of course, people have gotten involved. Virtually everytime a government is sued for having a separate and unequal policy, it loses in court from Bakke to Gratz. About the only things that the courts agree upon is that is a government hides its discrimination well enought, it can continue to discriminate (See Grutter V. Bollinger).

What is odd is that even after Gratz, many universities and even public schools still have separate and unequal admission.

However, in the end, the pandering that the Democrats do toward non-whites and the desire of non-whites to be pander to, means that in the long run, the Democratic Party will be the only relevant political party. There is no way that the Republicans or any other conservative party will ever be able to appeal to the urban Democratic voters.

"Michigan is a key state and the watchword is Reagan Democrats. Palin is Ronald Reagan in a skirt."

I'll ignore J. Spencer's still-tired slogging (sorry if you can't keep up!) and address this -- Michigan.

Yes, it is very swing-y here, and: note that the Big Three, pressing Washington more than ever now for a bailout, know that they have leverage in the form of Michigan Electoral Votes.

Here's the red/blue map with POPULATION not real estate as the primary factor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cartlinearla...