October 05, 2004
Red vs. Blue? Try Blue vs. Gray
By Byron LaMasters
The Kerry "Dog Hunters" versus the Swift Vets has been one subtext of the 2004 campaign in which it often appears as if, even after thirty years, we are refighting the Vietnam war. Well, Glen Smith offers us another subtext. Forget Vietnam, we're refighting the Civil War. There's quite a bit of evidence to suggest it without looking any further than the 2000 election results. In 2000, Bush carried all eleven Confederate States. Meanwhile, Al Gore carried 17 of 23 Union states (three of Bush's six Union states were border states - Missouri, Kentucky and West Virginia). In fact, Al Gore only carried three non-Union states - Washington, New Mexico and Hawaii. What to make of it? Well, the easy answer is that Democrats are the party of progress, and Republicans are the party that has used every social issue in the past generation to rally the racists and bigots to their side. Well, that's one way of looking at it. Glen Smith extrapolates on the topic a little further.
Posted by Byron LaMasters at October 5, 2004 04:58 PM
| TrackBack
Byron, I am inclined to disagree with this analysis.
Look, the Republicans are the party of cheap land and cheap labor. They believe in waging war on the cheap. They believe in paying for government services on the cheap. They are the cheap-skate party.
The states that Bush did the best in were not Confederate states. They were states like Utah and Alaska. The common thread is that Bush does well in states where there's more land than people, with the exceptions really of Texas and Florida, and Texas and Florida are only fairly recent entrants into the "cosmopolitan" club. Of course Gore won Iowa, but just barely.
