BETTER DEAD THAN RED

It should be familiar. It's one of those red-state/blue-state maps that have been tormenting Democrats, liberals, and progressives since November of 2000. That was the first presidential election in which states that went for the Republican candidate were colored red, and states that went for Democratic candidate were colored blue. As George W. Bush and Al Gore fought for the White House in Florida, "red" and "blue" became metaphors for America's divided electorate. Red vs. Blue--Republican vs. Democrat; conservative vs. liberal; pro-life vs. pro-choice; gun-huggers vs. gun-haters; gay-haters vs. gay-huggers.

This red-state/blue-state map shows the results of 2004's presidential election--red states won by George W. Bush, blue states won by John F. Kerry. But the red-state/blue-state map is misleading. If a Republican presidential candidate takes a slight majority in any given state, the whole state is colored red; if the Democrats take a slight majority, the whole state is colored blue. But painting an entire state one color or the other creates a false impression, an impression that we believe is hampering the Democratic Party's efforts to pull itself out its tailspin.

However, if this same map showed a county-by-county red/blue breakdown, it would provide a clearer picture of the bind Democrats find themselves in. The majority of the blue states--Oregon, Washington, California, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware--are, geographically speaking, not blue states. They are blue cities.

Look at our famously blue West Coast. But for the cities--Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego--the West Coast would be a deep, dark red. The same is true for other nominally blue states. Illinois is almost entirely red--Chicago turns the state blue. Michigan is almost entirely red--its cities turn it blue. And on and on. What tips these states into the blue column? Their urban areas do, their big, populous counties.

It's time for the Democrats to face reality: They are the heart of urban America. If the cities elected our president, if urban voters determined the outcome, John F. Kerry would have won by a landslide.

It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states, too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers.

Never mind civil unions, red Virginia prohibits any contracts between same-sex couples. And Florida bans gays and lesbians from adopting children. Compassionate? Texas allows the death penalty to apply to teenaged criminals and mentally retarded criminals. Dumb? The Sierra Club has reported that Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee squander over half of their federal transportation money on building new roads rather than public transit.

If Democrats and urban residents want to combat the rising tide of red that threatens to swamp and ruin this country, we need a new identity politics, an urban identity politics, one that argues for the cities, uses a rhetoric of urban values, and creates a tribal identity for liberals that's as powerful and attractive as the tribal identity Republicans have created for their constituents. John Kerry won among the highly educated, women, Jews, young people, gays and lesbians, and non-whites. What do all these groups have in common? They choose to live in cities. John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000. He took half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000. The future success of liberalism is tied to winning the cities. An urbanist agenda isn't a recipe for winning the next presidential election--but it may win the Democrats the presidential election in 2012 and create a new Democratic majority.

For Democrats, it's the cities, stupid--not the rural areas, not the prickly, hateful "heartland," but the sane, sensible cities--including the cities trapped in the heartland. Howard Dean had it wrong when he tried to woo the "Pickup Truck with Confederate Flag" vote. That's a waste of time. Again, look at the blue spots in red states like Iowa, Colorado, and New Mexico--there's almost as much blue in those states as there is in Oregon, Washington, and California. And the challenge for the Democrats is not just to organize in the blue areas but to grow them. And to do that, Democrats, liberals, and progressives need to pursue policies that encourage urban growth (mass transit, affordable housing, city services), and Democrats need to openly and aggressively champion urban values. Focus on the cities. The Dems need a tribal identity to combat the white, Christian, rural, and suburban identity that the Republicans have cornered. And it's sitting right there, on every electoral map, staring them in the face: The cities. The urbanites.

We need a new identity politics, one that transcends class, race, sexual orientation, and religion, one that unites people living in cities with each other and with other urbanites in other cities.

Certain distressed liberals and progressives are talking about fleeing to Canada or, better yet, seceding from the Union. We can't literally secede and, let's admit it, we don't really want to live in Canada. It's too cold up there and in our heart-of-hearts, we hate hockey. We can secede emotionally, however, by turning our backs on the heartland. We can focus on our issues, our urban issues, and promote our shared urban values. The Republicans have the federal government--for now. But we've got Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City (Bloomberg is a Republican in name only), and every college town in the country. We're everywhere any sane person wants to be. Let them have the shitholes, the Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas. We'll take Manhattan.

To all those who live in cities--to all those depressed Kerry supporters out there--we say take heart. Clearly we can't control national politics right now--we can barely get a hearing. We can, however, stay engaged in our cities, and make our voices heard in the urban areas we dominate, and make each and every one, to borrow Ronald Reagan's phrase, "a city on a hill." This is not a retreat; it is a long-term strategy for the Democratic Party to cater to and build on its base. To red-state voters, to the rural voters, residents of small, dying towns, and soulless sprawling exburbs, we'll say this: Fuck off. Your issues are no longer our issues. We're going to battle our bleeding-heart instincts and ignore pangs of misplaced empathy. We will no longer concern ourselves with a health care crisis that disproportionately impacts rural areas. Instead we will work toward winning health care one blue state at a time.

When it comes to the environment, our new policy is this: Let the heartland live with the consequences of handing the national government to the rape-and-pillage party. The only time urbanists should concern themselves with the environment is when we are impacted--directly, not spiritually (the depressing awareness that there is no unspoiled wilderness out there doesn't count). Air pollution, for instance: We have a right to meddle. If coal is to be burned, it has to be burned as cleanly as possible so as not to foul the air we all have to breathe. But if West Virginia wants to elect politicians who allow mining companies to lop off the tops off mountains and dump the waste into valleys and streams, thus causing floods that destroy the homes of the yokels who vote for those politicians, it no longer matters to us. Fuck the mountains in West Virginia--send us the power generated by cleanly burned coal, you rubes, and be sure to wear lifejackets to bed.

Wal-Mart is a rapacious corporation that pays sub-poverty-level wages, offers health benefits to its employees that are so expensive few can afford them, and destroys small towns and rural jobs. Liberals in big cities who have never seen the inside of a Wal-Mart spend a lot of time worrying about the impact Wal-Mart is having on the heartland. No more. We will do what we can to keep Wal-Mart out of our cities and, if at all possible, out of our states. We will pass laws mandating a living wage for full-time work, upping the minimum wage for part-time work, and requiring large corporations to either offer health benefits or pay into state- or city-run funds to provide health care for uninsured workers. That will reform Wal-Mart in our blue cities and states or, better yet, keep Wal-Mart out entirely. And when we see something on the front page of the national section of The New York Times about the damage Wal-Mart is doing to the heartland, we will turn the page. Wal-Mart is not an urban issue.

Neither is gun control. Our new position: We'll fight to keep guns off the streets of our cities but the more guns laying around out there in the heartland, the better. Most cities have strong gun-control laws--laws that are, of course, undermined by the fact that our cities aren't walled. Yet. But why should liberals in cities fund organizations that attempt to get trigger locks onto the handguns of NRA members and Bush supporters? If red-state dads aren't concerned enough about their own children to put trigger locks on their own guns, it's not our problem. If a kid in a red state finds his daddy's handgun and blows his head off, we'll feel terrible (we're like that), but we'll try to look on the bright side: At least he won't grow up to vote like his dad.

We won't demand that the federal government impose reasonable fuel-efficiency standards on all cars sold in the United States. We will, however, strive to pass state laws, as California has done, imposing fuel-efficiency standards on cars sold in our states. We officially no longer give a shit when family farms fail. As far as urbanists are concerned, fewer family farms mean fewer rural voters. We will, however, continue to support small organic farmers, as we're willing to pay more for free-range chicken and beef from non-cannibal cows.

We won't concern ourselves if red states restrict choice. We'll just make sure that abortion remains safe and legal in the cities where we live, and the states we control, and when your daughter or sister or mother dies in a botched abortion, we'll try not to feel too awful about it.

In short, we're through with you people. We're going to demand that the Democrats focus on building their party in the cities while at the same time advancing a smart urban-growth agenda that builds the cities themselves. The more attractive we make the cities--politically, aesthetically, socially--the more residents and voters cities will attract, gradually increasing the electoral clout of liberals and progressives. For Democrats, party building and city building is the same thing. We will strive to turn red states blue one big city at a time. And while we build the cities, you can continue to ruin the rest of the country. We're glad you live in areas where guns are more powerful and more plentiful, cars are larger and faster, and people are fatter and slower and dumber. This is not a recipe for repopulating the Great Plains.

And when you look for ways to revive your failing towns and dying rural counties, don't even think about tourism. Who wants to go to small-town America now? You people scare us. We'll island-hop from now on, thank you, spending our time and our money in blue cities. You can starve out there in red America for all we care. Hell, we already give you enough money anyway, you big government leeches. Although you like to complain about "tax-and-spend liberals," guess where that big-government money gets spent: North Dakota, New Mexico, Mississippi, Alaska, West Virginia, Montana, Alabama, South Dakota, Arkansas. These red states top the list of federal spending per dollar of federal taxes paid. And who's paying the most? That's right, you government-handout parasites: blue states. New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, California, New York, Minnesota. We pay the most and receive the least. You've made your choice, red America, and we urban Americans are going to make a different choice. We are going to make Portland--and New York, Chicago, and the rest--a great place to live, a progressive place. To borrow Reagan's phrase again, we will make each of our cities--each and every one--a shining city on a hill. You can have your shitholes.

Another whining rant from a gay metrosexual that demonstrates the paradigm shift that the RATs must accomplish before they can begin winning national elections.

Sorry if already posted, but it didn't show up in the search I did.

Add to that, Carole Simpson of ABC news staff, and a wholly disinterested voice, comparing the Confederate States of America with the Michael Moore Jesusland map, and how they surprisingly broke almost the same as the US red-blue map.

This guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
Which states are red, and which are blue is decided by alternating the color of the incumbant's party every 4 years. Because of the way elections went, it just so happened that Republicans were blue (last time they were red was Ford vs. Carter), until the last two elections. In four years, Republicans should be blue again.

That is unless the media has so entrenched "red states" vs. "blue states". I suspect they will keep the tradition of switching.

Not only is this loser a militant sodomite, but he's the same guy who signed up as a volunteer with the Bauer campaign in Iowa in 2000 and spent his spare time licking doorknobs, phones and keyboards at the headquarters trying to spread the case of flu he came down with.

This by his own admission.

Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country.

Nothing warms my heart like the tolerant left. The way they embrace diversity is inspiring.

Haha, what a rant! These losers are melting down faster than Chernobyl!

First off, the rather liberal use of the "F*** off" phrase tells me all I need to know about their basic spiritual values.

Second, it would be fantastic if urban whiners would shut up and quit trying to meddle in the environment.

Pollution? Big cities are swimming in it, and big cities are the primary generators of it. They need to take a look in the mirror.

Power? From where? I imagine a big wrestler holding some weenie's arm behind their back, twisting it near off, making the person confess. "SAY IT! SAY IT! OIL!!!!", well, that is, unless they want to go nuclear... They want urban, they can park that reactor right in the middle of their big ol' cities.

The urban slum, piled up with bodies of people who complain about "the man", crime-ridden stinking fetid pools of humanity, is an environment of the liberal's making!

The blue urban islands of his archipelago get all of their food, water, and energy from red areas.

Oh, they could import food from overseas, Canada, Cuba, Brazil, but the cost would be terrible.

If he really feels that it is OK for a red state kid to blow his brains out so he won't vote wrong, his feelings may change if the food trucks stopped rolling into his island of perfection, or if the rural people took their water back.

John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000.

Every Republican who values this country had better know that the environmental laws that are driving landowners off their property and back into cities play a key role in consolidating the power of the left.

"F.. the mountains in West Virginia--send us the power generated by cleanly burned coal, you rubes, and be sure to wear lifejackets to bed."
But why send them anything? By turning that guy's argument on him, let them stew in their own juices.

To the extent that a loony bird like this should even be answered, it would not seem to make much demographic sense to build a party based on urban centers. Most of them have declining populations, and if the Dems actually were foolish enough to embrace such an approach, they would be sentencing themselves to perpetual minority status. But it is pleasant to reflect that they have been driven to such extremes, and that unstable people like Savage have been sitting in their attics for two weeks now, curled up into balls, trying to make sense of it all.

Those maps show Christian Conservatives live in the South and tend to vote for conservative politicians. That's it.

The Left tried the racist/slavery angle in 2004 and it didn't stick.

We will pass laws mandating a living wage for full-time work, upping the minimum wage for part-time work, and requiring large corporations to either offer health benefits or pay into state- or city-run funds to provide health care for uninsured workers.

Great, we look forward to all the over-taxed businesses moving to those red states, leaving sick sorry @holes like this one without a job. Oh, btw dumb @ss, you don't want to do business with us, then starve, since we control the food supply - eat concrete dust.

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