Posted on 11/14/2014 4:51:59 AM PST by Kaslin
If you're a political junkie -- or at least if you're a conservative political junkie -- you've probably seen the map. It's a map of the United States showing the congressional districts won by Republicans in red and those won by Democrats in blue.
It looks almost entirely red, except for some pinpoints of blue in major metropolitan areas and a few blue blotches here and there -- in Minnesota, Northern New Mexico and Arizona, Western New England, along the Pacific Coast.
Of course, it's misleading. Congressional districts are of basically equal population, and Democrats tend to roll up big margins in densely populated areas. So while voters have elected at least 244 Republican congressmen and probably will end up with at least 247 -- more than in any election since 1928 -- the map overstates their dominance.
But it does tell us something about the geographic and cultural isolation of the core groups of the Democratic Party: gentry liberals and blacks.
These were the two groups gathered together when Barack Obama had the opportunity to draw the new lines of his state Senate district after the 2000 census. He combined the heavily black South Side of Chicago with Gold Coast gentry liberals north of the Loop.
Together, they provided him with an overwhelmingly Democratic voter base and with access to the upper financial and intellectual reaches of the Democratic Party -- and, in short time, the presidency of the United States.
But blacks and gentry liberals by themselves are not a national majority, as the map suggests. And policies designed to appeal to the Obama Democratic base may be repelling other, larger segments of the electorate. Consider the racial groups surveyed by contemporary political analysts.
1. Black turnout was only slightly down from 2012 to 2014 (from 13 percent to 12 percent of the electorate), and blacks voted 89 percent Democratic. But blacks are not a growing segment of the population, and Democrats will never again win by the margin Obama enjoyed among blacks in 2008 -- 91 points, or 12 points of the entire electorate.
Democrats tried to gin up black turnout with ads about the fatal shooting of black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. But given the facts of the case that have come out so far, that may have hurt more than helped overall.
2. Hispanics represented 8 percent of voters in 2014 and 10 percent in 2012, and those percentages will rise. But they're not unanimously Democratic. They voted 62 percent Democratic in House elections this year, but that figure was buoyed by the nearly 40 percent of Hispanics who voted in heavily Democratic California, New York and New Jersey. Hispanic Democratic percentages were significantly lower elsewhere, including Texas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas and Colorado.
Evidence suggests that gentry liberal causes -- abortion absolutism, gun control and opposition to fracking -- have been repelling rather than attracting Hispanics. Polls also show they're more interested in jobs and education -- and dissatisfied with Democrats' performance -- than in immigration, on which they are miffed at both parties.
3. Asians, 3 percent of the electorate, have been oscillating wildly in exit polls: 73 percent to 26 percent for Obama in 2012, 50 percent to 49 percent for House Republicans in 2014. These may be small and unrepresentative samples. But note that California Asians squelched an attempt by gentry liberals, Hispanics and blacks to overturn the state's voter-imposed ban on racial preferences in higher education.
4. Whites are constantly told they're headed to minority status, but they were still 72 percent of voters in 2012 and 75 percent in 2014 -- and they're increasingly Republican. They voted 59 percent for Mitt Romney, the highest for any Republican presidential candidate except in the 1972 and 1984 landslides, and 60 percent for House Republicans this year.
Analysts who separate Americans into two tidy categories -- white and nonwhite -- assume that the nonwhite category will grow and that whites can't vote any more Republican than they have historically. Presto, a Democratic America.
The first assumption is well-founded. But Hispanics and Asians are not replicating blacks' voting behavior, just as they haven't shared their unique historic heritage. In some states, they're voting more like whites than blacks.
The second assumption may not be true at all. History shows that self-conscious minorities tend to vote cohesively, as blacks have for 150 years and Southern whites did for 90. It's an understandable response to feeling outnumbered and faced with an unappealing agenda.
In that case, Romney's 59 percent or House Republicans' 60 percent among whites may turn out to be more a floor than a ceiling. And that map may become increasingly familiar.
Just like the Progressive fairy tale of “peak oil”. (There’s alot more than they say.)
IMHO
In my opinion America needs badly, to start to create more jobs here in America.
Both parties have sold out to global manufacturing. That was good when it started, and it made a (huge) amount of money for a lot of investors.
The problem is, it has sent America’s manufacturing capability, primarily to a massive communist country which doesn’t even allow Americans to truly own anything.
Additionally, it has caused the GOP to come ever closer to being an obsolete party.
There have been so many American jobs eliminated and sent to China, that the GOP no longer can dominate in elections.
It is not simply that America has changed. America has changed because we have exported too many American jobs.
Someone will eventually truly press for a return of American manufacturing.
Soon, perhaps.
I don’t want the democrats to drive this process. In my opinion that would be the end of America.
The GOP needs to lead this return.
Yet, not one Republican is yet standing up and saying that. Everyone is sold out currently.
Someone in the GOP, stand up for a return of American manufacturing.
Soon.
The really odd part of that map is the obvious lack of blue in St. Louis, MO.
A big purple bruise as red states are infested by Liberals fleeing states they’ve scrooooood-up and Obama’s millions of newly minted illegal citizens signing up to vote.
I went to the TownHall link but don’t see the map. I even disabled AdBlock.
I didn’t see a map either. The article is probably a descriptive article, and no real map.
Well, that’s a disappointment. I was looking forward to seeing our nation awash in the color red with only a few isolated, malignant specks of blue.
I saw the map, and if McSally holds in Tucson it turns a bit redder.
Here is the map to which he refers.
Thank you. But there is still too much blue for my taste.
The New England states should be ONE state with 2 senators instead of 12. They are OVER represented in the senate.
With the union stranglehold and taxes here no one can justly blame corporations for moving jobs overseas.
You want to bring back jobs? A national right to work law is a good first step.
247, if McSally holds on and we win the LA runoffs (seems impossible that we won’t). And I can’t help be pissed it’s not more like 257, many stolen races, several in CA (which should break off and float away).
BTW, RINO Bruce Rauner (pictured in the article) carried every county in Illinois but Cook. AFAIK this is first election in IL History where this split has occurred. Rock Island county elected a Republican state Senator (sadly this was our lone gain in either House of the State Leg) St. Clair county almost did the same (East St. Louis’s James Clayborne, Jr. faced his closest race ever) and did send it’s first Republican to the US House since 1942.
All I am saying is we have now created a massive competitor to America:
China.
China now out-produces America.
And is rapidly gaining strength. All I am saying is many of us, are still locked into fighting the last fight, against American unions. And some of us, are sold out to China, it almost appears.
We need to start paying attention to the next challenge, which is a world dominated by Chinese manufacturing.
America needs to rebuild.
Here.
Bring back jobs.
Sure we need to improve America’s competitiveness, but that does not change the fact we have taken Chinese production too far (in my humble opinion). We have compromised our own country’s manufacturing capacity now, for over one entire generation.
Both parties are now, in complete sell-out.
It is time to start building up American manufacturing once again.
GOP stand up for America.
I hope massive import taxes that screw over consumers aren’t part of your solution.
I am deliberately avoiding suggesting solutions.
However what we are doing now, is simply selling out the future, of the best country in the history of earth.
America needs to re-build.
The GOP needs to lead.
That's not a coincidence. Higher population density drives the demand for bigger government. The higher the density, the higher the demand, which indicates causality. Population density is a more more accurate predictor of general voting behavior than demographics.
More Americans are moving out of high density areas than are moving in. Big gov counters this by importing third world immigrants. They must, else their ponzi schemes implode. Big gov is facing big problems with this plan though: Earth's population is peaking soon, and fewer immigrants are willing to move to a country going down the crapper.
Affordable self-piloting small cars and aircraft will accelerate the outflow of Americans into lower density areas. Higher speed internet decreases the city hub advantage for employment, shopping, socializing, and entertainment. Robotics will dry up jobs for immigrants. Studies of human happiness show that maximum happiness occurs in lower population density areas, never in Democrat voter zones. Crime, drugs, violence, riots, terrorist attacks, HIV and Ebola type diseases, nuclear attacks are primarily city life problems.
” if McSally holds on “
I don’t care if she wins or not. She is a closet RINO, whose biggest contributor is the Chamber of Commerce.
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