[vannrox]

I disagree with them, and are actually horried if their conclusions are correct. But I personally believe the opposite to what they state is occurring. I believe that the term that they shoulbe be using is "Libertarian" rather than "Progressive Centralist".

In other points of consideration, I scanned this using an OCR reader. I corrected as best I could some of the OCR errors, but it is possible that some may have slipped through.

Finally, I think that their last line was most note worthy and comment worthy. What do you think?

[jdege]

They think that the tech workers are core Democratic voters?

That's a small thread to pin your hopes on.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Maybe I missed it, but nowhere in the article does the author touch on what the impact of massive third world immigration, who mostly for democrats is having on the electorate nationwide. Without it, the shift to conservatism and Republican control, primarily in the South and West would probably be even more complete.

[Defiant]

Is that ideopolis, or idiotopolis?

[onedoug]

As most Americans don't think, this is probably true.

[AZLiberty]

This was flawed from the first sentence:

Earlier this summer, as the economy slowed and the winds of scandal swept through Washington and Wall Street, it looked likely that the Democrats would win big in November. But the two month long debate over war with Iraq, initiated and orchestrated by the Bush administration, may have blunted this outcome.

This was the Democrats' dream, but Iraq wasn't the primary factor. None of the Democrat trial balloons gained traction (to badly mix metaphors). The voters just didn't care about any of the issues they raised, and when they tried to stir up scandal, more of it stuck to them than to the Republicans.

The Democrats will be surprised at how badly they do on November 5th.

[struwwelpeter]

At least they got the colors right (red = commie).

[Consort]

Anagram
Ideopolis = oops, I lied.

[Z in Oregon]

Intriguing article. I've always said that the Republican Party needs to work harder for the vote of conservative men, and stop pandering to liberal women. The Republican Party fails when it tries to be The "Democrat Lite" Party.

[okie01]

"A quarter or so of the jobs in Austin, Texas, Raleigh-Durham, Boston, or San Francisco are held by these kinds of workers..."

The authors cite these four "ideopolii" as representative of their coming electoral revolution.

They are, indeed, high-tech centers. But what were they before they became high-tech centers? Hmmmmmmm?

Boston and San Francisco have always been bastions of the left. Austin and Raleigh-Durham are also traditional liberal hotbeds of academe and government workers.

In other words, these "ideopolii" are liberal now...because they've always been liberal.

The authors have mounted a very selective survey, it seems to me, that tends to prove what they already want so desperately to believe.

[ffrancone]

It may help the dems temporarily. But as soon as they grab power, they will (again) lurch to the left, destroy the economy and rip our national defenses apart. This will result in a new republican majority.

Dems are incapable of pretending to be moderate when they actually have power. If they were really moderates, they would not be Democrats.

[Let's Roll]

Not without election fraud it won't, which is why they are such masters at it - election fraud.

[The Right Stuff]

Where's the MegaBarf Alert?

[Torie]

The problem with all this is that it assumes that the issues that remain salient will not change. I suspect that cultural issues will fade over time, and this "Emerging Democrat Majority" paradigm will collapse. In the end, politics for the long distance runner is about the efficacy of government, facilitiating economic vitality, where it intrudes and where it doesn't, and the degree of redistribution of wealth. Plus it is about style. Bush had the wrong style for highly educated and upscale northern suburbs.

[Holden Magroin]

Third World immigration is the reason Republicans are losing. Those liberal techies aren't having kids (they keep women from moving up the corporate ladder), so they won't provide many votes in the future.

[glc1173@aol.com]

Bull. Nonminority women aren't part of any "new Democratic majority" outside long-commie Blue Nation states. Bush won heavily-black Red Nation states like here in North Carolina by margins so high that it's mathematically obvious he won the entire nonminority female vote.

[x]

Serious font size crisis.

Affluent areas on the coasts swung towards Clinton and Gore. So did outlying cities and university towns in the Middle West with the same make-up. And "verbalizers" or "symbol manipulators" have shown a preference for Democrats. But I don't think it represents technologists swinging to the Democrats. It's rather the affluent decadence that accompanied the late 90s boom. In other words, it was the apparent prosperity of the time and all of the perks and privileges that high-flying dot.coms and start-ups were getting that swung the vote strongly Gore's way. When you understand that every tech worker or manager or director may be married to a Democrat or spend his or her wad on the decadent pleasures of a high flying era, you can see how politics in New Hampshire or Northern Virginia (already full of Government workers) or Silicon Valley may have changed.

A Democrat who can win over these people may win elections (though he'll lose votes in key industrial or mining states like KY, PA, WV or OH). But not every Democrat will be able to do so.

The old industrial and new high tech economies have different ways of thinking of society and the individual. So they'll swing different ways -- so long as old economy districts remain industrial. When welfare becomes the main industry, they may change their votes and a new alignment may occur. But it's by no means clear that high tech is tied to liberals and democrats or that high tech will always be a high flyer. Basically, in 2000, they were getting all they wanted and weren't under pressure or threatened by government, so they felt free to vote for the incumbent Democrats who courted them. That won't always be the case.

[ChuxsterS]

Earlier this summer, as the economy slowed and the winds of...

I think it's very telling that the very first words of this article start in on a little Democrat historical revisionism. The economy slowed in the summer of 2000, when their man was still in the White House. This summer, the economy was recovering (albeit with less than hoped-for vigor).

[Nick Danger]

There's a lot of wishful thinking here, by a somewhat idealistic leftist idiot who at least knows how to lie with statistics. He's taken something that is happening -- migrations associated with the move toward a more knowledge-based economy -- and tried to turn it into a wet dream for Democrats. As an exercise in polemic, it's somewhat clever, but if the author believes it himself he's dumber than a rock.

If you take a compass, and put the pin in the center of any inner city full of core Democrat voters, and then adjust the compass to draw a circle around the largest area in which you will still find a Democratic majority, you will have his "ideopolis." All this guy has done is draw some circles around different cities than a guy from Boston is used to hearing about. "Houston" didn't used to be on the radar if you were from Boston... real cities were places like Pittsburg and Philadelphia. When Phoenix got an NFL team, he probably went into shock. That people might be moving to places like this probably came as a revelation to him, which is why he thinks he's discovered something new.

The hidden assumption in this guy's "Ideopolii" is that Democrats can move from one city to another, without reducing the number of Democrats left behind. In his formulation, the "growing areas" get all these new Democrats from the Fourth Dimension. None of them ever leave where they are; new ones just show up someplace else. Soon the entire country will be covered with Democrats.

It is true that 2+2=5, for sufficiently large values of 2. However, no one has ever actually seen this happen in the real world. Boston may be home to MIT, but I suspect this guy didn't go there. Someone who can add and subtract would have noticed that every time an aging hippy moves from Minneapolis to Boulder, Colorado gains a liberal voter. But Minnesota loses one.

[aruanan]

More like Idiotopolis.

[LS]

I think there is a spelling error. It is "Idiotopolis."