07-23-2018, 01:23 PM
(07-23-2018, 10:13 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I wonder if the states in green in your first map will continue to vote by race. The last 3 elections especially people have been voting in those states by identity politics, and they are dominated by southern whites. If some of them begin to see the folly of voting by race instead of economic interest, then they may swing back Democratic. It's a faint hope, perhaps.
West Virginia has one of the smallest proportions of black people in America. It seceded from Virginia because the Mountain folk had no desire to die to protect the institution of slavery entrenched in eastern Virginia but not in 'western' Virginia. Kentucky has a smaller-than-average percentage of black people. West Virginia went Republican as the once-powerful United Mine Workers union declined as mine seams were worked out -- and Democrats were caught with under-investing in roads, schools, and public health. The other states (Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee) have larger-than-average black populations. That group of states is not a monolith.
The "Mountain South", which used to vote strongly Democratic because Republicans had nothing to offer, went Republican as Republicans played up religious identity. Note that West Virginia and southern Missouri (except for the extreme Southeastern part of Missouri that is more like Mississippi than like any other part of Missouri) are very similar. Missouri was slower to drift R than the other states in green on the top map because it has big chunks of Greater St. Louis and Greater Kansas City, but those parts of the state, as non-growth areas, are becoming less relevant to statewide politics in Missouri. Contrast Georgia, which has the fast-growing Atlanta metro area -- and whose partisan map could easily come to resemble that of Illinois, which is highly R except for the Greater Chicago area. But Greater Chicago is where the people are, and it is firmly D.
The states in green on the top map have problems -- big ones -- poverty and really bad habits (smoking, obesity, and drugs -- and low levels of educational attainment). As I see it. Texas is closer to going Democratic at the statewide level and switching several House seats from R to D than are any of the states in green on the top map. If one ignores Missouri as a bellwether state until 2008. I see all of the states of the arc from Louisiana to West Virginia less likely to vote for a Democrat for President than Texas.
So what about Texas? It has a large Mexican-American population, and a fast-growing Mexican-American electorate. There has never been the enmity toward Mexican-Americans as there has been for blacks at any time in American history. Mexican-Americans do not have the same contempt for education that white fundamentalists have. Positive attitudes toward formal education now favor Democrats about as much as they did Republicans in the 1950s. (Just take a look at my overlay of the Eisenhower and Obama elections). Texas used to be below average in education and public health, but it is below average in smoking and obesity (two things at which one wants to be low), much in contrast to states to the east of Texas. Texas actually attracts transplants from relatively liberal Northern and Western states.
I can imagine every state in green going for Trump in his re-election bid -- but Texas going for the Democrat. It may be ironic, but states that have gone for the Democrat twice (both times for Bill Clinton) beginning in 1992 may be less likely to go Democratic than those that have gone Democratic once (Arizona, Georgia, Montana, North Carolina... and even Indiana!) or Texas.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.