the blue revolution: Abandoning The Principles

Monday, November 08, 2004

Abandoning The Principles

I think a lot of us have been staring at those red-blue maps, or purple maps (via Cosmic Log), or whatever for way too long. What I haven't noticed, though, is talk about the economic correlation between personal income and voter preference. From the exit polls (on which I still have my doubts), the numbers are pretty obvious (and standard): you're more likely to vote Bush if your income is high, and vice versa for Kerry. So it's sorta shocking that ultra-partisan Democrats are abandoning their own principles of economic equity for the sake of political gains that will probably never materialize:

Lawrence O'Donnell (I believe this is the Larry that talked on McLaughlin), said the "blue states" should over the next 20 years seriously consider seceding from the union, because the red states are welfare recipients without supporting the federal government.

And now the Democrats talk against redistributionism? I'm in awe. What's particularly interesting is that this sentiment comes from the fact that the states with higher per capita income voted Kerry, although the Bush voters are the ones with higher personal incomes. The following map shows exactly how "Kerrystan" would carve off the parts of the country with the highest per capita income (2001 data: reds and browns are rich, greens are poor).

What's more intriguing is that, when compared to the county-by-county map, the parts of the country within the red states that went for Kerry are amongst the lowest per capita income in the country, including along the Mississippi (south of Missouri and Kentucky), central New Mexico and the southern tip of Texas.

Now I'm not trying to teach Democrats how to do their job, but it would seem to me that the idea of Blue state secession is not only nutty and impossible, it represents a complete abandonment of their long-held beliefs on economic distribution in society. To borrow that overused term from the Left, it looks like economic apartheid. Now I'm not totally new to this idea of ill-thought-out calls for separation (by "blue provinces", incidentally) after electoral defeat. Thankfully, cooler heads seemed to have prevailed here in Canada as the talk died down and we bitch about health care as usual.

At least in Canada there's some history to this sort of talk. Amongst the American Left, separatist sentiments seem to have been spurred upon by nothing more than a personal hatred towards President Bush, and by inference, those who support him. While I am not terribly worried about the territorial integrity of the United States at this time, the extremely personal feelings motivating this discussion, which have overwhelmed all other sense of priorities in these people, is very unhealthy for the future of the nation. It is possible to have a rational discourse over the prevalent issues of the day. It isn't possible to debate whether the President is the spawn of Hitler and an ape.

# posted by Kelvin : 9:10 p.m.. Comments: 1

Comments:

Fine, let Kerrystan leave. It's the red states that feed the country and fight this countries wars.

As they say, don't let the door hit you in the ass...

But seriously, this red/blue stuff is nonsense. Most states were very close with Bush winning the majority of them giving us that ominous looking red swath thru the middle of the country. Much a do about nothing.

Also, the people(indiduals) who always threaten to leave after an election never do.

# posted by