So it’s not quite as red and blue as they say, or so summarizes this site with a collection of election maps and cartograms (licensed Creative Commons).
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Thanks, this is way overdue. I was getting a bit frustrated with the way my fellow lefties have been looking at the red/blue maps and pissing away large chunks of their political capital with their campaign to blame everything on “red states.”
As usual, these people who put together the maps and cartograms ignored Hawaii and Alaska. There’s no excuse for this.
I agree, it has amazed me the amount of ridiculous ranting I have seen from my fellow liberals. (Even just the Title of Slates “Why does America hate Democrats?” is misleading and offensive, not to mention completely counterproductive.)
Playing into the stereotypes of “liberal elitists” doesn’t help anyone, except those that think a one party Republican state is a good idea. (and even most Republicans I know think that would be bad)
I’m hardly the only one saying this, we need to find where we lost our core liberal “values” (though that term is getting over used). We need to remind people (secular humanist liberals included) that the core message of the major world religions (including Christianity) is focused mostly on social justice and care for your fellow humans.
I do miss the old small government & low taxes conservatives (who I agreed with on a number of things). These new ones take the worst attirbutes of big government liberalism and mix it with the worst attributes of social conservatives.
There are about a million ways to phrase a 51%-49% win. Bush, of course, likes to say that even Clinton never got that high a percentage. OTOH, Bush has one of the lowest ever percentages of the vote (yes, that means Clinton has lower percentages of the vote as well). Without Perot, Nader, et. al. on the ballot, Presidents used to win with much more than 50% of the popular vote, with few exceptions.
But anybody expecting Bush to move more to the center, missed the first months of 2001. With a larger majority of the Senate, a healthy majority of the House, and 49% of Americans blaming Bush for not agreeing with them, I don’t see Bush acting any less conservative for the near future.
Max,
Fareed Zakaria disagrees with you. http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/articles.html
The Bush team has proven to be a group of pretty smart politicians. They reversed the usual pattern of moderation in a first term to position for a second run. I wouldn’t be shocked if they reversed the second term pattern to moderate themselves in preparation for the next Republican candidate.
The Republicans are a party. The Democrats are a collection of factions. Those of us who are Democrats have to deal with that somehow.
Any ideas?
Oh, and that’s a great title for this item! I’m a bit jealous.
Well, John and adamsj, I think you have valid points. We’ll have to see how things play out.
I remember seeing the cartograms in the news a month or two ago, and the purple map was in my alumni magazine in October. I have been imagining and wishing to see these maps – thanks for sharing!
Kudos to the creators (except for Alaska/Hawai’i – shame, shame).
-John
P.S. And I’m wondering: Why there isn’t a cartogram skewed by _electoral vote_ rather than population? That’s an important comparison – small states have a disproportionate influence under the electoral college system.
-J
I think we need to change the foucs of our dialog. The Bush team maybe smart but they are not conscious and the difference is in orders and not degrees.
I heard Carl Rove on the Russert show on Sunday make a referrence to the 5000 year old human history. These guys are exploiting ignorance. They are pandering to men and woman who still believe human history started 5000 years ago with Adam and Eve.
If we are to progress and evolve we need to educate our populace. The way to do it is by introducing more eveidence and opening the dialog instead of polarizing the dialog.
Given the new map we only need to raise reasonable doubt and win over 10-20% of the border line people, don’t you think?
Well, John, now that I’ve read the rest of the article you linked to, I have to say that much of it mischaracterizes the situation.
For instance:
Of course, the US worked with allies and international institutions (such as the UN) for over ten years while dealing with Iraq. Deciding to start with diplomatic action on Iran and North Korea isn’t a change in policy. It’s the beginning of a paper trail (and the current best hope).
My understanding of North Korea was that Clinton held bilateral talks (and Kerry wanted to do that again). However, the only reason for North Korea to follow a bilateral agreement is out of fear of, dependency on, or respect for the US. Any surprises that North Korea eventually broke the Clinton agreement?
Currently, Bush is working on six-party talks, using pressure from North Korea’s neighbors — including China — to get US goals. That isn’t going to change. And it’s not a change in policy.
And, immediately after the Iraqi invasion, and while the US was having trouble finding WMDs, the UN used US-supplied intelligence to pressue Iran into admitting its nuclear ambitions. Claims that the US has no legitimacy because of Iraq are wildly overstated.
Given the new map we only need to raise reasonable doubt and win over 10-20% of the border line people, don�t you think?
I think that Alan Keyes is a good example of what is going on if you think of him as a trial baloon. 4/10 self-identified republicans voted against Keyes. If you listen carefully to the statements made by Bush and Cheney about gay rights, they are playing to the known supermajority of Americans who don’t care what gay couples do in their own home, but are not quite to the point where they can contemplate gay marriage. I think that Bush knows that the party can’t go too much further towards the Christian right.
Looking at the differences between pecentages is misleading because you can’t gain 1% without taking 1% from someone else. While the absolute difference between the popular vote was 3%, you only needed for 1.5% to switch sides to get a Kerry victory. This wasn’t a popular vote landslide.
In spite of many claims from the right and left, this election did not sound the death-knell for Democrats, at least not yet. I think 2006 is going to be just as important for 2004 and sorry folks, but the Dems need “red state” cities such as Dallas, Denver, St. Louis, Birmingham and Atlanta.
A different type of red/blue state map, based on which ones pay or recieve more from the federal government.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html
I don�t see Bush acting any less conservative for the near future.
interesting comment max lybbert. have you seen bush acting conservative in the past?
conservatives used to be for a balanced budget and limted government. conservatives used to ridicule nation-building as a means of foreign policy and warned of the dangers of “mission creep.” conservatives used to be against large social programs and using the federal government for the re-distribution of wealth.
conservatives used to stand up against communism.
except for one lopsided tax cut, bush has orchestrated the largest expansion of the federal government since roosevelt, created the largest new entitlement program since johnson, run up an annual 1/2 trillion dollar budget deficit, added 10,000 pages to the tax code, handed out farm subsidies that are the envy of french farmers, given the FBI powers to spy on american citizens without cause, repudiated reagan’s position on taiwan and openly pandered to the communist chinese, he’s made nation building the cornerstone of his foreign policy, left every child behind, and created an anti-intellectual following in which conservatives such as barry goldwater and william f. buckley would find themselves totally out of place.
if bush is a conservative, ketchup in water is tomato soup.
oh and one more thing….
true conservatives have a close, loving, intimate, passionate and responsible relationship with distilled spirits.
a true conservative would sooner accept a ride home from a party with ted kennedy than give up alcohol.
now where did we put that bottle……
Without knowing of these efforts, I made a map that uses 7 shades of color (one for each 5-percentage-point range in votes). While not scientifically determined, the colors look good together — especially on a T-shirt.
And yes, this map includes Alaska and Hawaii, although not to scale.
To add to the thinking here, here is a list of the generosity index (amount of charitable giving in relation to amount of income) of the red vs. blue states. Interesting in that the above claim of “liberals” being different by helping others more – doesn’t hold up under examination.
http://www.catalogueforphilanthropy.org/cfp/db/generosity.php?year=2004
(hint: all of the “blue” states are in the bottom 25 states.
Kudos for the “purple” state map, btw.
Three Blind Mice: So if Bush isn’t conservative because of all of these typical “liberal” actions, why do liberals hate him?
This is a long one. Sorry.
Lopsided?
Well, he tried to take credit for the Department of Homeland Security, but didn’t he argue against it for several months?
And isn’t he accused of chronically underfunding programs such as the VA and No Child Left Behind?
Which program? I honestly don’t know what this refers to. I know it’s not the VA.
If you remember, when the Republicans proposed a balanced-budget amendment, the amendment included exceptions for a recession or war. We now have both.
OTOH, Bush has left small-government conservatism behind. Ronald Reagan (who also had trouble balancing budgets) used to say that the most-feared words in English were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Bush’s speech at the Republican Convention clearly overlooked that sentiment.
How long was the tax code before? Actually, yes, I know that he has added more tax credits, exemptions and deductions. He’s reworked the Alternative Minimum Tax to not affect people it’s not supposed to affect. All of that falls under “conservative” in my book.
Are these new subsidies? I really haven’t followed this story much.
My understanding was (1) the FBI always had an intelligence-gathering wing that “spied” on Americans, and (2) while the Patriot Act permits searches without warrants (and searches without immediate notification), however the Constitution still prohibits unreasonable search and seizure, meaning that there is still a need for some sort of cause.
Even before the Patriot Act, the majority of searches took place without warrants (usually with permission, or via looking in windows — the Constitution permits this, but requires that if a warrant is needed under federal law, that warrant can only be obtained with both probable cause and specificity). As federal law, the Patriot Act simply can’t supersede the Constitution.
I’m impressed that somebody could keep China out of Taiwan, get back the spy-plane, and still get China to pressure North Korea, while simultaneously push for tougher sanctions on Castro. Does “pandering to the Chinese” include opening up free trade as a way of undermining the Communist economy?
Well, his policy of dealing with failed states. He isn’t arguing for nation-building in France, no matter how tempting that might be.
For the record, my high school history textbook had examples of campaign posters from the 1900 election, when Republicans touted the Spanish-American War. “Conservative” isn’t a synonym for “isolationist.” There are times conservatives find using military force and nation-building to be useful activities.
With co-sponsorship from Ted Kennedy.
OK, that was low. However, the “No Child Left Behind Act” simply applies MBA-thinking to education. It’s also accused of underfunding, which is definitely not “liberal.”
Anti-intellectual? Because a large percentage of his supporters go to church? Scientists can go to church, they simply can’t explain everything as an act of God.
And religion isn’t anti-intellectual. It’s often forgotten that the earliest universities were religious schools, and that a cornerstone of religious though is thinking for oneself.
I have no relationship with distilled spirits. Does that mean I’m not truly conservative? What about those evangelicals that belong to churches that forbid dancing and drinking?
Three Blind Mice,
I couldn’t have said it any better, so I will just restate what you’ve said:
“except for one lopsided tax cut, bush has orchestrated the largest expansion of the federal government since roosevelt, created the largest new entitlement program since johnson, run up an annual 1/2 trillion dollar budget deficit, added 10,000 pages to the tax code, handed out farm subsidies that are the envy of french farmers, given the FBI powers to spy on american citizens without cause, repudiated reagan�s position on taiwan and openly pandered to the communist chinese, he�s made nation building the cornerstone of his foreign policy, left every child behind, and created an anti-intellectual following in which conservatives such as barry goldwater and william f. buckley would find themselves totally out of place.”
–John, whose thoughts are clouded by a Glenlivet hangover
max lybbert, anti-intellectualism does not refer to religious faith, we didn’t even mention religion in our screed.
anti-intellectualism refers to this president’s ill-informed, non-questioning supporters who accept as truth and fact, what to the rest of us are obvious lies and deceptions.
WMDs in Iraq, for example.
Which program? I honestly don�t know what this refers to. I know it�s not the VA.
it’s that 600 pound gorilla to your left – the perscription drug benefit for senior citizens. it was in all the papers.
As federal law, the Patriot Act simply can�t supersede the Constitution.
well, tell that to yaser hamdi, the US born american citizen held by the federal government for over a year in a military prison without being charged, or provided access to an attorney.
the gulag at guantamano bay – operated in violation of the geneva convention – is another clear violation of american law.
I�m impressed that somebody could keep China out of Taiwan, get back the spy-plane, and still get China to pressure North Korea..
well, that spy plane AND her crew were held for weeks by the chinese until they finished interrogating the crew and taking the plane apart. you might be impressed by that, we were not.
as for keeping china out of taiwan, read what FOX News had to say about secretary powell’s recent trip to china
“Powell’s expectation that Beijing and Taipei will move toward a “peaceful unification” violates the decades-old nuanced US policy of peaceful resolution of differences between Taiwan and China..”
and so on and so forth.
our point is that if half drunk, blind mice like us can see serious reasons to question the “conservative” credentials of herr bush, why can’t the rest of you who call yourselves conservatives do the same?
blind faith may be fine as a basis for religious belief, but blind faith seems to us a very dangerous basis on which to form a political belief.
I’m not the first to say it, but it’s not about Red States vs. Blue States, it’s about urban areas vs. everybody else.
I have no relationship with distilled spirits. Does that mean I�m not truly conservative? What about those evangelicals that belong to churches that forbid dancing and drinking?
sorry max lybbert, but you seem to be confusing puritanism with conservatism.
this may explain why america is so bloody purple.
karl rove might have sent you people an invitation, but we conservatives like our party with plenty of drinking and dancing and smoking and even a wee bit of fornicating.
to a conservative, imbibing alcohol is a family value.
as p j o’rourke explained:
“Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol,
causes the fundamental ills of society.
If we’re looking for the source of our troubles,
we shouldn’t test people for drugs,
we should test them for stupidity,
ignorance, greed and love of power.”
Like most arguments this one will be decided by who is able to frame the question being asked. The argument will be far less important to the outcome.
Presently liberals seem to be flailing around trying to ask “was the election fixed” “did the republicans cheat” “did the public vote for Bush by accident or due to ignorance.” All of that ignores the more critical question that needs to be looked at in earnest.
Is the election process working in its current form and if it is not what needs to be done about it?
In 2000 Bush won the election with less than a majority of the popular vote and with a federal judiciary imposing its will in place of those voters residing in the alledgedly soverign state of Florida. By all accounts that is not an optimal result of the election process.
In 2004 Bush won the election with a clear majority of the popular vote and with 30 of the 50 states supporting him. However, if only 68,000 Ohio residents had voted for Kerry instead of Bush Kerry would have won the election in the face of an opposition candidate that had a clear majority in both states and people. That would have been an even less just result.
The election process is the question that needs to be answered. We need not be concerned with unjustly defeating Bush but rather with having a system where whoever is elected is also the just result of the election.
I can accept the will of the people, even when it is contrary to my own. I did not slash the tires of my republican counterparts because a victory while they were silenced would have been less desirable than a Bush presidency that was fairly acheived.
Lets get back to the question at hand….
Also recommended:
most of the US is red *and* most of the US is blue
created by Jesse James Garrett, via Rebecca Blood:
“There’s a story even the purple map doesn’t tell. My husband decided to take a different look at the Purple map by filtering it into it’s component parts–and as you can see, most of America is red…and most of America is blue.”
three blind mice wrote:
I must be getting a little jumpy.
If there was a battalion of people who believed before the invasion that Iraq didn’t have WMDs, why did they not say so? Why did Clinton say that Iraq had WMD? Why did Kerry and Edwards say that Iraq “without a doubt” had WMD? Why did they spend ten years telling us that America was dumb for giving Iraq WMD?
On other issues, it is possible to reasonably disagree with the Kyoto Protocol, without being anti-intellectual. Unfortuantely, anybody who does gets rebuffed with an almost-religious faith in a large number of scientists — even if the rebufer doesn’t really know what the scientists say about the evidence.
Ah. Now I get it. Well, the program is more conservative than alternative proposals. However, this is an example of Bush trying to move toward the middle.
Was Hamdi held under provisions of the Patriot Act? I understood that he was held (originally) as an unlawful combatant — and the Supreme Court’s ruling made it very clear that (even without the Patriot Act) American citizens can be held as unlawful combatants or prisoners of war. The decision only requires a government hearing to continue that detention. Since the detention isn’t supposed to be a punishment, that seems pretty reasonable.
Oh, and there’s a decent legal argument (PDF) to be made that Hamdi really shouldn’t be a citizen just because he was born in the US. He is a citizen, but should he be?
First, since the detainees in Guantanamo are there because they were carrying weapons and attacking US troops in a warzone, I don’t think there’s much of an argument that they are political prisoners.
Second, in Hamdi and similar cases, the Supreme Court stated that the imprisonment isn’t punitive, and that Congress has authorized it. Even the recent DC Circuit court ruling makes it clear that not all prisoners are POWs (“The government must convene a competent tribunal (or address a competent tribunal already convened) and seek a specific determination as to Hamdan�s status under the Geneva Conventions. Until or unless such a tribunal decides otherwise, Hamdan has, and must be accorded, the full protections of a prisoner-of-war” pgs. 18-19.).
OK, what reasonable actions could Bush have taken on the spy plane that would have impressed you?
The course Bush did take included not appologizing (although a subordinate did express “regret”). In the end, the Chinese government had to release more information to its citizens because Bush wasn’t going to give it a way to save face. Chinese opinion on who was at fault changed overnight. For the record, I didn’t know about this (the Chinese government releasing more information to its citizens to explain why it released the crew) until it was referred to in a SARS critique.
After that embarrassment, and Bush having to deal with an anxious Taiwan, I truly am impressed that China would agree to shut down an oil pipeline to North Korea for three days.
And the next day Chinese troops rolled into Taiwan. Wait. That didn’t happen. Later that same week, Powell “carefully avoided repeating [that] suggestion”. Powell has backpedaled before, as have many Bush Cabinet members. It appears that Bush gives his Cabinet members a lot of leeway, but gets them to issue corrections when they go too far overboard. Chinese troops are still not welcome in Taiwan.
“oh beautiful for purple states”
Oh, get off it already! Kerry and Edwards lost. Two people lost an election. The whole democrat party is still alive, well, and madder than ever. Thank God. I hope this election inspires every voter in America to write their congressmen, newspapers, and all their friends about what’s important. And four years from now which ever figurehead wins, he will be the face of a powerful army of change for the good in America.
the democratic party represents one very important core value: RESPONSIBILITY.
The democratic party hasn’t “lost it’s values”.. its representatives for the past decade have just been hyppocritical about it, and do a terrible job hiding it..
the far right of the republican party has gotten its way because it is much better at hiding its hypocracy and transgressions, which are just as if not more serious (and frankly i think it learned from vast experience). Because it knows how to hide them, it is more adept at pointing them out in their rivals as well.
It’s time to react to this in a cohesive and effective manner, either by adopting the opposition’s tactics (dirty as i think they are) or by some other means which evens out the credibility/morality issue.
A NOTE:
I have libertarian views, and thus i have no great enmity toward moderate republicans, but those who are “flag conservatives” or “christian ultra right” are terrible, and while bush is only borderline in this regard those who he brings to power with him fall radically within these categories.
I think the Democrats, by and large, have lost their values.
BTW, a better article about the lack of shame in the Democratic party by the same writer (himself a Southern Democrat) can be found here, where Card points out one of the biggest tactical blunders the Democrats made before the 2000 election was even an election:
Could the Democrats ahve looked far enough into the future to know that the election would have been close? No, but would dumping Clinton (the way the Republicans later dropped Trent Lott) have hurt the party? Not at all.
Let’s get on the defense of bill clinton’s right to a private life shall we?
“OK, let�s do, just for a moment. Clinton clearly committed perjury in order to disadvantage a woman who was suing him for actions he certainly committed.”
actually, the woman was sueing him over something he did not certainly commit… it was not a suit over adultery, it was a suit on a completely unrelated sexual harassment charge(for which there was no evidence)
As we all know, sexual harassment is the easiest and most frivolous thing a party’s enemies can throw at another to disparage them in the mass media. It is the most trite, dirtiest, lowest thing anyone can do in general, but in politics it represents a new low, the dirtiest of the dirty.
While the intent was noble, sexual harassment laws have been too broad for many years now, and have resulted , at least until recently(though i cant be sure because the news is focused on the shiny war), in what is basically a financial penalty for failing to pick up any woman who is spiteful or deceitful enough to wish to exact it.
Clinton was rich, powerful, and an enemy to all republicans, this made h im prime target for a republican engineered sexual harassment suit. In case you didnt notice.. everyone and their mothers are being accused of that “crime” in courts.
now where.. in a sexual harassment suit waged by one person.. is a question about ADULTURY with a COMPLETELY UNRELATED PERSON appropriate?
Could it have anything to do with the fact that ken star was republican? hmmmmm?!
I must reflect… “southern democrat” was used to desribe zell miller, whose speech against his own party reminded me of the same illogical and completely uninformed “KKK style” hate “lefties” rhetoric which the republican party spews in order to invoke moblike mentality.
southern democrats are in fact republican.
I think you missed the point, Alex. If the Democrats had dropped Clinton, instead of telling us how shameful it was for the Republicans to bring up sexual harrassment charges, Gore would have been President in 2000, and whomever he chose as veep (Lieberman, perhaps) would likely have have won this last election as well.
Similarly, if Bush had tried to explain that Lott “didn’t really mean anything racist” (which he didn’t), it would have hurt Bush’s attempts to clear up his race-relations scorecard (Rosa Parks is willing to work with Bush). Instead, Bush distanced himself from Lott, and stayed out of the mudslinging. Was it dishonorable to leave Lott to the wolves? In a way, yes. Did it hurt the party? No. Is there a lesson for the Democrats here? Only if they choose to learn it.
I only bring this up to point out that Card, who wrote that the Democratic party as a whole has no shame, does think of ways for the Democrats to win. I can no longer find it, but during the Trent Lott affair, Card wrote that he is registered as a Democrat because for all the party’s failings, it’s better (in his opinion) than the Republicans. He even called Lott a twit for making the remarks.
Card is a pretty good example of a Southern Democrat. He would have no trouble voting for a Democratic President if the party gave him a decent alternative (he even stated that Lieberman would have been an attractive alternative). In fact, I believe he would prefer to vote for his own party, just as my parents-in-law would. Unfortuantely, the Democratic party simply hasn’t given southerners a decent alternative for several years.
Woo. Doesn’t the filamentous reddish network look just like an advanced fungal infection eating a blue host alive?
I think it’s clear from the map that Bushy pseudorepublicanism is a malevolent parasite in memespace attacking the once good and true great american nation.
Personally, I thought the map looks more like well-marbeled meat.
you go max lybbert
keep talking about then democrats and clinton.
keep looking at that bright shiny object.
while your all consuming fear of “the left” blinds you to the fascism creeping in from your right.
I love the cartograms.. they’re simply beautiful!
Your site’s great too man, love the content and esp your Free Culture book.. but the design sucks! Drop me a line if you want a free revamp! ;p
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