God I hate political ass-licking & coalitional politics. Bush is neither the Great Leader nor the Beast in my book. It’s nice to see hypocrisy pointed out on occasion, how many times should I have to listen to New York City living neoconservative intellectuals praising the muscular values of the Heartland in comparison to their effete citified environs? (move to the fucking south and shut up!) How many times will I have to endure orthodox liberals praising the value of diversity from their “lily white” (to use a favorite liberal appellation) suburban perch? (go move to the ghetto or barrio and take in the fucking ambiance first person!)
I’ve enjoyed the recent posts on the blogosphere (something I can’t say often for political pieces to be frank) noting that Red states are more charitable and Blue states tend to feed less gluttonously at the federal trough. After the recent loss it has been pleasant to see the Left praise federalism, though I can only wonder how long it will last before the next political swing corrupts them again. Nevertheless, sometimes the superficiality of the analysis bothers me. As many observers have noted: the wealthy in Blue states voted for George Bush (and so pay a disproportionate number of taxes), so the liberal critique of Red states parasitizing off the hard earned money of Blue citizens is pretty shallow (and when did Blue staters lionize capitalistic productivity anyway???). Similarly State-by-State divorce rates mask the higher rates of cohabitation in Blue states, while cumulative years married (since Red Staters marry earlier) might also close the perceived gap.
Just as liberals ignore the reality of Republican enclaves in places like Wall Street and (to a lesser extent) Silicon Valley driving the engines of their prosperity, it is tiresome to see NRO publish a piece which caricatures Blue folk who live in Red states as if they were all effete Austinites, when they are in fact mostly blacks or racial minorities (Red intellectuals aren’t often muscular & brusque enough to point that out, but must go for the easy targets, so liberals aren’t the only pussies about facing up to facts). If the Blue and Red do go their separate ways, will we see an outmigration of Manhattan financiers south toward Dixie? Will blacks begin to reprise their great northern treks to industrial cities? I doubt it. People are more than just their politics, more than Blue or Red. The back-migration of northern blacks to their grandparent’s ancestral towns illustrates that the Republican nature of most of the south does not deter them, because the sum of life is more than the political orientation of your state. Similarly, I am skeptical that the brokers and traders on Wall Street or the Chicago Mercantile Exchange view an exurban life in the South as anything more than an option of their dotage.
I’ve travelled a bit in the past few years, through the Blue and the Red. If liberals like diversity so much, they should appreciate it more. There are always familiar oases in strange lands like Madison or Austin to recharge at (and as a nonwhite person I’ve encountered no ovetr racism, though a few people in rural Kentucky did do a double-take when they saw me according to my girlfriend, but perhaps it was my angelic face?). Similarly, I might live in the least churched part of the nation, but those who are religious here often tend to be evangelicals and people who take their faith seriously, surrounded as they are by relative paganism, it isn’t just wall to wall “goths, faggots & single moms” (not to mention that single moms are not solely a Blue phenomena).
Below is a table with exit poll results for the two highest income brackets and who they voted for in the states that give the most and get the least from the federal government. The $200,000+ group is unbounded into the great white expanse of the asset rich, while I added the $150,000 – $200,000 bracket to indicate the upper-middle-class professionals. Though the samples were small, going through the polls I detected a surprisingly strong vote in Blue states for people who made $100,000 – $200,000 for Kerry (the $200,000 leaned toward Bush more or less). Assuming that these are two earner families, I wonder if they validate Steve’s hypothesis that many liberals earn less than people of lesser education, so they are voting against the interests of the $200,000+ crowd, who might only be equally educated (you can only get so many postgraduate degrees) or even less.
| How the “well off” voted | ||||
| $200,000+ | $150,000 – $200,000 | |||
| State | Bush | Kerry | Bush | Kerry |
| New Jersey | 51 | 48 | 43 | 57 |
| Connecticut | 53 | 46 | 64 | 36 |
| New Hampshire | 55 | 45 | 49 | 49 |
| Nevada | 76 | 24 | 58 | 40 |
| Illinois | 50 | 50 | 46 | 54 |
| Minnesota | 57 | 39 | 49 | 51 |
| Colorado | 66 | 34 | 35 | 62 |
| Massachusetts | 54 | 46 | * | * |
| California | 64 | 36 | 54 | 46 |
| New York | 57 | 42 | 39 | 61 |
Posted by razib at 12:20 PM