[Mb-civic] Mapping the Election - Tom Dispatch

[Michael Butler]

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Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 14:51:17 -0500
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Subject: Article from Tom Dispatch

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posted November 14, 2004 at 12:32 am

Tomgram:  Mapping the election

Let's start with an electoral map <http://www.presidentelect.org/e1988.html>
(scroll down) of the United States not long after George Bush beat a
Massachusetts liberal for the presidency.  If you take a quick glance at it,
you'll note that sea of blue stretching majestically from coast to coast
with just a few isolated red states hanging off the northern border like the
last ripe mangos of the growing season.  Sound like the fabulous fantasy of
some cockeyed Kerry supporter?  Actually, it represents a distant reality --
and not even one that you have to approach via some Star-Trek-style worm
hole into an alternate political universe.  You just have to go back 16
years to 1988 when George H. W. Bush pummeled Massachusetts governor Michael
Dukakis in a presidential race.  Back in those days, as you might now have
guessed, the blue states on the electoral map were Republican and the reds
Democratic.  (Someday, some enterprising young cultural scholar will tel!  l
us when, how, and why those colors were flipped and what it all means.)
That map of a political stomp-fest is actually a reminder for all Democrats
that the political world a the presidential level hasn't always rolled
directly downhill.  In 1988, even massive fraud by the Democrats wouldn't
have helped.  

Since 1988, however, we've entered a world of ever more extreme, polarizing
words and images.  Just this week, for instance, Bob Jones III, president of
Bob Jones University, wrote in a letter to George W. Bush
<http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_07.php#003973> :

> "In your re-election, God has graciously granted America -- though she doesn't
> deserve it -- a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a
> mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain
> sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will
> follow that kind of voice eagerly. Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the
> front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you
> because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you."
  

In the right-wing Human Events on-line
<http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=5652> , there's even a
"modest proposal," filled with the usual levels of anger, resentment, and a
sense of eternal victimhood, that calls for expelling the "liberal states"
from the U.S. complete with instructions on how to do it.  ("If the
so-called ‘Red States' [those that voted for George W. Bush] cannot be
respected or at least tolerated by the ‘Blue States' [those that voted for
Al Gore and John Kerry], then the most disparate of them must live apart --
not by secession of the former [a majority], but by expulsion of the
latter.")  In the meantime, a rejiggered map
<http://sandhill.typepad.com/sandhill_trek/2004/11/jesus_land.html>  that
shows North America divided into "The United States of Canada" and
"Jesusland" -- one of a number of similar embittered joke maps -- has been
zipping around the Internet among disappointed anti-Bush and/or Kerry
voters.  

I had my own polarizing moment, however, back in that extreme red/blue year
of 1988.  Not long after the election, looking at that pathetic little
string of red Democratic states at the northern edge of our national map, I
had an urge -- which turned out to be a few years ahead of its time -- and
wrote my first piece for the Nation magazine.  I invented two Canadian
political scientists who, I claimed, had produced a massive pre-election
report suggesting a logical political realignment of North America,
incorporating those Dukakis states into an enlarged liberal Canadian
commonwealth.  (It turned out to be a realistic enough sounding scenario
even then for a Canadian Broadcasting Company interviewer to call me looking
for the two -- quite fictional -- scholars, having been unable to track them
down either at their nonexistent institute in Toronto or at their home
university in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.)  I thought, you hardcore weekend
Tomdispatchers might find this p!  eek into my archival past amusing and
perhaps still of interest in the present context.  Even then, as you'll see,
I was quite aware that this country was far more complex than any map filled
with red-and-blue blocs of color could possibly begin indicate.

Analysis of the 2004 election began pouring in from all quarters even before
the counting ended; certainly before we could think straight about what had
actually happened.  I've generally found far more illuminating the many
varieties of electoral maps that have begun to circulate.  They do a better
job of indicating how much more complex and confusing we are as a nation
than any single electoral-college map could begin to catch. (Even these
maps, focused as they are on the vote, can't catch the complexities,
ambiguities, and confusions with which Americans -- those who did -- went to
the polls to make what, after all, is a black-or-white, red-or-blue choice).
So let me just offer a little tour of these first post-election remappings
of America, some of which might give you hope and others throw you into
despair.  

Here, as a start, is the essential red-and-blue map
<http://www.pbs.org/newshour/vote2004/politics101/politics101_ecmap.html>
of this election.  (Above it, you can click on and check out the red/blue
configurations of elections from 1980 on.  If you're a Democrat and want to
know what true depression is, try 1980 or 1984!)  But red-and-blue blocs
actually tell you remarkably little.  So try checking out where Bush and
Kerry votes actually came from
<http://bigpicture.typepad.com/writing/2004/11/where_did_their.html> .  You
need to squint at these two maps a bit, but what you can see is that the
split is less state by state than urban versus suburban and rural.  Kerry,
for instance, lost Missouri but carried St. Louis; lost Tennessee but
carried Memphis; was crushed in Alabama but carried Selma; was dismantled in
Texas but carried Austin and El Paso; won California!
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1349702,00.
html>  but lost large rural and suburban hunks of the state, and so on.
Sean Wilentz 
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-wilentz7nov07,1
,893828.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary>  considered these splits in a
recent Los Angeles Times Sunday opinion piece:  "The real electoral
division," he wrote, "isn't between the coasts and the heartland. It's
between cities all over the United States and the rest of the country
By
perpetuating the easy impression of a nation divided into coastal liberals
and heartland conservatives, reporters and commentators are misleading
themselves and their audiences about the actual political state of the
Union." (However, the inclination of analysts to lump the rural and suburban
vote together in the Republican column and think of it all in the context of
some kind of metro/retro split probably makes little sense either.  Whatever
the Republican suburbs are -- a subject to which Tomdispatch will return in
a f!  ew weeks -- they can't be dismissed simply as "retro.")

As soon as you consider the vote county by county
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm> ,
the look of the red/blue configurations begins to change dramatically --
even more so, if counties are essentially not awarded in toto to either
candidate.  Then you end up with a "purple America" map
<http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/>  that begins to take
into account the Bush voters in New York City and the Kerry voters in
deepest Texas.  If you're really curious, scroll down two maps and try your
luck at matching the purple electoral map against a dark-sky snapshot of
electricity-use nationwide or simply check out a basic red-and-blue map
rescaled for population <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/>
(scroll down). 

Or -- to return to red-and-blue America -- here are a couple of other ways
to go at it:  Consider what 2004 would have looked like in electoral-college
terms if only voters 18-29 <http://www.musicforamerica.org/node/view/67061>
had trooped to the polls (scroll down).  It would, of course, have been a
Kerry electoral landslide.  Or to slice into the electoral map on a
different angle, check out a red-and-blue on-the-dole map
<http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html>  of
the states that do (and don't) take in more federal dollars than they pay
out in taxes.  It's essentially a 2004 election map since "17 of the 20

states receiving the most federal spending per dollar of federal taxes paid
are Red [Bush] States."

By the way, if you have an extra moment, check out Barbara Ehrenreich's
latest piece, The Faith Factor
<http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041129&s=ehrenreich> , in the Nation
magazine in which she argues that the "great awakening" of Christian "moral
values" in Bush's America isn't exactly what it's made out to be.  "What
these churches have to offer," she writes, "in addition to intangibles like
eternal salvation, is concrete, material assistance. They have become an
alternative welfare state, whose support rests not only on ‘faith' but also
on the loyalty of the grateful recipients."    In other words, while
attempting to dismantle one kind of welfare state, the President's "moral
majority" has been hard at work building up another (far more modest)
version of the same inside the churches.  As anyone knows who remembers
those classic jobs-and-votes Democratic political machines in big cities
like New York or Chicago, there's nothing better for creati!  ng essential
loyalty at the polls.

As if to support Ehrenreich's position on the "moral values" debate, a map
in this Sunday's New York Times Week in Review
<http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2004/11/14/weekinreview/20041114_BELLUCK_
MAP.html>  accompanying a Pam Belluck article, To Avoid Divorce Move to
Massachusetts 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/weekinreview/14pamb.html?ex=1101445245&ei
=1&en=3879b96040804f51> , shows that the lowest divorce rates in the nation
are "largely in the blue states" of the Northeast and upper Midwest.  Go
figure.     

Or how about putting the 48% of America that officially voted for Kerry in a
global context?  Though this map
<http://bigpicture.typepad.com/writing/2004/11/red_blue_world.html>  isn't
completely accurate -- preferences in some Asian countries like India and
the Philippines seem to have been more mixed than it indicates -- you'll get
the idea.  

Then there are other curious questions maps can raise.  For instance, a map
floating around the e-universe in recent days shows Pre-Civil War Free vs.
Slave States 
<http://bigpicture.typepad.com/writing/2004/11/voting_free_ves.html> .  It
is indeed an eerie historical snapshot.  Throw in the "territories open to
slavery" (and southern Ohio) and you essentially have the blue-red divide
again.  Perhaps this is a reminder that the great vote switch of our times
wasn't religious at all.  It started with President Richard Nixon's decision
to pursue a "southern strategy" (based, in part, on seeing the strength of
segregationist Governor George Wallace's third-party presidential bid in
1968 in which he garnered 46 electoral votes and about 13% of the popular
vote).  It was meant to drive a wedge right into the greatest of all New
Deal Democratic Party contradictions -- the long-lived, increasingly uneasy
alliance of the northern liberal and southern white conservative wi!  ngs of
the Party.  The switch-over of this once racist vote flipped the South
finally into the "red" camp and, to this day (however updated), proves
decisive in election after election, especially as in 2004 in the Senate and
the House of Representatives.  The 2004 electoral map probably does tell us
that, under the endless layers of a quarter-century of "culture wars" and
"moral issues," including those of abortion and gay marriage, lies the heavy
historical burden of America's slave past and racial history.

Recently, outside observer Paul Tiyambe Zeleza,  Professor of African
Studies and History at Pennsylvania State University -- "I could not but be
amused wondering what American commentators would say if this were an
African election: I bet they would bemoan the regionalization of voting as a
reflection of Africans incapacity to transcend primordial loyalties based on
‘tribalism' and ‘regionalism'; voting misdeeds would be ascribed to the
propensity of African governments for vote rigging and the ignorance of
'illiterate' voters unaccustomed to democracy." -- took up this subject.  In
"The Republicanization of America," an essay not available on line, he wrote
in part:  

> "It seems to me that this drift, what I would call the republicanization of
> America, can be attributed to the complex and combustible politics of race,
> empire, and globalization
 The cultural values trumpeted by the Republicans
> and which find so much resonance among millions of Americans primarily tap
> into the racial codes of American life and are driven by the desire to unravel
> the civil rights settlement of the 1960s that sought to enfranchise and
> empower African Americans and other racial minorities
 The politics of race
> ensured unity on the Republican side in this "war" (the party remains
> predominantly white and in the recent election attracted no more than 10
> percent of the black vote), and dissension on the Democratic side as different
> identity and social projects competed for primacy (as can be seen in the
> heated debates about gay rights in the African American civil rights
> community)."
The one factor that might be impossible to map, so deep does it lie under
the surface of American electoral consciousness, is the imperial factor.
(Speaking of historical ironies, by the way, the racist southern senators of
that old, white Democratic South tended to be far more anti-imperial and
anti-interventionist, often for the obvious racial reasons, than the new
right-wing senators of the Republican South.)  If the harsh racial maps of
electoral America are officially buried in the past, perhaps it would be
reasonable to say that the imperial ones are "buried" in the future.  Though
most Americans don't think of themselves or their country in imperial terms,
it's been clear in these last years that fears of a loss of supremacy abroad
and what that might mean domestically have risen dramatically (even if
overly focused on the single issue of terrorism and couched in the language
of patriotism).  My own belief is that there was an imperial vote in this
election, a vote g!  ripped by fear for what might be lost in the world.

But enough of that; now step with me through the electoral worm hole into
the distant year 1988 and consider "the Canadian stratagem."  Tom

> How to Create a Land of Liberals
> The "Canadian Stratagem"
> By Tom Engelhardt
> [A satire published in the Nation magazine on December 19, 1988, soon after
> George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in the presidential election]

Is there hope for a liberal America? Two Canadian political scientists,
Martin Sheldon and Arthur Drake, of the University of Saskatchewan at Moose
Jaw, hold out a glimmer to "L-worders" cowering in stunned silence in
coastal and northern enclaves of the United States.  However, their analysis
-- if correct -- also spells ultimate success for U.S. conservatives.

Sheldon and Drake's 345-page report, The New Realignment: Political
Realities for North America in the 1990s, was issued last July by Canada's
prestigious Institute for Strategic Surveys (I.S.S.) in Toronto.  Its title
may sound bland, but the report makes explosive reading.

While U.S. political commentators argued about whether Michael Dukakis could
take states ranging from Georgia and Texas to Ohio and California, Sheldon
and Drake assumed that the Democratic nominee would, with the exceptions of
Oregon, Iowa and Rhode Island, win only a series of states bordering on or
close to Canada -- specifically, Massachusetts, New York, Wisconsin,
Minnesota and Washington. "It's true," says Sheldon, "that Dukakis lost the
U.S.election, but looked at in another light, he won the southern Canadian
election, and it's this political reality that liberals and leftists should
be  facing and debating on both sides of the border."  Dukakis's victories,
Sheldon and Drake point out, fall roughly north of the old British
claim-line for the Canadian border in the West. They believe that this
particular configuration of states, which they call "the Northern Tier," is
no fluke of history.

As evidence that this "Canadian stratagem" has been consciously engineered,
Sheldon and Drake cite the private comments of scores of Democratic
politicos.  Typically, one close Dukakis aide confided to them: "Someday,
we'll have a few things to teach Canadian liberals about how to run a
country." They also highlight a comment, unreported in the United States,
that President-elect Bush made during the New Hampshire primary. Sitting by
a radio microphone he thought was switched off, he turned to a New Hampshire
supporter and said of the Democrats, "One more push and well have them in
Canada." 

>From their pre-election analysis of the developing situation on both sides
of the border, Sheldon and Drake conclude that we may be facing the first
political and economic restructuring of North America since the American
Revolution. In a chapter titled "The Northern Tier: Co-evolution or Chaos?"
they suggest that the only way Canadian liberals and leftists can take on
the historical task of guarding Canada's fragile economic independence --
symbolized in their recent attempts to hold back the U.S.-Canada free trade
treaty -- is by incorporating the part of the United States that clearly is
no longer wanted. 

The result -- a Greater Canadian Commonwealth -- if achieved without
acrimony, would offer both countries enormous advantages.  Canada would be
thrown solidly into the "L" column, an economic giant able to coexist with
its southern neighbor without fear of domination. At the same time, it would
do the United States a historically unparalleled favor by turning it into a
land relatively free of liberals.

Professors Sheldon and Drake, interviewed in their office in the New Age
wing of the Toronto institute where both are spending a year on leave from
Moose Jaw, noted that since their report was issued, events have only
confirmed their analysis.  When asked how two unknown Canadian academics
could have spotted trends that escaped the rest of North America, senior
author Sheldon, a tall, bushy-haired, 47-year-old wearing a green and red
jogging suit, denied that this was so. "We're no better at foreseeing the
future than you are. You shouldn't view our report as a predictive document
but as a series of projections based on bedrock trends there for anyone to
see." 

Arthur Drake, a rotund 40-year-old who spent the interview trimming a button
fern, offered a somewhat different perspective.  "At the risk of sounding
impolite, the distinction here is between what Canadians can see and what
you in the states can't see.  Remember, we come from a mythical country, one
you don't believe to exist -- not a bad vantage point for grasping certain
continental realities.  It's harder for you, and we're sympathetic to that.
But all you really had to do was watch the election night maps broadcast by
your own networks: that day-glo blue stretching unbroken from sea to sea and
the fragile string of red blobs hanging tenuously from the Canadian border.
The unconscious sorting out of colors was enough. It told you everything you
needed to know, even without our report."

"Just one thing," cut in Sheldon. "When you write this article, make it
clear that there's nothing pie-in-the-sky about the report.  We've looked
the problems square in the eye."

Sheldon and Drake have, in fact, taken special pains to confront the
possible criticisms their proposals are likely to raise. In three linked
appendixes they deal with the most crucial and difficult of these:

* What to do with states like Maine. (Suggestions range from ragged or
discontinuous borders --the so-called Alaska solution -- to massive
population exchanges with more conservative areas of Canada.)

* What to do with West Virginia, the District of Columbia, cities like
Pittsburgh, and parts of Northern California and black areas in the South.
(Suggestions range from the establishment of a "free city" policy inside the
United States, to the setting up of Greater Canadian consulates throughout
the country and an offer of asylum to Jesse Jackson and other black
leaders.) 

* What to do with the expected flow of refugees in both directions (a
subject so complex that it will be the focus of an upcoming Nation article).

Nation readers are urged to consider the Sheldon and Drake report themselves
($12.95,  I.S.S. Press, Toronto) while time still remains for a reasonable
discussion of the issues it raises. With this in mind, an ominous signal of
which Nation readers may already be aware was George Bush's comment to
hecklers during his postelection Florida vacation: "Read my lips:  You're
Canadians.'' 

When this piece was written, Tom Engelhardt was a senior editor at Pantheon
Books.  His history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558491333/nationbooks08> , would
not be published for another 7 years; his novel, The Last Days of Publishing
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558494022/nationbooks08> , not for
another 14 years.  It would be 14 years before he created Tomdispatch.com, a
weblog of the Nation Institute.
 

Copyright C1988 Tom Engelhardt


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