Much ink has been spilled – metaphorically at least – over how American politics has been nationalised to an unprecedented degree. Now people even choose to move based on politics, which makes more relevant the sharp regional divides, one reason why the candidates are spending their money and energy in only a handful of states.
This was not the case back when many states, even my adopted home of California, had a vibrant two party system. Today, most regions are increasingly monolithic, as people tend to move to states compatible with their ideological bent. Forty states now endure “trifecta” status, with one-party control of all branches of government, up from around 20 as recently as 2008.
In the past, Democrats could win elections, even at the presidential level, in the South, the current base of the Republicans, as well as in states such as Utah and Montana. After all, both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton came from Dixie and also had some allies in Congress of a similar disposition. Today, the ranks of moderate – and politically savvy – Democrats in the South are down basically to a handful.
The Democrat base now lies in the if anything even more politically homogeneous West Coast and Northeast. Apart from Maryland’s Larry Hogan, there is not a single prominent Republican in either region; in all these states, the Congressional delegation tends to be overwhelmingly Democratic. The rise of Donald Trump seems to have accelerated the pace of change, wiping out the last vestiges of East Coast-style moderate Republicanism.
In New York, California, and Illinois, the three big Democratic states, Kamala Harris is up by as much as 20 points and never less than 15. At the same time, in the two big GOP states – Texas and Florida – Trump is ahead by comfortable, albeit closer, margins.
This regional divide is not exactly healthy for the overall unity of the country. More than anything, it reprises the long-standing conflict between established elites and wannabe, often less well-groomed, challengers. As the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun noted, there are always conflicts between rougher, more aggressive forces on the fringe and settled peoples living in urban centres.
Read the rest of this piece at Telegraph.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
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