Victory.....!
It was a great victory, for GW Bush and our country. Democrats would disagree, but they should be used to being wrong. I am not, however, going to gloat. The President is not gloating, he and I are just glad that the elections are over. And before I move on I do have to thank John Kerry and/or those at the Democratic Party who had the sound thinking to not protest the results in several close states. Perhaps, just perhaps, this is the turning point in becoming a more civilized nation as pertains to our politics. I can only hope, and ask that the Republican Party try to answer in kind. This election is over.
I saw the USA Today map above referenced at
Bunker Mulligan's Place and it really gave me pause. I'm interested in maps anyway and this one really caught my attention. It's a county-by-county breakdown of the voting, showing counties where the lead was more than 5% for Bush [Red] and Kerry [Blue] and illustrates graphically the divide, great and small, that we have geopolitically in this country. Looking at the MSM TV maps where the states are either Red or Blue in totality doesn't give the same effect, no sense of how much power the relatively small urban areas wield.
I've pondered awhile about the people, thinking and culture in the Blue areas. Some are obvious. On the West Coast you have the actors, "wing nuts", ex-hippies and new age practitioners i.e. California and the people who have moved to Oregon because California is to crowded. In the Seattle Bay area, it rains constantly and so people are depressed, perfect fodder for the Democrats. Anarchists are from here also.
On the North East Coast reside our betters, the cultural elite, Ivy League scholars, the old families, old money. i.e. those who think that we who live west of Pennsylvania are the great mass of unwashed peasants and farm hands. It's the other assorted Blue's that make me wonder what is going on in these scattered and diverse areas that would cause them to vote for John Kerry.
Except for the upper MidWest, which is an anomoly, I have to conclude that the driving force behind most of the "Blue" counties is economics. Wealth or mainly the lack of it. Wealth on the far East and West Coasts.....lack of it in between. Take a look starting in the east. You'll notice areas in Virginia, North and South Carolina ....the tidelands and Appalachia. Some of the worst poverty in the country and I'm sorry to say a population still waiting for government to bail them out of their misery. A little further Northwest you'll find blue areas in West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky. Coal mining country, a depressed area for decades. In conjunction with Appalachia you'll see blue stretching into Northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. The dead remnants of the Old South that have never really caught up. Further west, running north and south, you can outline the lower Mississippi River and the poverty that follows that waterway. I honestly don't know what is the matter there....it's just poor. Finally, one last look in the Eastern U.S. around the Great Lakes and you'll notice the outline that was once, and probably still is, known as the "Rust Belt". No wonder they'd be bitter about jobs going overseas.
As stated above, the upper Mid West is hard to understand. A bundle of blue that is not, I think, related to poor economic standing. I know many people from this area, and most are hard working patriotic Americans. Why they continue to vote with a liberal bent I think is more related to their heritage. Germanic and Scandanavian stock who somehow, I'll wager, have a touch of socialism programed in. My Grandmother's father came from Germany, she went to the University of Wisconsin. The one time she worked in her life, she was a social aide worker. She was a liberal.
In my home state of Texas there are five blue zones. No questions about those. Three along the Rio Grande River are El Paso, Presidio and the lower Rio Grande Valley. Hispanic and dirt poor. A fourth is around the Beaumont/Port Arthur area. Sorry that I'm not versed enough to know exactly why with a fairly vibrant Texas economy that these folks are not doing well, but they never seem to. To close to Louisiana I suppose. The fifth small blue outpost towards the center of the state is Austin, which has always been a magnet for.....well see California above.
The Blue tracts in the vast majority of the great West are large but spread thinly. One has to ponder a little more deeply to concieve of the answer for their existance. Pardner that's Indian country. Many of the large Democratic areas are Indian reservations particularly in Northern New Mexico and Arizona. I have great admiration and sympathy for American Indians, their poverty is by and large a product of Government ineptidude and failure. To bad they vote Democratic, perhaps they don't connect the two.
Lastly, the remaining areas in the West are not born of poverty but of the Democrats new found friend, wealth. Las Vegas, Santa Fe, Aspen and Whitefish Lake Montana.....blue all. But of course these too are inhabited by ordinary common folk. Common millionaires.
Hope you enjoyed the tour, please leave any observations that you might have. And rest easy tonight, the country is in good hands for four more years.
