Democrats and Republicans live in two different worlds - economically, socially and increasingly geographically

Paywall.

Oh, the irony of there being a paywall!

I was able to get access to it through the link on memeorandum.com.

Basically:

- blue districts have nearly 2/3 of the GDP of the country.

- blue districts show median household income increasing 17% over the past decade while it has declined by 3% in red districts.

- blue districts have 64.3% of the finance and insurance jobs, and 71% of the tech jobs.

- red districts have 60.5% of the agricultural and mining jobs and 56.4% of of the manufacturing jobs.

- in the previous two cases, the blue and red districts are gaining more of their respective industries, so the blue districts have increased their share of finance, insurance, and tech jobs over the past decade, while the red districts have increased their share of the agriculture, mining, and basic manufacturing jobs.

- the two parties used to be geographically intertwined but in 2010 the tea party election wiped out Democrats in rural and working-class districts and in 2018 the Republicans were ousted from the suburbs. The population density of blue districts has increased; the population density of red districts has decreased.

- blue districts have increased their share of people with college degrees.

Conclusion:

[quote]“When folks have less in common with one another, it’s hard to expect that they’re going to see the problem the same way,” said Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, “let alone recognize that a problem exists.”

I keep reading how Red America is dying - yet they keep winning elections and controlling the country. In the 80s, I thought the Republican culture wars and racism would mean they would all die off within 20 years. Instead we got the epitome of the modern Republican with Cheeto. I’m tired of waiting for the tide to turn. I guess part of the problem is those ignorant, uneducated rural Reds are getting married and popping out babies so there are more of them compared to the one child Blues.

You kidding OP? It's basically one party, one product. Like Coke and Diet Coke fighting for shelf space.

R5 they still get two senators in each deplorable state, thus receiving outsized representation on issues which have now become simply cultural, not economic.. That's why the die off isn't enough

The big cities (where all of the professional jobs are located) also have huge minority populations (who do not hold these professional jobs and who vote straight democrat).

The real problem is that the right-wing media conglomerate is lying to the red-staters and manipulating them, telling them that the blue "rich liberals" are responsible for all their economic problems.

Which is a huge fucking lie, liberalism is almost entirely a middle-class thing, the genuine rich - the people who decide which jobs get sent overseas - are almost entirely conservative. They fund Republicans because they want lower taxes, and they're all for official social conservatism because they think the little people ought to shut up and live lives of meek obedience. The wealthy "Hollywood liberals" the right-wing media despises are not genuinely upper-class rich people, they're mostly jumped up members of the middle classes.

THEY’RE STUPID! Right wingers are stupid! Why do we have to sugarcoat it- manual labor, poorer, less educated... two Americas: the dumb and the rest.

The smart ones move away. The rich republicans manipulate them. There ain’t no helpin’ it, honey.

Way way back, the Democratic Party was the more conservative one. Pro slavery - later, after the Civil War, they despised the Republican Lincoln for freeing the slaves, and the "Dixiecrats" were the party of Jim Crow laws, lynching, preventing African Americans from voting, etc. Woodrow Wilson was a southern racist. George Wallace had been the Democratic governor of Alabama in the 1960s - the south was solidly Democratic - because of racism, period.

"As America's political party system developed, Jackson became the leader of the new Democratic Party. A supporter of states' rights and slavery's extension into the new western territories, he opposed the Whig Party and Congress on polarizing issues such as the Bank of the United States."

THEN, the "southern strategy" was developed - I've heard it was considered under Barry Goldwater, 1960, but as LBJ said, he wrote off the south for a generation as he supported civil rights, as an apostate of sorts. Well, that generation is probably permanent, until pretty extreme demographic changes occur, if they ever do.

Anyhow, the Republican Party has made a pact with the devil because they have every last one of the Dixiecrats, and their ilk throughout the country - along with the evil rich who would gladly side with a genocidal maniac if it protected their wealth.

Don't tell me someone really actually thinks that both parties are the same, R6.

I've heard that from leftists who hate capitalism. But I wish they thought about the concept of "the lesser of two evils" or "why sacrifice the good in search of the perfect" - oh something like that.

Some of the Democratic demographic groups are less likely to vote. That really makes me sick. Well, if they live in swing states, anyway. Where I live it really doesn't matter but I do it anyway, just to get one more number in the World Atlas voting statistics for a Democratic vote from a red state. Sad that that's all it means.

Together they are killing democracy.

There's also this myth that GOP turnout was bad in 2018. It was actually up!

You saw this is red States like IN, ND, MO where incumbent Dems lost, but in bluer states: PA, MI, WI Dems won.

Iowa and Ohio had a split result but had high turnout.

Thanks to Rupert Murdoch who made Fox News. Fox News is opiate to the dumb poor redneck masses, when ironically, Fox News is the puppet master of the very rich who want to keep their wealth. Why isn't anyone investigating this guy?

If only Democrats wanted to win as bad as conservatives do

I'm all for letting the South secede and let all the looney fundies and neo-Nazis go with it.

[Quote]I keep reading how Red America is dying - yet they keep winning elections and controlling the country.

Republicans haven't won a popular vote since 2004.

But the electoral college and the way the Senate has lots of low population rural states works keeps them in power beyond their raw numbers.

Yeah and the fact that democrats like to clump in packs in big cities and a few urban states

Once the Dems get power, we need to get rid of the Electoral College or modify it so it will reflect the votes in a fairer way. This is where our Founding Fathers handicapped us.

That can never happen. In order to amend the Constitution, you need small states to agree to it. Why would small states agree That greatly diminishes their power?

It might help change those demographics if people of color in those states were actually allowed to exercise the franchise equally, r11.