Always interesting to contemplate the future after an innervating victory, such as the House turnovers
Consider the sources of liberal votes, the large cities along the coasts.
1. 1. William O'Rourke of the Chicago Sun-Times: " George W. Bush's America "Yahoo Nation" contains not one major city, nor one primary center of creative and intellectual density." And "Al Gore's America is the country's great cities: New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle."."if George W. becomes president, he will not have won one center of the thinking America, the teeming centers of creative and intellectual life." Nicholas Strakon: Yahoo Nation strikes back
But, while liberals like ORouke love to point with great pride to the centers of thinking America, it should be recognized how many Americans shun these centers of crime and poverty, and, as the great Ronald Reagan said, vote with their feet.
2. But major metro areas are casting a declining share of the nation's votes, while fast-growing counties beyond metro-edge cities, with family-size subdivisions and megachurches, are heavily Republican Democrats have made their greatest gains in the nation's very largest metropolitan areas. At the same time, Republicans have been gaining in rural areas and the fast-growing metropolitan fringe. Michael Barone, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/001106/6pol.htm
3. These areas, with with family-size subdivisions and megachurches, termed Sprinkler Cities by David Brooks, are experiencing astounding growth, due to Americans looking to escape high taxes, bad schools, and still-high-priced homes.
a. Sprinkler Cities are the fast-growing suburbs mostly in the South and West that are the homes of the new style American Dream, the epicenters of Patio Man fantasies. Douglas County, Colorado, which is the fastest-growing county in America and is located between Denver and Colorado Springs, is a Sprinkler City . Sprinkler Cities are also generally the most Republican areas of the country. In some of the Sprinkler City congressional districts, Republicans have a 2 or 3 or 4 to 1 registration advantage over Democrats... In fact, the rising prominence of these places heralds a new style of suburb vs. suburb politics, with the explosively growing Republican outer suburbs vying with the slower-growing and increasingly Democratic inner suburbs for control of the center of American political gravity.
Patio Man and the Sprawl People | The Weekly Standard
b. Already, suburbanites make up about half of the country's population (while city people make up 28 percent and rural folk make up the rest), and America gets more suburban every year. According to the census data, the suburbs of America's 100 largest metro areas grew twice as fast as their central cities in the 1990s, and that was a decade in which many cities actually reversed their long population slides . The majority of Asian Americans, half of Hispanics, and 40 percent of American blacks live in suburbia. Ibid.
While the election of 08 saw votes from every geographic and demographic for Barak Obama, and explanations for this multiply daily, the 10 mid-terms may indicate that this was an aberration, outside of the trends suggested above.
The next election may tell the growth outside of cities is a hint of dominance for the Republicans, or continuance of a divided polity.
Consider the sources of liberal votes, the large cities along the coasts.
1. 1. William O'Rourke of the Chicago Sun-Times: " George W. Bush's America "Yahoo Nation" contains not one major city, nor one primary center of creative and intellectual density." And "Al Gore's America is the country's great cities: New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle."."if George W. becomes president, he will not have won one center of the thinking America, the teeming centers of creative and intellectual life." Nicholas Strakon: Yahoo Nation strikes back
But, while liberals like ORouke love to point with great pride to the centers of thinking America, it should be recognized how many Americans shun these centers of crime and poverty, and, as the great Ronald Reagan said, vote with their feet.
2. But major metro areas are casting a declining share of the nation's votes, while fast-growing counties beyond metro-edge cities, with family-size subdivisions and megachurches, are heavily Republican Democrats have made their greatest gains in the nation's very largest metropolitan areas. At the same time, Republicans have been gaining in rural areas and the fast-growing metropolitan fringe. Michael Barone, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/001106/6pol.htm
3. These areas, with with family-size subdivisions and megachurches, termed Sprinkler Cities by David Brooks, are experiencing astounding growth, due to Americans looking to escape high taxes, bad schools, and still-high-priced homes.
a. Sprinkler Cities are the fast-growing suburbs mostly in the South and West that are the homes of the new style American Dream, the epicenters of Patio Man fantasies. Douglas County, Colorado, which is the fastest-growing county in America and is located between Denver and Colorado Springs, is a Sprinkler City . Sprinkler Cities are also generally the most Republican areas of the country. In some of the Sprinkler City congressional districts, Republicans have a 2 or 3 or 4 to 1 registration advantage over Democrats... In fact, the rising prominence of these places heralds a new style of suburb vs. suburb politics, with the explosively growing Republican outer suburbs vying with the slower-growing and increasingly Democratic inner suburbs for control of the center of American political gravity.
Patio Man and the Sprawl People | The Weekly Standard
b. Already, suburbanites make up about half of the country's population (while city people make up 28 percent and rural folk make up the rest), and America gets more suburban every year. According to the census data, the suburbs of America's 100 largest metro areas grew twice as fast as their central cities in the 1990s, and that was a decade in which many cities actually reversed their long population slides . The majority of Asian Americans, half of Hispanics, and 40 percent of American blacks live in suburbia. Ibid.
While the election of 08 saw votes from every geographic and demographic for Barak Obama, and explanations for this multiply daily, the 10 mid-terms may indicate that this was an aberration, outside of the trends suggested above.
The next election may tell the growth outside of cities is a hint of dominance for the Republicans, or continuance of a divided polity.
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