Will The Big Sort Leave You Out?
(posted by FreeDem)
Who could have guessed back in 2000 that the media’s fixation with “red states and blue states” would still be with us eight years later? People vote, not neighborhoods, but there is an obsession with political geography–the idea that where we live is becoming more important to what we believe and how we vote. A quick glance at the bookshelf (yours may vary) shows the popularity of political geography: pundits asking what’s the matter with poor red states, demographers predicting the rise of a creative class that will remake our economy, others worrying about what this regional sorting based on class and ideology will mean for America, Democratic strategists heralding the rise of a Democratic majority on the backs of this emerging creative class, other Democratic strategists saying goodbye to the decidedly uncreative region of America known as the South (although maybe they’ll keep courting Virginia), and yet other pundits, both Republican and Democratic, arguing that this creative class Democratic majority (the revenge of George McGovern!) would be a disaster and that one party has to stand up for the forgotten white working class (amazing what three years of demographic trends can do to someone and their political outlook) and particularly the white male worker. As a left-libertarian with strong sympathies to authentic third way movements like agrarianism and distributism (and even a bit of a Crunchy-Con side), I don’t fit into the growing “Retro versus Metro” divide that predicts a “big sort” of Americans into two Americas: red and blue. I’m all for the revolution in transportation and communication encouraging the development of regional differences that enable people to find places to live that match their individual quirks (any suggestions for a crunchy libertarian?). But being limited to two equally unsatisfying options feels like no choice at all.
The rise of the blue state “ideopolises” can be told by throwing together narratives from Richard Florida (of creative class fame), Michael Lind (of New America Foundation fame), Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam (author of Grand New Party, and Salam is also of the New American Foundation), Mark Stricherz (author of “Why the Democrats are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party,” which, despite its obvious partisan bias, presents a good narrative of how the Democratic Party became the party of secularism and not the Republican Party, despite the GOP’s earlier “advantages” in pushing prohibition, nativism, eugenics, women’s suffrage, and a host of upper class reform issues. There was nothing inevitable with the pathway that American politics took.) and many others.
Here’s an overview of blue America. Well-educated and typically secular voters working in a creative economy. Major metropolitan areas with sky-high costs of living. High levels of diversity, low levels of children. Openness and tolerance of alternative lifestyles and different ethnicities. There’s a correlation or causation with metropolitan areas that are either on the coast or near the mountains and unable to expand outward like edge cities in the Sun Belt–this gets to the chicken or the egg argument about high costs of living. A low-paying service industry growing as a support system around the affluent creative workers. Inequality is high. Gentrification of the inner cities. Government is expanding to offer a support system in the form of health care and education–look for pressure in the future to grow for government to take on an expanded role in providing childcare for career oriented mothers. Most middle class families either stay small or move elsewhere in order to have more children, part of the “big sort.” Affluent workers have fewer problems staying married and providing stability to their children, starting them off on the road to college and their own life of affluence. The underclass is decidedly less stable. In the New England portion of this realm there is only one Republican Congressman: endangered Chris Shays.
Open Left Blogger Chris Bowers brought attention back in 2007 to how similarly Michael Dukakis and John Kerry performed among white voters, but that Kerry’s defeat to George W. Bush was smaller than the 1988 margin because of demographic shifts. Dukakis actually performed better among Latinos than Kerry, a similar performance to Dukakis by Kerry which would have made the 2004 election even closer. Today, all signs are pointing to Latinos shifting back to the Democratic Party in support of Barack Obama. Blogging at MyDD back in 2005, Chris Bowers predicted the rise of a Non-Christian Coalition that would probably take one or two election cycles to come to power (circa 2012). The disaster of the second Bush term has increased the Democratic Party’s brand among the public enough to push this transformation along earlier than Bower’s original prediction:
According to Rasmussen, Democratic self-identification has increased by 3.5% since November 2006, when Democrats made up 38% of the electorate. If Democrats make up 41% of the electorate in 2008, Republicans drop to 33%, and partisan vote preferences break just as they did in 2004, then Obama wins 51.2%–47.7%, without doing even one point better among Republicans or Independents. That is a net 6% improvement on Kerry’s result, and it would come entirely from the creation of new Democrats.
Democratic improvement in performance due to an America that is more secular and less white than four years ago will continue to benefit Barack Obama and the Democrats in 2010, 2012, 2014, etc. Democratic improvement due to white working class voters fed up with George W. Bush may be fleeting.
Blue America, built around these creative ideopolises, may not be at a working political majority yet and may still have to depend on decent performance among white working class voters–for now. It is clearly allied, through identity politics and income redistribution, with minority-majority areas of the Deep South and the Southwest. The poorest voters in America vote Democratic, but those at the bottom are more likely to be students, retirees, or unemployed than struggling working class voters. The wealthiest states vote Democratic even while the wealthiest voters support the Republican Party–the difference is that the wealthiest voters in blue states are less Republican than the wealthiest voters in red states. Cultural liberalism and the creative ethos of tolerance probably explain why wealthy blue state voters are more Democratic than their red state peers. The cultural norms of the ideopolises seem to be designed to promote the Democratic Party. The industries on the rise are giving to the Democratic Party, those on the decline to the GOP.
A Democratic Party built on this geographic base will continue to have problems with a white working class that cannot afford to live in blue state America. The big sort is separating geographically groups that are already distinct culturally and politically. Ross Douthat and Reiham Salam argue that working class Americans are more vulnerable to the changes brought about by the sexual revolution than upper class Americans who have existing networks of social capital. Joe Bageant in “Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War” provides a similar narrative. Rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, and illegitimacy are higher among working class Americans in the red states and they respond by voting for government support of “traditional values.” Not as a sign of hypocrisy, as alleged by liberals who gleefully point out that the Bible Belt has higher rates of divorce than Massachusetts, but out of desperation.
Family values voters in the working class, lacking a college education, are unable to thrive in blue America and so move to red America. The cost of living is cheaper and there is more room to spread out because edge cities are allowed to sprawl out across the land, free of both political and natural barriers. Until recently, the suburbs offered an affordable lifestyle and a transportation system built around a machine that was American as an apple pie on wheels: the automobile (often of the SUV variety). Kevin Phillips, who first wrote of the emerging Republican majority back when it was emerging and not declining, has highlighted conservative obsession with the car culture in his book “American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.”
The role of the car in creating the modern conservative movement cannot be ignored, nor can we underestimate its continued appeal in red state America. A Republican President implemented the construction of a national transportation system designed by GM, the rise of the suburbs offered a new home for workers fleeing the inner cities (white flight), the suburbs were the base of operations for anti-tax warriors in Reagan Revolution, and even today the car culture is driving perhaps the most powerful conservative issue in the 2008 election: Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less. The rise of the Sun Belt is the story of the rise of the conservative car culture, and parallels the rise of the military-industrial “Gun Belt” that is practically synonymous geographically with the Sun Belt.
John McCain has already flip-flopped on offshore drilling in order to embrace the issue of drilling to mobilize the base. Throw in a Romney-like aggressive plan to bail out GM, the greatest symbol of America’s car obsession, and stand up for the American automobile industry and we begin see a pathway to winning in Michigan and the rest of the Midwest. Hell, throw in Romney as VP, or pro-drilling Sarah Palin (Hello Ted). Draw a line in the sand in defense of the military-industrial complex and its faux patriotism and McCain has a strategy to push back against Obama in Virginia. These can work, but are only short term fixes for long term problems for the GOP.
I think that Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam are correct that the Republican Party won’t win over the working class unless they shift their policies to using government to promote the family values of Sam’s Club voters. I believe that anti-government right-wing libertarianism, expressed by Grover Norquist, has a much smaller political base than activists like Norquist imagine. His disdain for reproductive rights and equality under the law regardless of sexual orientation means that this style of libertarianism is dead on arrival for most affluent voters in blue state America. But the idea of totally dismantling the social safety net of the modern welfare state is pretty scary to voters living in a time of economic insecurity in red state America. And that’s before we threw in a declining dollar and record oil prices. Social libertarianism would be a good sell in blue state America, where voters are also more likely to be affluent enough to take on the added risk brought about by a free market. Further, there is nothing about Sam’s Club Republicanism that makes it incompatible with the more popular aspects of Norquist’s “Leave Us Alone Coalition,” namely gun rights and tax cuts.
Despite the possibility I’ve described of a Club for Growth-Ron Paul alliance taking back the Republican Party for small government conservatives, I think the more likely pathway for the GOP is one similar to that described by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam. With some exceptions. The allure of the car culture will probably lead some conservative politicians to cling to out-dated 1970s era solutions for our nation’s energy crisis. We’ll see Romney pushing for a federal bailout of GM and McCain pushing for offshore drilling. The very fact that the Republican Party needs working class voters will encourage GOP politicians to offer solution after solution to the high cost of living in suburban red state America caused by high gas prices.
A Republican bailout of our oil addicted culture isn’t new to red state America. While blue state America is based on the creative economy, red state America is based on the conservative welfare state. Farming subsidies. Mining subsidies. Logging subsidies. Transportation subsidies for the car culture. Subsidies to the military-industrial complex. The red state economy is the economy of yesterday, propped up by government. But is this retro economy any more appealing than the metro economy of blue state America? The big sort is leaving me out, what about you?
Now there is (or was) a silver lining. Just as the blue state economy and its values seem to drive upper income voters into being more Democratic than their red state peers, the low cost of living in red state America probably attracts upper class creative workers who want a big family. A few areas, the suburbs around Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and Texas’ various metropolitan areas–to name a few–have a creative economy but with a car centric suburbia that offers a low cost of living to attract both working class families and the affluent creative workers. But high gas prices may well destroy this way of life, dependent as it is on suburbia.
What will happen to red state America? A lot of the once successful suburbs will probably decline into a white underclass with a lifestyle of poverty and familial instability resembling the more rural landscape of Appalachia and the Ozarks. What interests me is what will happen to working class families with the means to move elsewhere, and similarly family values minded creative workers. If the massive metropolitan cities of the Sun Belt are no longer a viable option with high gas prices, the most logical next step is to move to the smaller metropolitan areas across the country. The creative economy, after all, has liberated its workers from being tied down to one place. And as smaller family-friendly cities (say, Boise, Idaho?) grow, they will become an attractive location for the working class looking to flee the suburbs they once fled to.
Affluent creative workers who try to find family-family areas to live in are arguable the natural constituency of the crunchy conservative. I don’t know if you can even argue that there is any other constituency. Crunchy con concerns are post-material concerns that dominate the affluent, not the working class struggling to get by. And if you really care that much about family, you’re probably going to make the effort to move out of blue state America into a location with cheaper costs of living. And probably friendlier homeschooling laws to boot. Rod Dreher is no fan of either big business or big government, but would probably benefit from some lessons on the difference between a free market and the market embraced by vulgar libertarians. I may be overly optimistic, but I think this is the last best constituency for libertarianism within the Republican Party.
July 5th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
1. I think you and I read very different versions of Lind’s “Made in Texas” (his worst book, I thought). My recollection is that little of the book deals with the creative class and, to the extent he deals with it at all, he doesn’t think a creative class/minority Dem party is sizable enough to win Presidential elections.
2. Douthat and Salam, I thought acknowledged that Sam’s Club Republicanism will cost more money and require more taxes. That is anathma to Grover, I would think.
3. I’m not sure that the inequality is more stark in the Blue states. I suppose it depends on how you measure it.
4. I’m not sure why creative class folk wanting larger families wouldn’t move to smaller towns in Blue states rather than to Red states. (If they did move to Red states, I would expect them to cluster around universities, where there are already well established Blue customs.)
July 5th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
1- Lind’s point in “Made in Texas” as I read it was his disdain not only for conservative America, but the liberal America of the major cities. In the last chapter he focuses a lot on a “third way” that seems very similar to Douthat and Salam. He doesn’t specifically go after the creative class, but he describes the modern Democratic Party in a way similar to his disdain for the Gilded Age Republican Party.
2- Yes and no, Douthat and Salam are pretty counter to everything Grover would want. But you can sell middle class/working class tax cuts and still get the bang of being pro-tax cut.
3- Richard Florida has noted that inequality is particularly high in the creative cities.
4- The question is if creative class folk who want larger families are socially and culturally liberal, or, as studies seem to indicate, affluence enables a voter to focus more on social and cultural issues and the voters who care the most about social and cultural conservatism are affluent voters.
July 5th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
1. Huh. I don’t remember the disdain for city liberals beyond a sense that they weren’t doing much for people who needed representation and who would turn to more malign forces in the absence of an offer from the Dems. In any case, I don’t doubt that he is particularly concerned about the proper representation of and support for the white working class. But I thought he saw them as the critical bloc for a governing majority, and therefore as people who were always represented, if not well-represented.
2. I guess I wonder about the sustainability of tax cut promises in the face of increased government spending.
3. I can imagine that there are great inequalities in cities, but I’m not understanding why inequality will drive people not only out of a Blue city, but also out of a Blue state.
4. I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re saying here.
I guess I’m not quite understanding what you’re saying more generally. I’m mildly pro-sorting, but, though I thought you were mildly anti-sorting, I’m not sure to what I could pin that appraisal.
July 5th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
1- Lind’s other writings deals with the 1948 election and his belief that the modern Republican Party represents the Dixicrats and the Democratic Party of today is formed of two wings, one wing representing Dewey (DLC) and another wing representing Wallace (more far left). No one is representing the strong working class values of Truman. With the collapse of the DLC centrism representing Dewey and the rise of a liberal near-majority that to Lind resembles Wallace, I think that Lind would agree that the working class will be a critical bloc for a governing majority, but wouldn’t find a happy home in either party and will continue to swing back and forth every four to eight years.
2- I think tax cut promises for the working class in the face of general expansion of government spending is the most likely scenario for the GOP. Or they can try to just expand government spending and push tax cuts, I don’t get the sense that the party has any strong budget hawk wing anymore.
3- Income inequality in creative cities is a product of the high income of the creative class and the low income of the service workers supporting them. It’s a product of high variation, essentially, in the income system.
4- If I am an affluent creative class worker but I value a large family and I score high on surveys that attempt to determine the role that religion plays in my life, what exactly will my overall social and cultural views be?
Most political studies indicate that affluence allows a voter to move beyond simple economic concerns in voting and focus on post-materialist concerns: “values.” The situation of an affluent secular creative worker in Connecticut voting against his economic interest by supporting the Democratic Party is one example, the voter may care passionately about international aid and the environment–”values.” But it’s just as possible to be an affluent religious creative worker in Utah and vote for the Republican Party out of passionate support for “traditional values”–pro-life, pro-family, etc.
The creative economy continues to grow. More affluent voters are going to be part of the creative economy. Fewer will be the managers and professionals of yesterdays industrial economy. Will creative religious workers be closer to creative secular workers, or to the affluent members of the industrial economy of yesterday?
I think the idea of “crunchy cons” may be getting to one possible route of creative religious workers. They may be religious, but they also have some liberal values–but not enough that they are pushed over to the increasingly secular Democratic Party. Think of the pro-environment evangelicals that are at least considering a vote for Obama. I view this Obama flirtation as a sign of Bush’s temporary destruction of the Republican Party brand and not a permanent shift. Once the GOP rebounds, you’re still going to have a growing group of evangelicals, especially among the young, who are religious, care about traditional social issues, but are also “liberal” on issues of the environment, and other crunchy issues (homeschooling, historical preservation, food, etc.) I’d argue that this group is strongly correlated with the rise of the creative economy.
I’m generally pro-sorting, but I have concerns about a two and only two Americas system where I have to pick between a the secular creative cities of blue America and the backwards declining suburbs of red America.
July 5th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Suppose you’re culturally liberal, can’t stand rural areas, want to live in a city with stuff to do and a variety of people but also want a low cost of living?
I’m thinking college towns. I guess.
July 6th, 2008 at 3:13 am
“People vote, not neighborhoods”. Actually, the whole idea of electing representatives for geographical constituencies goes back to using ballots as a proxy for bullets. What counted in a civil war was how strategic areas went, even if that meant that the local majority had to suppress the rest - so parliaments weren’t trying to get the proxy for individuals but for areas.
July 6th, 2008 at 8:03 am
“Suppose you’re culturally liberal, can’t stand rural areas, want to live in a city with stuff to do and a variety of people but also want a low cost of living?”
College towns, probably, but part of my criticism of the big sort is that these people (and other groups) have a difficult time finding someplace to locate to.
July 6th, 2008 at 8:04 am
“Actually, the whole idea of electing representatives for geographical constituencies goes back to using ballots as a proxy for bullets. What counted in a civil war was how strategic areas went, even if that meant that the local majority had to suppress the rest - so parliaments weren’t trying to get the proxy for individuals but for areas.”
I’ve read theories about democracy’s descent from military decisions where all that mattered was which group was larger, and therefore more likely to win a contest. Any good reads on the scenario you describe?
July 6th, 2008 at 11:16 am
“I’m not sure why creative class folk wanting larger families wouldn’t move to smaller towns in Blue states rather than to Red states.”
Anecodotes aren’t worth much in these kinds of conversations, but I’ll offer one all the same. For the last 10 years, when my friends in New York City have wanted to start families, they’ve often moved to the college towns of Massachucetts. Especially popular is Northhampton, where Smith College is.
July 6th, 2008 at 11:30 am
“The situation of an affluent secular creative worker in Connecticut voting against his economic interest by supporting the Democratic Party is one example,”
An affluent voter might vote for the high tax Democrats because the voter feels that, in fact, voting Democratic is in their best long term economic interest. If, for instance, they think the Democrats will shrink the budget deficit, as Clinton did in 1993, then they may feel that the Democrats are the best gaurdians of the long-term health of the economy (on which their own affluence may depend). Or if, for instance, the voter is a biomedical researcher, and they think that Democrats are more likely to spur spending on R&D than the Republicans, then that voter has an obvious reason for voting for the Democrats.
But the connection doesn’t have to be that direct. It could be as indirect as, you work in the high tech sector, you think the high tech sector will thrive under the Democrats, so you vote for the Democrats. From the Democrats you expect higher taxes, full employment and rising wages.
July 6th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Probably NYC is a special case, and certainly the plural of anecdote is not data, but this divide between the working class and the creative class isn’t particularly apparent from where I’m sitting. The divide looks much more like unskilled labor (burger flippers, delivery boys and waiters) vs. skilled labor (lawyers, programmers and the ironworkers local) vs. the aristocracy (rentiers, political elites and the equity peerage).
If there’s a great divide of some sort, it’s between the people who design software, build skyscrapers and maintain boiler rooms and the people who buy, sell and own the product of that labor. I and my creative class peers have a great deal more in common with the working class than we do with our landlords or CEOs, politically, economically and culturally.
The situation of unskilled labor is quite grim, and it certainly seems like poor resource allocation that we can’t find another dollar for the guy who can’t afford the meal he just brought to your table, but we can find one for the guy who owns the restaurant chain and for whom the marginal value of another dollar is approximately nothing.
It’s also worth noting that the high cost of living isn’t an uncorrelated data point — I understand it as pricing in capital investment in the city’s infrastructure, and therefor causally related to the metro area’s correspondingly high incomes (and quality of life, if you happen to like the city). I understand, of course, that the density of fabulously wealthy people tends to pull up costs for everybody, but still, a decision to live in the suburbs isn’t a straightforward economic gain over the city. We’re not paying for the privilege of our lifestyle, rather our lifestyle is more capital intensive and less resource consumptive, and so has different economic profile without being more or less expensive in any trivially measurable way.
July 6th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I suspect a lot of the red v. blue nonsense would go away if we abolished the antiquated electoral college system. I’m not going to vote in the next election because there’s no point; I’ve known since 1995 that my state would go for the Democrat in the 2008 presidential election. And in my early adulthood, the first couple times I voted, I knew the state where I lived at the time would go for the Republican, whoever that was.
So if you’re a Red candidate, you’d be foolish to spend limited time and resources winning voters in my Blue state; best to ignore it and focus on the states where you have a chance of collecting electoral votes. And the reverse holds true for Blue candidates who have every reason to write off the Red states.
July 6th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
So is the consensus now that there is in fact a Culture War at work?
July 6th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
The author of The Big Sort laments that people are doing (and dating, and dining…) exactly what and who they want. Libertarians think this is good. Everyone else thinks it’s divisive. But it’s the politics that is divisive, evidenced by the fact of a “culture war” and “political segregation” to begin with. Is there a “culture war” when I choose horror films and Mexican food while somebody else doesn’t?
But then again I’m positing a “harmonious” view of social life, arrived at by classical liberal theory. Most subscribe to a “conflict” oriented view of human affairs. My gain of one burrito is your loss of one order of pad thai.
I believe Proudhon referred to this idea of a relentless my-business-is-your-business attitude as the “cult of association”.
July 6th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Steve Sailer has written a lot about this political geography stuff, with David Brooks basically stealing from him and dumbing it down. I saved his review of Richard Florida here. He also theorizes that because politicians control real estate, real estate agents are driven to control politicians. A cui bono analysis would indict them as the culprits of both white flight and gentrificiation, as they are the only ones who benefit from both.
July 6th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
I generally agree that in the so-called “culture wars” it is the “liberal” side that will eventually get the upper hand, and I also think the Democratic Party will come to dominate American politics at the national level in the near future as the Republicans have done since 1968.
As the 60s generation becomes the elderly generation the values of that generation-like anti-racism, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, the sexual revolution- will be firmly entrenched and established (if they’re not already). Further, the growth of the non-white and immigrant populations, the growth of the urban population and population growth in generation will create larger constituencies for liberal-cosmopolitan values. The dominance of “liberalism” in public schools, universities, mainline churches, and the media and entertainment industries will assure that the rising generation are educated and acculturated in such a way as to insure liberal hegemony.
As for libertarianism of the mainstream kind (”druggie Republicans” or “capitalism without the welfare state”), I think it has no future. If it was ever going to be anything, I think it would have done so by now. The Republican strategy of combining plutocracy, nationalism, and social conservatism into a rhetorical package at election time, while practicing Rockefeller liberalism when in power, has worked very well for them. They’re not going to abandon it. As American society moves leftward, the Republicans will do the same. They’ll still use the same strategy, while gradually and subtlely moving leftward as Bush and the Neocons have done.
July 6th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Dain,
“The author of The Big Sort laments that people are doing (and dating, and dining…) exactly what and who they want. Libertarians think this is good. Everyone else thinks it’s divisive. But it’s the politics that is divisive, evidenced by the fact of a “culture war” and “political segregation” to begin with. Is there a “culture war” when I choose horror films and Mexican food while somebody else doesn’t?”
I think the problem with the “Big Sort” is that it is being combined with a two-party system of party policies and a system where state and local governments can be pretty damn statist. It would be fine if America had a decentralized system of government with political power concentrated at the local level. And if America had a multi-party system, for whatever reason, that was able to parallel the diverse tastes of the public.
Instead, we’ve got a two party system, state governments with no restrain to enforcing their values onto localities, and a public with no qualms about using states to do just that. So as we have a sorting out into blue America and red America, the blue cities have no problem using their political sway to dominate their home state. And the same is true with the red suburbs in edge cities. Third ways, arguably built around small towns, college towns, rural areas, etc., are screwed over. Unless they happen to exist in a state without a large metropolitan area throwing its weight around . . . and they are . . Vermont? Maine? Idaho?
July 7th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Romney adds a net nothing to the ticket; his negatives at least approximate the positives.
McCain NEEDS Alaska Gov Sarah Palin (if he wants to win in November) — whose positives are too numerous to mention here (with no negatives).
– and don’t cite Palin’s lack of experience, since she’s got 10 times that of Obama!!!
July 8th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
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