WA State - red/hick state with one huge exception, or no?

[BlooInBloo]

I wasn't born here, but have lived here for over twenty years (more than 2/3 of my life). I think WA is basically a hick/red state with the exception of the Seattle metro area - which, thankfully, is a big enough exception to mostly dominate.

Agree/disagree?

Disagreeing is tolly cool, but hopefully in the form "there's some progressive people in ". I know that - there's SOME progressive people EVERYWHERE. I'm tryin to think about it "overall". For example: If there were no sea/met area, would Kerry have won the state? It seems clear to me that Gregoire wouldn't've stood a chance w/o the sea/met area...

Thoughts?

(background, if someone thinks it's relevant: grew up on the eastside (don't get carried away with that tho - it was near crossroads mall), live in seattle proper now, went to school in bellingham, and have travelled around most of the state - tho I haven't hit the omak-ish area yet...)

EDIT: title for clarity.

[Cats Against Frist]

1. You step two inches outside the city limits, and it's like living in Idaho

:)

Seriously -- Shoreline, Burien, Bremerton, Bellevue, etc. -- I lived in Shoreline, for a while, across from some white supremacists -- they had like three monster trucks that all flew the confederate flag. I was consistently underwhelmed by anything in Washington, outside of Seattle. Scenery in the mountains are nice, and the blue trees and red sand look cool in Eastern Washington, but Yakima is the armpit and Spokane is the asshole. That said, I'm sure there are some liberal enclaves -- but not too many that I know of.

[BlooInBloo]

3. To both replies...

... yah - that's basically how it seems to me....

thanks!

CatsFrist: What body part is Tacoma? :rofl: don't know if i really wanna know...

[Zomby Woof]

7. Tacoma is the toe jam

Lived in WA for 15 years myself, in Everett, Edmonds, Kent, Ellensburg, Kent again, and Burien, in that order.

All I know is, "Almost Live" caught the dumbass republican spirit of Kent very accurately.

Seattle's downfall was being taken over by soulless yuppies. First, they ruined Queen Anne, then Belltown, and when I left, they had their greedy mitts all over Pioneer Square. And the hell with Capitol Hill too. And Westlake. :puke:

But it was fun while it lasted.

[BlueJazz]

4. Oh Man....When I lived in Seattle, our band got a 2 day gig in Yakima.

Sweet Jesus...Remember the scene in "Blues Brothers" when they played the
Redneck Bar?
It was like that but only worse.
God..I couldn't believe it...I've never seen so many obnoxious, loudmouth,
drunken Hicks in my life.
I felt like we had landed in some part of Alabama or even worse..Jacksonville, Florida.
Most of the Men were mean hayseeds and a good share of the Women had green teeth.. AAAGGG!

[feistydem]

2. I grew up on Bainbridge, Isl. went to WWU in Bellingham too

and I found those towns to be pretty progressive --in addition to Seattle, but drive 5 miles outside of those cities in any direction and you have military and religious righties who hate people like me. The other exceptions are Anacortes and the San Juans... artist and college towns on the western part of the state --but cross those mountains and you are in pure Republican country.

[DELUSIONAL]

39. Bainbridge Isl is fairly liberal/progressive

B.I. is in Kitsap County -- with Democrats as county commissioners. But there is a large retired military & military population in Kitsap.

Kitsap is so mixed -- it is really Purple.


Hey don't forget Port Townsend -- this is a mostly liberal town. I've seen some of the best anti bushie bumper stickers in Port Townsend. If you want to know where all the old hippies are now -- check out Port Townsend. In many ways I'd say it was more liberal than Seattle.

But the weather (LOOOOONNNNGGGGGGGGG rainy winters) is driving me out of Washington. I need more sun.

[mntleo2]

5. Born In Sedro Woolley...

...raised on the Upper Skagit, and gladly a Seattle resident now ~ and yes there are red hicks rurally who pretty much dominate rural areas. Either they are rich elitists who have built McMansions, ruining riversides, old growth forests and old farms, or they are ignorant right wingnuts who follow without thinking whatever their church or mega-church tells them. The only exception I see as a majority are the immigrants or the Native Americans who seem to be hep to the hypocrisy. I could not abide living in a small community around here. Though I am straight, educated, and a church attendee (albeit a progressive church), if I dared move into my grandmother's house in Clear Lake, believe me, I would probably be run out on a rail with my "new-fangled ideas" in about a week, lol!

Cat In Seattle

[ClayZ]

10. Cascadia! Cascadia! A Land Of Beauty & Prosperity

We live between Seattle and Vancouver! Ahhhhh! I have not seen a Bu$h bumper sticker in 6 months.



http://zapatopi.net/cascadia/

[BlooInBloo]

12. lol - never even heard of that!

I thought that was all edmonds/everett/marysville/mt vernon...

lol - cheers to your WA-state-nirvana tho!

[Poll_Blind]

6. It's sort of the same thing in Oregon. Portland and Eugene are liberal...

...but you're not likely to find nearly as much liberal support in Eastern Oregon or some of the other cities. Which always makes both sides nervous when it comes to elections, bills getting passed, etc.

PB

[BlooInBloo]

8. The elections issue is one think i keep in mind.....

... when it comes to washingtonians bitchin about immigrants (californians most notably)...

Those immigrants typically vote D. And the last gubenatorial election was decided by, what, dozens? hundreds? of votes? While I'm by no means a fan of stereotypical cali plasticity, i'm even less a fan of republicans....

[sandnsea]

24. No, you can get OC Republicans

And you can't always tell because they can spout the same kinds of environmental NIMBY stuff that annoys the hell out of rural people, causing them to become even more right wing. Then you've got both the newcomers and the oldtimers voting together for Republicans, when they think they're voting against each other.

[BlooInBloo]

30. Got any demography data?

I agree on CAN get those OC repubs...

I have no idea if in actual fact that's happened. You know of any wut-party-do-these-damn-californians-vote-for-anyway data? I'd be curious to see it. I assumed they, overall, were dem, but (a) i could tolly be wrong, and (b) i wouldn't even speculate by-how-much....

[philosophie_en_rose]

9. We outnumber them, for the most part.

I'd say that the West Coast of Washington is generally very progressive. There are a few yahoos (generally gravitating towards the military bases), but Western Washington is a progressive and beautiful sort of area - for the most part. (I close my eyes through Tacoma, so that doesn't count. kidding. :))

East of the mountains, there are some larger cities (Spokanistan, for one, and Walla Walla correctional facility for another). However, most of Eastern Washington is sparsely populated and attracts seriously disturbed individuals such as freepers and serial killers. Having spent some time over the mountains, I have experienced freeptopia and it is annoying. (Those bunch of whiners complain about taxes and liberals, when Eastern Washington gets a disproportionate amount of tax revenues from the states).

Do not characterize Washington by the yahoos. Washington is a generally liberal state. Cancerous Eastern Washington (aka Western Idaho) might be larger than our side, but it has a smaller population.

[BlooInBloo]

11. And your view on my "test hypothetical questions" then?

do you think kerry woulda won the state if there were no seattle/met area, for example? If no, could you elaborate your view a lil more?

And it seems to me that western wa, outside of sea/met (ok, and bham, but I don't think that counts because... well, i dunno, just because - lol) is basically the same as east. Ever been to vacouver/kelso? port angeles? yelm? etc... those all seem thoroughly red/it-was-good-enuff-for-my-daddy-i-don't-know-why-those-negroes-complain-all-the-time kind of places to me... Maybe I've caught them on bad days...

[philosophie_en_rose]

15. Well, when Jesus returns and only the freepers are left behind...

Then I suppose the state would obviously turn freepish. Since all of the good liberals will no doubt ascend into the heavens. :)

There are crazy people of all sorts in Washington. Washington voters are surly and independent and cranky, in my opinion. That's how we get I-695 and that sort of mass stupidity. Rossi was close, because he pretended to be a moderate. But the key fact in Washington is that the Republicans are forced to adapt. They have to pretend to be more liberal or at least moderate to succeed. I don't know if you remember the first yahoo that ran against Murray (before Nethercutt), but she lost by a lot. The GOP still panders and lies, but the fact that Liberals set the stage is key.

I just don't think that a state that earned an A+ from NARAL, has Democrats in almost all of the state's leadership positions, and that has produced so many liberal and cultural icons could be classified as some freeptard wasteland. Yakima is an armpit. Spokane is the state's ass. But those parts of the state are over the mountains in Mordor. I don't know what kind of assholes you know, but the kind of assholes I know are generally not thoroughly red, racists. And yes, having lived here for half my life, I have been to Vancouver and Port Angeles. (Though not Yelm).

Seattle IS Washington. I grew up in a small town on the West Side. You're right in that there are a lot of small towns that are dominated by McMillionaires or vocal, ill-informed idiots. However, I don't think that they define the community or eradicate the progressive spirit that the majority of people in the state share in some sense. Would you define yourself and this country based upon George W. Bush?

In other words, Washington is one of the most liberal states in this country. In many ways, we could be right at home as South British Columbia. It is just not true that Washington is some redneck state.

[BlooInBloo]

17. Apologies... I attempted to be clear....

... when i put a humungous exception to WA being a red state...

Do you, then, think Kerry and Gregoire would've won WA if there were no Seattle?

thx for differing view!

[philosophie_en_rose]

28. Apologies, the answer to your question is meaningless.

Seattle has a massive population compared to the rest of the state. Although liberals outnumber conservatives, we tend to stick together. Thus, when the liberals in Seattle suddenly vanish to satisfy your hypothetical, then it is obvious that the state would have more freeperish votes than liberal. So yeah, Kerry might not have won. (Even then, it's only a possibility, because there are liberal areas outside of Seattle. Ever been to Vashon Island? Freeland (started as a commune)?)

But what I'll emphasize again is that your hypothetical is meaningless. Take any state and zap the majority of liberals. You could then say that the state is obviously a redneck state, because you've artificially changed reality. That distinction is truly meaningless and it ignores the large number of liberals - even outside of Seattle.

[BlooInBloo]

31. Okiedokie - it wasn't obvious to me when i asked....

... until the other poster provided the link to that red/blue map...

Dunno if I really agree with you about the thorough n complete meaninglessness of the hypothetical, but that ain't nuthin to argue about - take your meaning where u find it i guess :)

[lumberjack_jeff]

13. I live in loggingtown, ruralsville, WA

I don't agree.

Grays Harbor County (for instance) has a strong democrat tradition, largely as a result of labor unions, and we're about as hicksville as it gets in western washington.

What residents of small towns do resent, which your post illustrates quite well, is a sort of condescension that often manifests itself in an insistence that us humble, simple folk must preserve our environment for your enjoyment (by closing our farms, for instance). The reason for this is because the alternative is too much trouble - to clean up your own neighborhood (for instance by restoring the concrete drainage ditch that was once the Duwamish river).

The rural/puget sound cultural schism is not healthy. It is rightly percieved in rural areas as an "I got mine, screw you" problem.

Would Kerry or Gregoire triumphed were it not for puget sound? Perhaps not, but my feeling is that there would be less polarization were it not for the cultural animosity.

(...besides the 8th district, Bellevue and Mercer Island, is about the most conservative area in the state)

[BlooInBloo]

16. Not familiar with your area...

One measuring stick I sometimes use is the following: how would a black guy dating a white girl be received in that area? (And no, it's by no means always ideally received in seattle, but still, there's better, and then there's worse...)

And yah - as the eastside gets MSRich, it gets more and more repub - but for reasons different from "hick-republican"...

[lumberjack_jeff]

26. People act strangely to what they don't see often

A mixed-race couple would be a novelty here, some people wouldn't react appropriately.

... much the way a blue-collar, working-class person or a farmer would be received in Medina.

[newswolf56]

37. Damn good point. I lived in rural Washington for nearly 20 years and...

will attest to the truth of your observations. Much less polarization "were it not for the (urban/rural) cultural animosity."

As a rural neighbor of mine -- a logger -- put it: "By god, I wouldn't think of going into one of their stinking cities and telling them how to live, but they've no damn hesitation at all coming out here and trying to dictate to us."

I couldn't say it any better.

And for other readers, let me point out I made no secret of my Leftist views. I was an organic gardner (grew nearly all my own vegetables, canned and frozen for winter) as were most of my allegedly "redneck" neighbors, and I lived as marginally (and as blessed by Nature) as they: heating by wood, cooking by propane, pumping my water from a well, hunting, fishing (fresh grouse and fresh trout are among my favorites). My only foes were Christian Fundamentalists: noting how I refused to attend church, they concluded I was a witch because I planted pumpkins in with my corn (the spiny pumpkin vines deter foraging by elk, deer and raccoons) and stacked the corn stalks in traditional shocks (to dry the stalks before grinding them as compost), and they assumed my two large black dogs were my demonic familiars. My more secular neighbors -- unconvinced by the religious fanatics in our midst -- remained defiantly friendly, and when there was time, we spent many a pleasant evening together, trusting one another to such an extent that, when necessary, we routinely watched one another's houses and land or cared for one another's dogs and livestock.

[Aristus]

14. I live in Puyallup, which is a pretty red little town. Pickup trucks

everywhere! Many of them boasting the "I support President George W. Bush and our troops!" bumper sticker; or as I like to call it, the "White trash pledge-of-allegiance."

Tacoma is more progressive than Puyallup, which may not be saying much. But joy-of-joys, I work with a large number of liberals and progressives in a public medical clinic. We are gung-ho for making sure underserved communities get the health care they need. Naturally, not too many right-wingers gravitate to that line of work, so I'm happy. B-)

[Cleita]

35. DH and I spent a night in Puyallup.

It was very ordinary except that we woke up in the morning to the most extraordinary view of Mt. Ranier that left us breathless. Oh, they were having a daffodil festival too. The natives told us how lucky we were. Even they seldom get to see Mt. Ranier and forget it's there.

:-)

[LSdemocrat]

18. I think Illinois fits that description best

Chicagoland and a few small pockets keep Illinois solid blue, but the rest of the state . . .

[BlooInBloo]

20. EXCELLENT/better example of what i'm talkin about...

I lived in peoria for a time - of richard pryor infamy - but was too young to appreciate it's charming quirks like the law that said at 6pm all the black folks had to get their negro asses back to "their" side of town...

one of my best friends is a WA transplant from decatur - and he concurs with you....

but yah - IL does seem like pretty close to a PERFECT example of what I'm talkin about... So perfect it's almost a caricature even... lol

[left of center]

19. Washingon State might be more blue than you think, go to

the CNN 2004 Presidential map for Washington State.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/WA/P/00/index.html

[BlooInBloo]

23. Point taken... mostly...

To my eyes it looks like 2/3 - 3/4 red (of some shade or other)?

Of course, geographical dominance is only one relevant variable. Of at least eqaual importance is population. We really need a diffusion cartogram of WA counties to take that extra variable into account. (Not familiar with that hoity-toity pair of words? google it - they're AWESOME at conveying PRECISELY the info I'm talkin about here.)

But since I do actually know where the population centers are located, the pic u provided does convince me that no way in hell Kerry woulda won the state if there were no sea/met - or am I on crack?

[sandnsea]

21. True of most states

Liberal cities, rural country. Although small towns went 50/50 for Kerry. It's really the suburbs and full rural areas that make the difference. But without the diversity of cities that require people to become more tolerant, who knows what kind of voting we'd have. On the other hand, without cities to oppose, rural people might vote more sensibly themselves.

[BlooInBloo]

25. But what isn't true QUITE as often....

.... is there being JUST ONE population center that basically rules the entire state on the red/blue question... As someone pointed out, of course, IL is an even better example of just that...

I got no real point tho.. just had a few beers and was thinkin bout it a lil... :)

[newswolf56]

22. Vehemently disagree! There are progressive pockets throughout...

Western Washington, and the whole state has such a long radical/IWW history, President Truman's postmaster general repeatedly referred to "the 47 states and the Soviet of Washington." Don't know about Eastern Washington, but during the years of the Back-to-the-Land Movement, there were many rural communes outside the smaller towns of Eastern Washington, and by all accounts they suffered far fewer vigilante attacks (typically organized by Christian Fundamentalists) than did the similar communes in rural Western Washington.

I wonder if -- like so many bourgeois self-proclaimed liberals (and I'm NOT saying that's what you are) -- you're allowing an anti-gun bias to blind you to the fact that while 70 percent of the state's voters are firearms owners who support the right to keep and bear arms, in 2000 54 percent of this electorate went for Left or liberal candidates (Gore 50 percent; other Left candidates including Greens, Socialist Workers Party etc., 4 percent), while in 2004 the results were similar (52 percent went for Kerry/Edwards, with about 2 percent voting for other Left parties).

Gregoire nearly lost the '04 election solely because the Democratic Party leadership -- in direct contrast to the Democratic grassroots -- is fanatically, even hysterically anti-gun, and the anti-gunners, a tiny but bottomlessly venomous minority within the party itself, have ridden their coattails from the lunatic fringe to the Democratic mainstream. Sen. Cantwell may lose for much the same reason: not only has she offended the many Democrats who are firearms owners -- the state has the highest per-capita number of concealed weapons permit holders in the U.S. -- she has also antagonized increasingly independent, increasingly militant organized labor. Thus a true labor/progressive has entered the primary race against her:

http://votemark.org/

And -- having lived here almost continuously since 1970 -- I would hardly call Seattle "progressive" at all. It is documentably the most xenophobic city in America, so much so its malevolent, vindictive hatred of "outlanders" -- that is, anyone not born in Washington state -- is legendary. So huge is this malice it has determined the region's public transport policy for all time: behind the fact the area has the most rapidly deteriorating traffic conditions in the U.S. is the Seattle ruling clique's steadfast opposition to effective (rapid) public transport -- that is, high-speed, electrically powered rail transport -- simply because (as I have heard it stated more than once) "we don't wanna be like Jew York": a position all the more hypocritical because of Seattle's claims to political correctness and environmental enlightenment.

Fortunately there are alternatives:

Tacoma is much friendlier to outlanders and is also far more labor-minded and demonstrably progressive in most other ways too. Tacoma legislators led the fight for regional rapid transit, and Tacoma's portion of the long-overdue regional transit system's rail network was up and running ahead of schedule while Seattle's -- now nine years behind schedule -- was still being sabotaged by xenophobia-motivated behind-the-scenes political treachery. (The system was approved in 1996, this after a 20-year struggle against opposition centered in Seattle. Most of the federal matching-fund programs had long since expired, precisely the stratagem Seattleites hoped would defeat high speed rail transit forever and thereby preserve their "Emerald City" from "Manhattanization" and "Californication.")

Bellingham and Olympia each harbor small but disproportionately influential communities of progressives in the same way Tacoma does.

Moreover, there is probably a greater percentage per capita of practitioners of alternative spirituality in Washington -- Zen, Wicca, American Aboriginal spirituality etc. -- in than any other state: only 22 percent regularly attend conventional services.

Back when I had enough hair to mark me as a bohemian, I felt a helluva lot safer in Washington state, including in deep country, than in Upstate New York -- or even Brooklyn. So did my female companions; Washington was either the first or second state in the U.S. to legalize abortion (the other was New York) -- this at least a year before Roe v. Wade.

_________
Edit: typo, plus revision of last paragraph including addition of last sentence.

[BlooInBloo]

29. bougy i may be... but i'm not anti-gun...

... even by the relativly lax standards of charleton heston....

Hopefully you noticed in my OP that I acknowledged the existence of "small pockets" of progs EVERYWHERE... The question I was trying to aim at was more like "are those pockets 'big enough' for, for example, Kerry to win the state if there were no sea/met?"

It seems to me that the answer is clearly 'no', based upon that county red/blue map someone provided...

Again - i tolly understand that there are good people fighting the good fight even in the red strongholds...

For the Gregoire example, I was thinking a lil more dumbed-down: she almost lost because something like "almost everybody" outside sea/met voted for rossi. (feel free to criticize that, but plz don't lose track of the qualifiers i put on it)

Try measuring stick? Would you feel as safe as you described in the "deep country" if you were a black man dating a white townie-girl?

I love the bellinham/fairhaven hippies - lol - they're nice.

[newswolf56]

36. What hurt the Democrats among rural voters was the class antagonism...

that grew out of the conflicts of the Vietnam Era -- the draft-exempt elite versus those of us who served -- conflicts that were then expressed and enshrined in Clinton's welfare reform, his support for NAFTA, and subsequent Democratic support for CAFTA, the restoration of indentured servitude via bankruptcy reform and of course the anti-gun madness. The result -- something I have heard expressed by former "lifelong" Democrats more times than I can count -- is tersely summed up in an oft-repeated rural/blue-collar summation: "The Democrats now hate us little people as much as the Republicans do, but at least the Republicans will let us keep our guns." Before that happened, Washington was overwhelmingly Democratic (hence the Truman-era appellative, "the Soviet of Washington" -- of which, by the way, my friends and I have always been rather proud).

By your black/white yardstick, I doubt a black man could comfortably date a white woman anywhere in the U.S. outside a very few cities, and -- yes (based partly on my own circle of friends and acquaintances) -- Tacoma is probably one of those few. Paul Krugman, in what I regard as the most important piece of U.S. social journalism written since the Civil War (and maybe since the Revolution) argues that America's most-deliberately-savage-in-the-industrial-world social policy (which by extension includes public health services, education and mass transport) is directly the result of racism:

http://www.pkarchive.org/column/091905.html

Reversing the yardstick, I have over the years had a couple of non-white lovers, both in Washington state, but then I am not only legally armed but appropriately skilled, and so were they, which makes an immeasurable difference in the degree to which one is comfortable in what otherwise might be hostile territory. Which may also have something to do with commune survival: in Western Washington it was an almost inviolable rule that the only rural communes that survived were armed; in Eastern Washington -- at least as far as I know -- there were no UNarmed communes to begin with.

As to a future blue/red separation, first let me note that I deplore the confusion implicit in these appellations: "red," to me (and with its associations with Petrograd 1917 and women boiling out of factories to start a revolution) is the positive color. Hence I don't doubt for a minute the induced confusion is deliberate, sort of like retraining all of us to believe "good" means "bad" -- Orwell's dreadful truth lives on -- and for that very reason I refuse to contribute to the intellectual chaos by using the terms themselves.

Next, using more appropriate nouns (Left/Right; Progressive/Fascist; Democrat/Republican etc.), I believe that voter division in Washington state will depend entirely upon the ideologies symbolized by the candidates. For example, Edwards has already asserted the desperate need to resurrect the New Deal, and if he runs as the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, I believe on that basis alone he would carry Washington state by a landslide of the sort not seen since the FDR years. But if the candidate is some Republican-lite mealymouth, a huge percentage of the electorate will vote by staying home.

By the way, I wasn't attacking you -- I had hoped to have made that clear in my "not saying" disclaimer above; I was merely responding with what other posters will attest is my customary directness.

That said, welcome to DU! Good discussion topic, also, because it gets at an issue that is relevant to Democratic efforts in all 50 states.

[lumberjack_jeff]

32. Well said.

Although liberalism in Olympia is not a small factor. I haven't spent much time in Bellingham but Tacoma and Olympia are great.

Your rant about the xenophobia of Seattle reminded me of Emmet Watson. "build a wall around the city".
http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/sept01/watson.html

[BeTheChange]

27. I guess it is all about perspective

As a northern californian who just did 2 years of time in Dallas, WA is splendidly liberal.. but more libertarian.

We love it here, they are going to have to kick us out of the state.

[BlooInBloo]

33. didn't really mean to slam the cali transplants.. lol

Was just speaking from the "native party line"...

I personally thought the anti-cali-transplant fervor was bizarre and unbecomingly snooty ("they're so fake, we're so REAL")...

I suspect tho that a substantial part of that fervor was from the rural we-don't-git-many-newcomers-with-their-outlandish-ways-here crowd... (yah i understand that there was also a substantial part from the damn-property's-gettin-expensive crowd...)

[Cleita]

34. Seattle got a big infusion of liberal Californians back in the

seventies. The first time I visited was in 1968. I wasn't married, didn't have a boyfriend, and family was driving me nuts. I talked a girlfriend of mine into an Alaska vacation. I really needed some wilderness and blue skies.

So we overnighted in Seattle. Both of us decided we wanted to do some clubing while we were there.
Well, we found out we couldn't get served at a bar without an escort. We weren't even allowed in. We were so pissed that we actually did a Suzie Wong and stood outside of the saloon and solicited a couple of guys to escort us in if we bought them a drink.

They escorted us in, we bought them a drink and ditched them. Not very nice, but this was really keeping the women barefoot and pregnant laws.

Since then I have been pretty much all over Washington. I love Spokane. I wish I could live there. I also love Idaho. The people can drive you crazy because of their two centuries ago thinking. Yet they are the salt of the earth in many ways.

I am just not that quick to judge them.

[ruggerson]

38. Isn't Bellingham pretty liberal?

College town. Artists. It's never struck me as rightwing.