West Continues to Drift into Democrats' Column

[No Elephants]

Jan 26, 3:48 AM EST

West continues to drift into Democrats' column

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI
Associated Press

DENVER (AP) -- A political generation ago, the West signaled the nation's rightward swing - from the emergence of Ronald Reagan to the success of tax-limitation ballot measures in California and Colorado. But now the fabled expanse of jagged peaks, arid deserts and emerald coastlines is trending in a different direction.

From Washington state - where voters in November legalized marijuana and upheld the legality of gay marriage - to New Mexico, once a hotly contested swing state that Republicans ceded to Democrats in the presidential campaign, the West has become largely Democratic terrain.

There are, as always, exceptions. Lightly populated Idaho and Wyoming remain strongly Republican, as does Utah. And Democrats are struggling in Arizona, where a bruising immigration debate has given Republicans a lock on statewide offices but may provide Democrats an opening by firming up their support among the state's growing Hispanic population. Still, the overall trend is clear, according to analysts on all sides of the political spectrum.

"It's just a different world," said Bill Carrick, a veteran Democratic strategist in Los Angeles who has worked widely in the region. "Nevada became the next California and now Arizona looks like it will become the next Nevada. ... It's just pushing the West further and further from Republicans."

Drift? LOL!


Thing is, one Republicans were the party of Lincoln and Democrats were the Party of the Klan and the Dixiecrats, many of whom overlapped.

Many of us are what are parents were. And people tend to gather and/or create vidence for what we already believe. (Which is one reason having a positive self-image is a good thing.)

So, I don't fault people, especially older people for being Republicans. For example, New York Jews were liberals. So, the closer it was to 1860 when they first arrived in the U.S., the more likely they were to be Republicans. I know there was a wave of Italian immigrants in 1880 that moved into neighborhoods that had been, until then, occupied by Jewish immigrants.

So, I was not totally surprised to learn that Joan Rivers, who is around 80, says that she is a Republican because her parents were.

But, at some point, if you still have a functioning brain cell rattling around somewhere in your skull, you wake the fuck up and grok that the Democrats are not longer the party that hated African Americans, Jews and Catholics. And the Klan was only ever the Southern wing of the Democratic Party anyway. Guess who the South is voting for today. And if you don't know why, read Lee Atwater's book, the part about "the Southern strategy." Even McCain used the dog whistle "states rights" to oppose MLK Day. So did his predecessor, Barry Goldwater.

Martin Luther King, Sr. woke up in the 1960s. I guess people like Joan Rivers and Robert Duvall (of the Godfather movies) still don't get it. Oh well.

[Enthusiast]

1. You can only recommend threads started in the last 24 hours.

Sorry.

The parties morph back and forth I guess, or have, at least once. When I was a kid the Democratic Party was pretty terrible in the South. My parents were Democrats so I leaned that way. But my parents were Catholic. The "klan" hated Catholics too.

When I came of voting age, Nixon was president. And he was coming with his tin soldiers. I was in danger of being drafted into the Vietnam War. As a matter of fact, I had already passed my physical. I was a young, strong and healthy specimen.

So the first vote I ever cast was for McGovern. He was deserving of the vote even if there had been no Vietnam War. He was a far better man than Nixon, the first of the truly evil Republicans. http://youtu.be/YnOoNM0U6oc

I hope the West moves into the Democratic column. At the same time I hope we can keep the Democratic Party from morphing into the Republican Party of the 1980s. Contrary to the thinking of some, the Republicans of the 1980s were not good people.

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground

How can you run when you know?

La la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la
La la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio.

[No Elephants]

2. Obama self-identified as a moderate Repuiblican of the 1980s.

And he is, IMO, to the left of Hillary and Rahm.

At the same time I hope we can keep the Democratic Party from morphing into the Republican Party of the 1980s.

So, we're probably over 20 years too late on this.

And keeping the Party from going further right requires actions that few people seem willing to take.

Even the Greens may not be as far left as McGovern.

[Enthusiast]

3. Even more troubling than the President's

self-identified position on the political spectrum is his inability to recognize that "moderate Republican" is not a desirable thing to be when you claim to be a Democrat. Moderate Republican are wrong on every fucking issue.

Hey Obama, WTF?