It’s a nice idea, Matthew Pratt Guterl, but there’s a real sense in which it would be counterproductive to follow Governor Gina Raimondo’s advice to move to Rhode Island rather than fleeing to Canada. It’s true that Rhode Island, like California, has enough Democratic firepower to act as a counterexample to what is about to sweep our nation. It could be a very attractive place for people to live who feel threatened or marginalized in Trump’s America, or who just want a sanctuary from the onslaught of dumb governance we’ll see in most of our states.
But demographic sorting of this type is what made the Republicans’ post-2008 comeback so strong and so virulent. I’d rather see disaffected liberals move to Georgia and Arizona, states that Clinton nearly won. Maybe a mass exodus to Texas would help, since Clinton did better there than she did in Iowa.
Of course, people don’t make their living decisions this way. People flock to places that appeal to them or that offer job opportunities that they can’t find at home. Colorado’s reputation as a Mecca for potheads probably does more to attract young people than anything else their politicians could come up with, and people will continue to flock to New York and Los Angeles for no better reason than that they look cool on television.
As long as the Democratic Party is the natural home for the well-educated and the ecumenical and pluralistic, it will have little trouble attracting like-minded people to our college towns and culturally-rich cities and suburbs. What the party needs is more reach. It doesn’t actually benefit when every pro-gay rights, anti-racist, liberal-minded person flees their hometown for the comfort in numbers they get in Blue America.
But there’s no solution here, either way. People will move where they want to. The party cannot make a comeback until it claws back the support it has lost in county after county after county since 2008.
We can all debate how best to do that, but it’s not going to be done by making California and Rhode Island so attractive that every liberal wants to move there.
And I don’t really believe that their fine example will somehow make a winning argument that convinces millions of Trump voters that they made a mistake and should come back home to the Democrats.
The party needs to win the argument in these communities, and that won’t be done by pointing to other communities that are culturally dissimilar.
People do change. If you move to a red area and are one in 100, you might find you attitudes shifting.
And as people age, their attitudes change. As people’s circumstances change, so do their attitudes.
This what prompted Thatcher to sell all the council houses to the tenants back in the 80s. And since the Tories have been pretty dominant since then, it might have been effective.
People’s attitudes don’t change much as a function of age. What is considered liberal or conservative changes so that shifts the spectrum.
Well, yes. People do go native. Others have that attitude before they move.
Sue Myrick (former R-NC-09) was from Toledo, married an NC advertising guy
Pat McCrory’s parents were the transplants to NC. He grew up in the Greensboro area.
As circumstance change, so do vested interests. As people get older, most become more interested in Social Security. That’s why every 401(k) sales pitch starts by scaring people into believing that Social Security will not be around when they retire. That’s to get the young’uns to think why they are paying for something they won’t benefit from.
There used to be an implicit social contract in this country. All of the elderly paid taxes for public education even when they didn’t have kids so that those kids in the workforce would pay for their Social Security when they themselves couldn’t work. For seventy years, conservatives have worked to sabotage that social contract.
Those folks who are still sitting in those privatized council houses with disappearing National Health Service now are beginning to understand they’ve been flim-flammed.
My dad’s about to retire at age 66. His social security will amount to ~$25,000/year. This is a just a few thousand above the poverty line.
Young people are rightfully skeptical of it for that reason alone. It is best thought of as a supplementary retirement program.
I max out my 401k every year because I hope not to have to live with my children when I’m old.
Rhode Island has Legal Seafood (TM)restaurants that I highly recommend.
That would be enough reason to move there, but I just checked, there’s only one — in Warwick.
Legal Seafood started in Boston and Cambridge, and Massachusetts has the largest number by far.
I just checked and it’s amazing to see how they have expanded to a bunch of other states.
To my family, the opportunity to eat at one is rare, but we go any time we can and always enjoy it.
BTW, speaking of legal, or rather illegal, seafood in Rhode island …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/shark-fins-rhode-island_us_586b6650e4b0de3a08f94c0
The demographic division in the country has been going on for a very long time and is likely to continue. While I agree that the “moving” to a deep blue state solution is a pointless one and not how people make decisions, it is wrong to appear to put the onus just on Democrats. The Republicans have aided and abetted the hollowing out of small town America through decades long policies that have effectively disinvested in those areas. Poor education, poor infrastructure, poor public services, intolerance of diversity – it’s not just young people that don’t want those; it’s also a lot of small, medium and large businesses that are deterred from investing in those places because those are lousy investment incentives. While I live in MD, we have a small farm in Shenandoah Co., VA, which is a beautiful but relatively poor area and yet some of the farmers are out there comparing which solar panels are best for their barns for some of that free electricity. Thanks Democrats but those farmers still vote solidly GOP. No easy short-term solution until rural and small town voters wake up and local Democrats start messaging better.
Yes, this. It is policy more than residential preference that has created the ideological polarization geographically.
And the consequences of the policy have had a hand in creating the politics.
Well, let’s not get too carried away in praising CA for goo-gov: DD at The Intercept – Treasury Nominee Steve Mnuchin’s Bank Accused of “Widespread Misconduct” in Leaked Memo.
Leaked because the AG declined to act on the recommendation of staff investigators to prosecute the miscreants. Why? No excuse or official explanation given. Surely the following wasn’t a factor (unless one is one of those crazy BernieBros):
Perhaps the newly appointed CA AG, Xavier Becerra, will do better in the few months before he begins his campaign for Governor, Senator, or AG. Meanwhile, Warren, with some assist from Sanders, will continue her lonely fight.
At some point California secession will become a sideshow – yet another Russian attempt to tear apart the U.S. and western alliances in general.
Thank you for making a point I have been yammering about for a while.
And not only from state to state but within states.
What gets rid of Darrell Issa are more Democrats in his district and outside of the Bay Area who will vote against him.
What gets rid of Louis Goehmert are more Democrats in his district and outside of Austin…
What gets rid of Steve King are more Democrats in his district and outside of Des Moines….
What gets rid of Virginia Foxx are more Democrats in her district and outside of David Price’s district.
The practical matter of how that happens and how one sustains oneself as what will be perceived as a hostile outsider are just more practical problems to resistance.
There are some real limitations, given the exclusive demographics of certain communities and districts that are enforced through various forms of economic discrimination. Even those become useful political information.
This. Drives me fucking crazy. HRC won Dallas county (TX) bigly. She won Pete Sessions district bigly, yet Pete Sessions won re-elction unopposed. WTF Texas?
Blame that on Nancy Pelosi and the DCCC. I told you before. The DCCC ran a Willard(Mittens’s real name, if you didn’t know) voter in Booman’s district. Who they then ignored. And HRC won Booman’s district!!
Moving to rural PA might help but god, who wants to?
Just came back from the Altoona area and I have to agree.
I dislike Pennsylvanians at the best of times, so I wasn’t sure if my comment was just biased but evidently not.
What next? Gated cities again?
Cut the water lines and food imports and those gates won’t last for long.
(Rhode Island? Ah, yes, the state where white stretch limos with tinted glass, turning left against traffic, have the right-of-way.)
Seriously, it’s not states, it’s counties.
It’s a nice idea, Matthew Pratt Guterl, but there’s a real sense in which it would be counterproductive to follow Governor Gina Raimondo’s advice to move to Rhode Island rather than fleeing to Canada.
Why would anyone move to Rhode Island unless you had a good reason? Raimondo is a DINO. The Rhode Island Democratic Party was passing voter ID laws and screwing retirees, like Rahm Emanuel just did!!
The problem with moving, after retirement, to red states (some of us started there), is that our kids and grand kids are in blue states/counties/cities. It’s a sacrifice we should make, to change voting patterns, but probably won’t.
My Ohio valley county was 69% Trump. I could move back there and help change it, but my daughter is in Chicago. Living is cheaper, health care is good (as long as Medicare lasts) in most red areas, and the climate is better than most blue areas as well.
It’s a conundrum.
Well there is Beloit WI, where you could move and help vote out Scott Walker and Paul Ryan. 🙂
You raise a serious issue. Most Republicans are getting what they voted for and will also now be getting more of what they voted for. The shock has not set in yet. Too many are still getting by.
A trend forming on the East Coast?
United Van Lines reported Tuesday that nearly two-thirds of the moves involving New York households were outbound, a higher proportion than any other state except New Jersey and Illinois.
The 2016 National Movers Study by Fenton, Mo.- based United also found that almost 59 percent of the moves within the eastern United States were outbound.
Where were people moving? Mostly to western states and the Carolinas, with one exception. That exception was Vermont, which ranked second on the list of states with the highest proportion — 67 percent — of inbound moves.
South Dakota had the highest share of inbound moves, at 68 percent. New Jersey and Illinois, like New York, saw outbound moves making up 63 percent of all moves.
http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/People-moving-from-New-York-outnumber-arrivals-by-10832318.ph
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