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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDavid Sirota on Colorado: "How To Turn Your State Liberal"
Colorado's progressive miracle is a road map to a much brighter America. Here are 9 steps behind the transformation
As Colorado goes, so goes the nation. With the culture and demographics of the Intermountain West so rapidly changing, this motto about my home state has become conventional wisdom in national electoral politics, and for good reason. After all, the square state is the capital of the so-called Rocky Mountain Empire, a region that is fast becoming the political equivalent of a test market for the whole country. And if it is true that the way Colorado goes is the way the nation as a whole goes, then America better get ready for some extremely large changes.
Part of Colorados story of change comes from the statehouse where Democrats control both the governors office and both chambers of the Legislature. But as much of the story comes from outside the Capitol, where organic grass-roots uprisings are obliterating old political assumptions.
For decades, this was a state whose electoral topography was reliable Republican and whose politics was dominated by an unholy coalition of cultural conservatives and oil and gas interests. In the 1980s and 1990s, it became the national conservative movement in a microcosmic petri dish, passing socially conservative constitutional amendments and a so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights aimed at pulverizing the public sector.
Now, though, everything is shifting. In just a few years, Colorado is pioneering a Western version of pragmatic progressivism, one built on a much different political coalition than the one that made Colorado the conservative movements grand experiment....
Read More: http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/how_to_turn_your_state_liberal/
As Colorado goes, so goes the nation. With the culture and demographics of the Intermountain West so rapidly changing, this motto about my home state has become conventional wisdom in national electoral politics, and for good reason. After all, the square state is the capital of the so-called Rocky Mountain Empire, a region that is fast becoming the political equivalent of a test market for the whole country. And if it is true that the way Colorado goes is the way the nation as a whole goes, then America better get ready for some extremely large changes.
Part of Colorados story of change comes from the statehouse where Democrats control both the governors office and both chambers of the Legislature. But as much of the story comes from outside the Capitol, where organic grass-roots uprisings are obliterating old political assumptions.
For decades, this was a state whose electoral topography was reliable Republican and whose politics was dominated by an unholy coalition of cultural conservatives and oil and gas interests. In the 1980s and 1990s, it became the national conservative movement in a microcosmic petri dish, passing socially conservative constitutional amendments and a so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights aimed at pulverizing the public sector.
Now, though, everything is shifting. In just a few years, Colorado is pioneering a Western version of pragmatic progressivism, one built on a much different political coalition than the one that made Colorado the conservative movements grand experiment....
Read More: http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/how_to_turn_your_state_liberal/
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David Sirota on Colorado: "How To Turn Your State Liberal" (Original Post)
Robb
Mar 2013
OP
Not quite there yet--try Grand Junction. Those people are effin' wackadoodles.
TwilightGardener
Mar 2013
#1
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)1. Not quite there yet--try Grand Junction. Those people are effin' wackadoodles.
Robb
(39,665 posts)2. Still under state law: gun control, civil unions, legalized cannabis.
Wackadoodles notwithstanding.
FredStembottom
(2,928 posts)3. Read it all and hope.
Please be the national bell-weather that Mr. Sirota thinks it is.
I'm 57 now. I still remember sane America.
I don't want to die in Rambo-Jesus America.
I am sooooooo tired............
I'm 57 now. I still remember sane America.
I don't want to die in Rambo-Jesus America.
I am sooooooo tired............
ThoughtCriminal
(14,047 posts)4. Arizona Next?
It's a long haul, but it's really a purple state with an infrared legislature.