Reply #35: Why do this? So we can win, of course. [View All]

[pmbryant]

Plus, it has the benefit of being a more accurate way of describing our political world.

Since when is winning appeasement?

You claim to live in a "red" county in a "blue" state. Yet it is likely that there are parts of your county that are "blue" parts of a "red" county in a "blue state". And so on.

All that really matters are the individuals. Not states. Not counties. Not towns. Not neighborhoods.

But when we artificially assign states (or counties, etc) to be "red" or "blue" based on rather small differences in voting patterns, we artificially force people to think of themselves as part of one team or the other.

Those people who only follow politics peripherally may well start to identify with being members of the "red" team or the "blue" team, if they are constantly told they live within some arbitrary lines on a map that are colored a certain way. This strikes me as basic human nature.

Since our team, the so-called "blue" team, is smaller, we will lose if this happens.

If we want to win, we need to counteract this. Ceasing to speak in terms of "red" and "blue" states or counties is one step in doing so.

(T)he "color" of the state (in many cases, counties) is the overriding politics of that area.

This is wrong, and the belief that this is true is one symptom (or perhaps a cause) of the red vs blue rhetoric. Since when does a majority that can be eliminated by the switch of one-hundredth (Pennsylvania, Ohio), one-fortieth (Florida), or even one-eighth (Texas), of the electorate, represent the "overriding" politics of that area? We only get the illusion that this is true because of the winner-take-all electoral system we have. Minor differences get blown up into major consequences.

But the differences are still minor, and we absolutely cannot lose sight of that, given our current political position.

--Peter