BTW, the surprising numbers on BoifromTroy’s site are less surprising as further numbers have come in.

Nick

Those New England states are so small they are like suburbian areas of larger states. If you look at New York a good deal of the state is red, but it is a larger state.

I think tradition plays a part in voting trends as well.

I am not rich, nor will I ever be but I don’t think the Dems will help me there. John Kerry’s wife will be rich and I won’t be rich no matter who is in the White House. The Dems have spent years making promises they can not keep and that is how they lost rural people.

I remember Andrew Sullivan saying the gas tax should be raised so that gas costs $5 a gallon, when somebody pointed out that would be hard for rural poor, he said “Screw em”. There you go, that is the basic attitude of of the oh so cool city folk to us red necks. screw em.

Well we screwed Sully didn’t we? We are smart enough to know that people like Kerry are going to find ways to avoid paying taxes no matter who wins an election and the economy has a life of its own. It seems the urbanites are still hanging on that old apron string. They want to be taken care of like the Europeans, that is their great ambition. I think that is naive.

I don’t talk about guns and Jesus but I do know that if there is a fight and George Bush is on one side of it and the Butcher of Baghdad Saddam Hussein is on the other side, that Saddam is the bad guy. This is a concept the Bay area just can not seem to grasp. And that is what lost them the election.

California will still be a blue state for the forseeable future but the Republican Party is starting to,slowly, see the wisdom of running more moderate candidates for statewide office and the wild eyed liberals of the Bay area are going to insist on having one of their firebrands run for Senator, leaving the republican candidate a opening for victory. By the way I am a registered independent who left the Democratic party out of disgust with their self hating foreign policy. The increase of immigrants, many with more conservitive social values, also leaves an opening for the Republicans. It will take a decade or two but unless the Dems become less reactionary they will slowly lose their grip on the Golden State.When Feinstein retires you can expect a more radical replacement.

PS- The Bay Area makes Manhattan look like a bastion of conservitism in comparison. The SDS people dress better now but many of their original ideas still find purchase in that enclave of radical leftist politics. If President Bush visited Berkley there would be at least one council member who would propose arresting him and turning him over to the Hague for war crimes.

Of course, there’s no room for logic in politics.

Such a merge would probably give the republicans an additional 18 or so e-votes, no ?

I lived in California in the early 1980′s when Reagan was winning California. The numbers today in California are simple, there are more minorities now than back then and also many conservative whites have left the state, so demographics have worked against the Republicans.

I do very much agree on the positive/negative aspect you touch upon. The Republicans just are more focused on being positve, bringing forth new ideas, and getting things done. The culture of “victimhood” has finally come home to roost for the Democrats, they are all victims now. They fail to realize that the political center hates losers, they wii go with the percieved winner.

Right on the money, my man, right on the money.

I feel the real difference between the two parties is the aspect of grievances. Are you a victim of AmeriKa or are you one of those who hope to succeed here? It applies to the GWOT as well. Are the poor terrorists victims of globalization and Americana writ large, or are they the reincarnation of fascism?

If the GOP can stay on the great American themes of “freedom, success, liberty” then it can always trump the “everything wrong at home and in the world is America’s fault” siren song of liberals who see every wrong righted by a bigger state

regards from CA…