Just saw a map of the country detailed by its red versus blue counties.

[kairos12]

I thought I was looking at the bottom of the shower stall in the movie "Psycho."

No wait, that movie was in black and white.

Anyway,: you get the unfortunate picture. As a country, we are f.....

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Can you provide a link?

I know my county stayed bright red - but I'm interested in what the rest of the country looks like.

[kairos12]

2. I'm sorry I saw it on the TeeVee and nearly passed out. I can look around though.

[Proud Public Servant]

5. I can't find one , but consider

This map:



That's 2012; I can't imagine how red 2014 is...

[kairos12]

8. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

[oberliner]

11. Very deceptive

Last edited Sun Nov 9, 2014, 03:18 PM - Edit history (1)

Many of the big areas in red have very few people living there and many of the small areas of blue have huge populations.

[Atman]

16. ^^ THIS ^^

I was about to type the same thing. You could much of the population of those red areas into the "tiny" blue areas.

[uppityperson]

19. I posted the maps, adjusted by population, downthread post #18.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=386017

[kairos12]

14. Pretty soon it will be like Invasion of the Body Snatchers except when they point out and scream

there is a liberal their english will be mangled and the syntax unintelligible. Remember to drool and yell Fox News is our God.

[40degreesflaps]

15. Even If It Is...

...what are you gonna do about it? No, I am not unintelligent. I do not drool or use mangled English although I will admit to eating with my fingers depending on what's being served and who's at the table.

We've been here before, at the end of the seventies. The party will have to be rebuilt. Give it 10-15 years. It's going to take a hell of a long time to live down some of the things Obama and company have done. The ACA will survive as a shell. Even the Republicans are reluctant to dismantle it but when they're finished we'll all wonder why they bothered.

Strongly recommend reading The Next 100 Years by George Friedman who started Stratfor, the geopolitical forecasting consultancy. It's all in there but not easy reading for most people. I would say the book is written at a college junior-senior level or above.

Conclusion? Get ready for Jeb Bush. Don't worry, Hillary will never be President. She's too old and the Democratic base can't stand her. Please explain to me how, in the present environment, Liz Warren carries two out of three among Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida with the GOP holding 246 seats in the House and no hope of any power shift there until after 2020. She doesn't. The next President will be a Republican and more than likely from a family with which we are all very familiar. Barbara Bush has said she doesn't like the idea but thinks it's gonna happen. It's in the news today that Jeb's fifty-fifty on running in 2016. They're preparing the ground. Just watch.

We're not the United States of Europe. We're just NOT.

[Atman]

17. It sure as heck won't take 10-15 years.

The party def needs work, but more likely it will be closer to the next census when Dems have an opportunity to un-gerrymander the GOP districts. If the country survives that long.

[40degreesflaps]

20. It Will Take...

...10-15 years because only then will we have another cyclical recession that enables the sort of power shift we saw 2006-2008. The economy was starting to go in the shitter around 2003-2004 when we moved to Los Angeles. I knew something bad was in the wind when my application for a mortgage was approved like most people go for a car loan.

Also, watch out for another short deep recession ala 1980-1982. The next Fed chief will have to get a handle on things and you do that with higher interest rates. My wife and I are already preparing for it. Pay off debt. NOW. If the excrement hits the oscillator, fine...we'll survive. Choice for the next Fed chief? John Taylor, who is very close to the Bushes. Bank on it, gonna happen given the very Republican Congress we will have and all this slop in the money supply that goes back to the early days of Alan Greenpants. That's in his book, too. They first opened the tap in response to the 1987 market drop. The roots of our current problems date back more than twenty five years. Those of us who've been around that long remember. It's not the United States of Europe but neither it is the United States of Millenia.

I think Liz Warren is the second coming of Mike Dukakis. There are better choices such as Mark Warner but he may not want to leave the Senate. He damn near got beat on Tuesday but he's better than that. It was a bad night.

[Rozlee]

22. Not a chance. This Republican congress still hasn't gotten its hands dirty, but it will.

Single women, youth and we minorities that make up the base of the democratic party won't sit at home in 2016 like so many did this month. Republicans see a green light on a mandate to pass everything from cuts in Social Security to trying to impeach Obama, which proved disastrous for them when they did it to Clinton. They have 23 seats to defend in 2016 vs. 9 for Democrats and Jeb Bush isn't popular in the rest of the country outside of Florida. In a recent poll, Hillary trumps him by 9 points in Florida. And that business about him speaking in Spanish to us because his wife is Mexican? Please, we're not trained apes that 'ooo' and 'ahh' every time someone speaks to us in Spanish. That's insulting. Trust Republicans to think that we'd be that simple-minded.

[40degreesflaps]

26. You Don't...

...understand. I've been around this stuff for a long time, mentored by quite a few older people who are no longer with us but they force fed enough of their wisdom into me that I'm more than merely confident I know what's coming.

If you were dumb enough to believe what you were told in 2008 and dumb enough to believe what was repeated in 2012, why would I believe you're now suddenly smart enough to be on the correct side of things for the next ten to fifteen years? I don't like Jeb either but I'm telling you, that's what's gonna happen. It as hell won't be Hillary or Warren. Just how in the hell could she expect to work with a House that's likely to be the most Republican in one hundred years? How do you square that? It doesn't make sense and it won't happen.

Do I think she's incapable of working with the Republicans? Of course not - but her party would never allow it. About half the Democrats think she's Republican lite. Guess what? She IS and for that reason will never be President. It will never be permitted. Who's left? JEB. Fact is, they're not very far apart. For that reason alone, it's a likely scenario.

[Rozlee]

30. I don't even think he's going to run.

I think he's going to step back and let the Bush notoriety die down so that his son, George P., can step up to the plate and be the next in line in the dynasty. It's no secret that they're grooming him extensively for the big leagues. I think all this talk about Jeb running is just rumor-mongering, even if some of it was by George P. himself. Jeb's son is the new anointed Bush and they want to make sure his uncle's damage is forgotten or rescripted by 2020 or 2024.

[kairos12]

21. Shrub guarantees Jeb will never be President. Even Poppy Bush knows that.

[40degreesflaps]

25. If Jeb is the anointed one...

...he'll be President. Talk to people who manage money professionally. Talk to foreign service professionals. Talk to seasoned business people, not kids with fresh MBAs who can't find jobs. Talk to people who understand American politics and the cycles and all the dynamics of markets and money and our history. They know. They knew two years ago.

If it's not Hillary and it's not Warren and it's not Fatso in New Jersey and it's not Perry (whom I have met, nice guy but not very bright - gorgeous daughter) or that nut who represents Texas in the Senate or the eye surgeon, then who the hell it is gonna be? I know who. I just told you. The media will get its marching orders and that's that. They have BIG money and heavy connections. That's what the whole goddamn thing is about anyway.

[LiberalElite]

24. OMFG nt

[MFM008]

28. ok

that was the vote this time. 7 million votes out of 350 million to gop. Blue is heavily populated, thats how we win elections. Just 2 counties in western WA can determine the balance over the rest.

[lynne]

7. Pretty sure this is the map he's talking about -

at this link > http://media.cq.com/elections/2014/

[Scootaloo]

27. Boy, those districts in Texas and NC look like something a kid with a spirograph would draw.

[packman]

3. I saw the same map, on Reddit-I think

and you're right. Except for the west coast, some New England states, and a sprinkling of border counties in Texas, it did remind me of a bloodbath. Nothing for Dems to be proud of.

[kairos12]

4. Thanks for telling me where it is. I saw it on TV.

[craigmatic]

6. I feel lucky to live in a blue county in a blue district of a red state.

[CBHagman]

9. There are two things you are not taking into account.

1. Land and human beings are not the same thing. Reliably red Kentucky has half as many people as oh-so-blue New York City. It's bigger geographically, yes, but it doesn't represent more of the country.

2. If a candidate wins a seat, it doesn't mean he/she got 100 percent of the vote. In fact the percentage of the vote for a winning candidate depends on how many people are in the field (e.g., the three-way gubernatorial race in Maine). Our job is to change the percentages. It's a numbers game. It's about registration and turnout and the nature of the competition.

[kairos12]

10. Thank you. i will now step off the ledge.

[oberliner]

12. Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota are huge and red

Massachusetts and Connecticut are tiny and blue - yet have nearly double the population of those four states combined.

Edit to add: Similarly - Montana, Utah, Idaho vs. the California coast - similar situation.

[fizzgig]

13. i have no idea whether i should count my county as blue or red

we went for the puke senate and house candidates but the dem governor. i don't get it.

[uppityperson]

18. Here are a bunch, including adjusted by population

2012
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/
By county


Adjusted for population


Same with %s of votes vs entire county





Same by state

[Blue Idaho]

32. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics...

Thank you for this post - it's very revealing! Any chance the M$M will ever show us these more accurate depictions? Nah - that would be bad news for their overlords...

[blkmusclmachine]

23. Remember a LOT of those red places are very sparsely populated. Coyotes and sage brush.

We dominate many of the large population centers and college towns.

[40degreesflaps]

29. But If...

...the minorities and kids don't vote, what does it matter?

We know Tom Del Beccaro personally. I have been to his house. He told my wife that Catherine Baker likely won that seat in the Assembly because she sold her soul to Charlie Munger. He's worried. He should be - but if it so happens that Charlie's influence can get us some badly needed infrastructure here in the Bay Area (please God...do something about the congestion in our morning commutes) what the hell does it matter who she's blowing? California is never gonna be Texas. It's not supposed to be. We lived down there and it has it's very own unique set of problems that we don't have here. California isn't short of money if it knows how to manage itself. We attract the world precisely because of our resources. And yes, the food and wine and weather are just that good.

[noiretextatique]

38. Study: Voter ID Laws Cut Turnout By Blacks, Young

WASHINGTON (AP) — States that toughened their voter identification laws saw steeper drops in election turnout than those that did not, with disproportionate falloffs among black and younger voters, a nonpartisan congressional study released Wednesday concluded.

As of June, 33 states have enacted laws obligating voters to show a photo ID at the polls, the study said. Republicans who have pushed the legislation say the requirement will reduce fraud, but Democrats insist the laws are a GOP effort to reduce Democratic turnout on Election Day.

The report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative agency, was released less than a month from elections that will determine which party controls Congress.

The office compared election turnout in Kansas and Tennessee — which tightened voter ID requirements between the 2008 and 2012 elections — to voting in four states that didn't change their identification requirements.

It estimated that reductions in voter turnout were about 2 percent greater in Kansas and from 2 percent to 3 percent steeper in Tennessee than they were in the other states examined. The four other states, which did not make their voter ID laws stricter, were Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, and Maine.

"GAO's analysis suggests that the turnout decreases in Kansas and Tennessee beyond decreases in the comparison states were attributable to changes in those two states' voter ID requirements,"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/08/voter-id-restrictions_n_5955736.html

[Amishman]

37. And that is part of the problem

The bluest areas are far bluer than the reddest areas. We have become the party of the cities, and have incredible strength there. But this offers a problem, particularly for the House. Gerrymandering is a huge problem, but even if districts were legally mapped we would still be at a disadvantage.

Ideally House districts should be drawn up so that each one is as compact as possible, none of this shoestring nonsense. With this proper allocation we would still have many of our districts where the Democratic candidate wins 90+%, effectively wasting 40% of the total democratic vote as overage. Just remember back to all the bullshit conspiracy theories spun in 2012 about the districts where no one voted for Romney.

In contrast, red districts tend to still have a small blue streak.

In short, the house will remain a very difficult task even if intentional gerrymandering is corrected as the district landscape is almost inherently gerrymandered due to the Democratic party's metropolitan core. Even if we would win the overall national vote tally in house races, even with fair districting we might not get a majority due to the 'wasted' overage in the deepest blue areas.

[brooklynite]

31. UNREC

The Republicans have been pushing that map since GWB was elected. It's misleading because most of the those counties don't have many people in them, so it's irrelevant if they the "voted Republican".

[kairos12]

34. Let's see. The rethugs will own the House, the Senate, and SCOTUS. Any Democratic President can have

his legislation either filibustered or vetoed by the Supreme Court. The Red Map also allows the rethugs to redistrict us into oblivion. Which they did in 2010 when Democrats won more votes in the House but lost the majority. Yeah right--the map doesn't matter at all.

[brooklynite]

36. Take a look at New York State...

...Pretty red, right? The Republicans must be running everything.

[Sunlei]

33. all the 'lower class' are kettled into as small an area as possible & mapped in tightly.

Local ordinances galore to keep those jaywalkers, food stampers, to loud music and 'your grass is to tall' people, jailed/homeless or paying fines for life.

[savalez]

35. Think of it this way.

One household has one person living there and he votes Repuke.

Another household has 4 people living there and they vote Dem.

Is it fair to say the 50% of those households vote Repuke?

Nope.

Same thing.