What is a Red State?

 

What is a Red State?

In Omaha Nebraska, a progressive Democratic voter lived in an area where lawn signs carrying text were just not allowed. Instead, he took a small white blank “lawn sign in waiting,” and painted a large blue dot right in the middle. After he placed that “no words” placard on his lawn, he was bombarded with requests for more of the same. He could barely keep up with demand. Blue dots appeared everywhere. Why does that even matter? After all, everyone knows Nebraska is a red state… except Nebraska divides its electoral votes; it’s not part of the “winner takes” all syndrome, one of many factors that explain why the United States is no longer considered a truly representative democracy.

Texas is a state where even the big cities – Dallas, Houston, El Paso, San Antonio, Austin, etc. – are red, red, red, right? Nope! The above is a list of the cities where Democrats outnumber Republicans, but gerrymandering has carefully drawn maps deliver one of the reddest states in the nation. Even in mega-sized cities like Houston, a blue city by far, voters are relegated to concentrated pockets of blue which are fully diluted by defining the majority of voting districts to include massive swaths of rural voters who simply do not live in that city. See the above map. Gerrymandering is everywhere. During Reconstruction, it favored Dems. Today, MAGA rules.

As I watch media’s focus on swing (“battleground”) states in the upcoming election, where the majority of congressional/Electoral College districts usually determine how ALL of the electoral votes in that state will be awarded – not exactly the Nebraska model – it’s pretty clear how distorted our presidential elections are. The power constitutionally granted to states allows different results in different states. What’s worse, five presidents have lost the popular vote but won the election: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), George W Bush (2000) and Donald J Trump (2016).

Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of US Constitution is at the heart of the lack of state-to-state uniformity in election. It reads: The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators. The Electoral College arises from Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 3: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress; but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States shall be appointed an Elector. But States still set the rules for those Electors, the individual designees of that state who actually vote for the President. So, you might say, states have a generic right to rig elections, and let’s just say they are not shy about doing just that.

But that great red/blue divide is built upon stereotypes. Kansas author Sarah Smarsh (Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by the Daughter of the Working Class), summarized by Lorraine Berry in the September 8th Los Angeles Times: “The descriptors ‘red state’ and ‘blue state’ have always been inaccurate, she says. Worse, calling huge swaths of the nation ‘Trump country’ oppresses the voices of resistance, especially those within the white working class.

“What’s missing from most news coverage, Smarsh argues, is the tradition of journalism for which she has been awarded prizes and which earned her the admiration of President Obama. ‘True story comprises two strands, spiraling: the specific and the universal,’ she writes. Her stories uncover truths about the economic structures and political decisions behind the individual stories of those whose lives are affected.

“Much of the reporting on working-class America has fumbled badly in recent years, including in coverage of Donald Trump’s 2015-16 campaign: National reporters did not understand the terms with which they labeled the purported billionaire’s followers. As Smarsh writes: ‘The trouble begins with language: elite pundits regularly misuse ‘working class’ as short-hand for right-wing White guys wearing tool belts.’

“Because so many local newspapers have gone out of business in the internet age, most of the country has far less reporting from journalists who intimately know the local communities. Instead we get national publications such as the New York Times sending a correspondent for a day or a week, parachuting into a community and — all too often — mostly reporting on the people whose opinions fit a preconceived narrative.

“During the presidential primary in 2016, while national journalists constantly seemed to be reporting from some Ohio diner full of disaffected white men, an ethnically diverse working-class coalition of 26,450 Kansans overwhelmingly backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to be the Democratic nominee — far more votes than Donald Trump received in the Republican race (17,062). Two years later, Kansans elected a Democratic governor. So why have the national media and the Democratic Party failed to focus on Kansas and similar diverse states? Because in representing the working class as a monolith, vital stories and organizational opportunities are ignored.

“The failure to understand Kansas politics continues: In 2022, when Kansas voters overwhelmingly turned out to vote to protect abortion rights, many in the national press were surprised, then quickly pivoted to examine how women’s rage at the loss of bodily autonomy had influenced even such a ‘conservative’ place… Smarsh, who lives in Kansas, knows better, writing that there was ‘never a Trump country at all’ but instead, ‘like many ‘red states,’ Kansas is a gerrymandered, dark-monied place where election outcomes may have more to do with who votes and whose votes are counted than with the character of the place.’ Tapping local expertise and including the stories of individuals helps to inoculate journalism against such mischaracterizations…

“The deep empathy that animates Smarsh’s prose combines with a rigorous intellect committed to uncovering and explaining structural causes of our current cultural moment. Her 2014 essay ‘Poor Teeth’ thoughtfully separates a convenient elitist myth from poor Americans’ painful reality… In America today, ‘poor teeth’ often result from a lack of access to dentistry, which is not covered by medical insurance; a lack of nutrients in early childhood; lack of access to fluoridated water; and the consumption of cheap calories or junk food, which Smarsh says she craved as a child ‘for dopamine production in a difficult home.’ Paying for orthodontia is unimaginable to many Americans. Smarsh writes that she was fortunate that her permanent teeth came in straight, although she spent years with tooth and jaw pain that her family couldn’t afford to have treated.

“Contrast that with the shorthand of many media depictions, in which being ‘toothless’ is seen as a symptom of moral turpitude, a lack of care of self, possibly a meth addiction. It’s one of many comforting narratives the ‘haves’ tell one another about the ‘have nots’ — such as when they pretend Type 2 diabetes is attributable to bad choices, or imagine that poor nutrition is a result of impulsiveness rather than affordability, or assume that healthcare is available for anyone who will work to get it. Smarsh’s essays (one of which quotes me) convey that she is fed up with such shallow and lazy dismissals of inequality.”

Local “leaders,” some only slightly more affluent than the majority of local residents, including boisterous and unlearned Christian ministers, are the real Trumpers… reminding us that so many Americans really share the same values… but the system is not geared to reflect that commonality under our bizarre and unrepresentative election process. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time to start voting down those who thrive on dividing us… and look to the commonality that makes us all Americans... and starting looking how to repair the election process with a new Constitution.