THE RED AND THE BLUE

For your weekend discussion:

In the decade before the Civil War, the North came to believe that the enslaver power of the South was intent on not only preserving slavery where it existed - which many in the North were willing to accept - but to expand it. Indeed, the South’s political orientation was offensive: using the courts in the the 1857 Dred Scott decision and their power in Congress through the seniority that came from being a single-party state whose representatives had nearly liftime power to pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, the enslaver’s goal was to authorize the expansion of slavery into the western territories and the states that would be created there. Rather than just protecting slavery within their borders, the Southern states sought to control federal policy potentially to the point of overriding the prohibitions against slavery in the free states.

Following their defeat in the Civil War, during the seven decades of legal Jim Crow segregation from the 1890s through the 1960s, the goal of the southern states was defensive; they worked tirelessly to prevent federal interference with state-sponsored segregation but did not seek to impose it on states outside the region. Once again, as had been the case prior to the Civil War, the North was willing to accept this condition of letting the South be the South - in the South.

Up until the 1960s, the basic trend between these two “nations” was toward greater convergence. The regional differences were moderated by national investment in that mid-century period: the New Deal spending on rural electrification resulting in the Tennessee Valley Authority that brought the South into the 20th Century; agricultural price supports ending the boom-and-bust cycle that affected the largely-rural South the most; the introduction of Social Security ending poverty among older peopleduring the 1930s; the Great Society programs that provided federal aid for K–12 schools and higher education, along with Medicare and Medicaid that created a national floor of health care.

Additionally, the massive defense spending that began in 1940 in preparation for World War II and continued through the Cold War had a disproportionate effect on the southern states that had historically spent little on public services. The resulting economic development helped narrow the gap in per capita income between the old Confederacy and the rest of the country until about 1980, when it stopped with the election of Reagan and the departure from economioc policies favoring the majority. The gap was roughly unchanged until the economic crisis of 2008. Since then, the southern states that are the heart of Red America have again fallen further behind Blue America in per capita income, due to the globalization policies that have led to the increase in political populism that resulted in the election of Trump in 2016. In the years since, Red America has fallen further behind on a broad range of economic and social outcomes such as economic productivity, family income, life expectancy, and “deaths of despair” stemming from the opioid crisis and alcoholism.

The mid-century convergence promoted the “rights revolution,” the succession of actions by Congress and the Supreme Court that strengthened nationwide rights and reduced the ability of states to curtail those rights. But the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and the Supreme Court decisions striking down state bans on contraception, interracial marriage, abortion, and same-sex intimate relations and marriage, along with the change in the status of women, led to the beginning of Reaction as those threatened by all this, who had never accepted the decisions. That these people were primarily found in the Red States of the South where the reforms had never taken deep root led to the current political-geographic condition.

When the Democrats became supporters of the civil rights struggle, which resulted in passage of the 1954 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act that led to the overthrow of Jim Crow, the unrepentant white supremacists of the old Confederacy were happy to accept Richard Nixon’s offer to join the Republican Party. By the 1980s, the white supremacist single party system that has dominated the South since the formation of the United States became known as “Republican” rather than “Democrat.”

“The great divergence” in opposition to all of that previous convergence began 43 years ago with the election of Ronald Reagan, who announced his campaign in support of “states rights” in Philadelphia Mississippi, site of the murders of Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney sixteen years earlier; that was not lost on the South. Now allied with the former Confederacy - in fact under its control - the Trump GOP plans to use its electoral dominance of the red states, the small-state bias in the Electoral College and the Senate, and the GOP- appointed majority on the Supreme Court to impose its economic and social model on the entire nation.

This time, however, the southern regional party that has survived by throwing its political weight in support of whichever of the two national parties - the national progressive party and the national conservative party which are otherwisee closely balanced - would allow the regional power to maintain its “peculiar institutions,” determined that to survive it must take control of its new ally. That process expanded under the Reagan Administration, and became fully dominant by the Clinton Administration. In 2016, they determined to take national power.

We have seen the Republican 2020 election deniers take power in the House, where the majority of Republican members voted to deny Biden’s electoral victory on January 6, 2021 after the Trump-led insurrection. Others have run for and won offices that provide them with control over the 2024 electoral machinery. Couple this with the systematic advance of the Republican agenda by the Supreme Court, and we remain facing the underlying political question of the 2020 election: can majority rule and democracy as we’ve known it survive this offensive?

By the yardstick that a state is defined as “red” or “blue” is which party has usually held unified control of the governorship and state legislature in recent years. Using that, there are now 25 red states, 17 blue states, and eight purple states, where state-government control has tbeen divided.

Red Nation has slightly more of the eligible voting population: (45 percent versus 39 percent. Blue Nation contributes more of total GDP: 46 percent versus 40 percent. On their own, Blue America would be the world’s second-largest economy, trailing China. Red America would rank third. If one factors in recent changes in voting patterns in 2020 and 2022, Virginia votes like a blue state at the presidential level, while Arizona and Georgia have largely moved from red to purple. With these changes, Red and Blue America are almost equal in eligible voting-age population; however, the Blue America advantage in GDP nearly doubles to Blue section contributing 48 percent and Red 35 percent.

The result, with the hardening difference between Red and Blue, is that the ten purple states - including Arizona and Georgia are the places where the decision which of the two national’ values, Blue or Red, will prevail in presidential and congressional elections. That is why we have been on a knife’s edge politically since 2012 - the difference in combined vote margin for either party has been around two percentage points in the past three presidential elections.

Looking back on the policies put forward by the Trump-era Republicans since Trump’s victory in 2016, one can see this movement is intent on installing the policy priorities of their preponderantly white and Christian coalition across the red states; with their full takeover of the federal judiciary, it is unlikely that the reactionary force will be satisfied with just setting the rules in the places now under their control.

The MAGA movement’s long-term goal is to use the courts and their “small state advantage” in the Senate and the Electoral College to tilt the electoral rules in enough states to make winning Congress or the White House almost impossible for Democrats. With the support of the GOP-appointed supermajority on the Supreme Court, the MAGA Republicans see themselves able to impose “red-state values” and programs nationwide, even if most Americans oppose them. The MAGA movement is not stopping at the borders of the states it already controls; it seeks to conquer as much territory as possible by any means possible. The MAGA Republican party, now under the control of the Southern reactionaries, is the South of 1850 rather than the South of 1950. Some red-state Republicans distantly echo John C. Calhoun in promising to nullify - defy -federal laws with which they disagree. “Second Amendment sanctuaries” and the “Constitutional Sheriff” movement are already doing so regarding recently-passed gun legislation.

This is most immediately apparent in the likely decision that will declare Mifepristone illegal nationwide, through an injunction that may come from a Trump-appointed federal judge in Amarillo, Texas, whose entire career before being place on the bench was in the anti-choice and anti-contraception movement. Close observers over the past 50 years have long said that Roe v. Wade was not the only goal of the anti-choice movement, that the real goal was always Griswold v. Connecticut, the ruling that Americans had a right to use contraceptives. If the goal was merely to avoid abortion, providing effective birth control is the fastest way to achieve that.

I don’t think this means we are condemned to fight one another again formally as happened because of the Southern political offensive in the 1850s. But it does mean that the 2020s are going to bring the greatest threats to the country’s basic stability since that decade before the Civil War.

It is now time to stop talking about “red” and “blue” America. When we think about the United States, we make the essential error of imagining it as a single nation, but in fact we have never been one nation. We are more a federated republic of two nations: Blue Nation and Red Nation. This is a geographic and historical reality. This has been the case since 1789 when the Constitution was adopted. These dividing lines have existed since the founding of the United States when slave states and free states forged what has been since an uneasy alliance to become one nation.

The differences among states in the modern Trump era are similar - geographically and culturally - to the divide between the Union and the Confederacy.

The MAGA movement is multipronged, and fundamentally antidemocratic. It has built a solid base of institutional support of conservative media networks, evangelical churches, wealthy Republican donors, GOP elected officials, paramilitary white-nationalist groups, and a mass following. It is determined to impose its policy and social vision on the entire country, regardless of what the majority supports and wants.

Defenders of the Red State political-economic-social model point to things such as housing being more affordable with taxes generally lower than their blue counterparts, coupled with recent robust job growth that has led to the Sun Belt states having faster population growth. But the fact remains that Blue States have benefitted more as the economy moves to a high-productivity, 21st-century information economy, while red states suffer while their 20th century economic centers in agriculture, manufacturing, and fossil-fuel extraction decline.

GDP per person and median household income are both more than 25 percent greater in Blue States than Red. Blue States have child poverty ratess over 20 percent lower that Red States and overall poverty is nearly 40 percent lower. Health outcomes also diverge: gun deaths are twice as high per capita as is the maternal mortality rate in Red States. COVID vaccination rates are 20 percent higher in Blue States with the per capita COVID death rate 20 percent higher in Red Staters. Blue State life expectancy is 80.1 years, nearly three years greater than Red States’ 77.4.

All Blue States have expanded access to Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, while only 30% of Red State residents have such access. Right-to-work laws are common in red states and nonexistent in blue, resulting in a much higher share of unionized workers and concomitant wage superiority. No Red State has increased the minimum wage past the federal minimum of 7.25/hour, while all Blue States have increased the minimum wage to as much as $15/hour.

No Blue State has a law banning abortion before fetal viability, while nearly all Red States either have such laws or are poised to pass them this year. All Red States have passed “stand your ground” laws providing a legal defense for the use of weapons against a perceived threat, while no Blue Atates has such a law.

Since 2021, Red States have passed a flurry of socially conservative laws banning classroom discussions of race, gender, and sexual orientation and LGBTQ rights, and those that have not already done so have introduced bills to set this rule. No Democratic-controlled state has passed any such measures.

The big difference between one party dominance in the Blue States and one party rule in the Red States can be seen in how the Republican legisltrures in Red States are returning to historical patterns from the Jim Crow era, skewing the electoral field to achieve a level of political dominance far beyond their level of popular support with laws that make registering or voting more difficult, and severe gerrymanders that let Republicans lock in indefinite control of those state legislatures.

It does not matter which Republican is nominated as the party’s presidential candidate in 2024; they are all closely aligned with MAGA, and the Make America First Foundation will be happy to provide all the plans they have been making since 2021 on how a “second Trump Administration” can hit the ground running on January 20, 2025 to President DeSantis, Pompeo or Haley. Any Republican administration that takes power out of the 2024 election will be a “Second Trump Administration” in all ways save who sits behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. As is being shown daily in the current House of Representatives, there are no “moderates” left in the party. The 18 “Biden District Republicans” are voting in lockstep with the Taliban Twenty, the extremists’ extremists. Depending on those people to break with the Republican majority to support “sane” government is a fools’ errand.

The core question for 2024 and the next two or three presidential elections to follow is how the United States will function with two component “nations” that are moving further apart than they have been since 1860.

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