reading about the lead up to the civil war and it’s insane about how it’s all the same shit, all over again. a party of petty tyrants openly disdainful of democracy that threw a massive fit over merely being tolerated rather than actively indulged by the rest of the country.
— William B. Fuckley (@opinonhaver) July 6, 2022
English expat, now living in DC:
Canadian journalist:
Americans have never been as liberal, tolerant, nonviolent and worldly-minded as they are today, and an ever-larger majority is growing measurably more so year by year.
This is in stark contrast to their institutions. We’re witnessing a chronic mismatchhttps://t.co/ANe9XJFba5
— Doug Saunders (@DougSaunders) July 3, 2022
… Throughout this century, a growing majority of Americans have become dramatically more liberal in their views and politics, more tolerant, less distrustful of outsiders and difference, and less prone to crime and violence.
As recently as 2016, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center, a majority said that in order to be “truly American,” it was necessary to be a Christian and be born in the United States. Today, for the first time, a majority of Americans – 65 per cent – feel that foreign-born or non-Christian neighbours are just as American as anyone else.
Likewise, in the 1990s, 65 per cent of Americans felt immigration should be decreased, according to the Cato Institute; today, it’s only 33 per cent, and only 9 per cent feel there should be none. A majority now believe that immigrants come to America to improve things, and that their ability to immigrate should be a human right.
The belief that people of the same sex should be allowed to marry – a good indicator of wider tolerance – was held by only 27 per cent of Americans at the end of the 20th century, according to annual Gallup polls; today, it has hit 70 per cent, including a majority of Republican Party voters and of seniors…
Here we see the problem Americans face: As a big majority of them have become more tolerant, their governing and legal institutions have been captured by a fringe minority who are very much not so. It’s as if the overall climate has improved, but today’s weather is terrible.
Even though most voting Americans say they lean toward the Democratic Party, and the Republicans have not had enough voter support to win a presidential majority since 2004, the Supreme Court has become packed with a majority of justices, from a fringe circle rarely recognized by mainstream legal scholarship, who were appointed by Republicans…
It’s led to a Congress, held by a Democratic majority, that’s unable to respond by passing laws, because too much geography – rather than population – has been captured by this minority.
This growing disjunction cannot hold. The collision will more likely happen peacefully: The majority will soon be large enough to prevent that fringe from capturing appointments and seats.
But as we saw in this week’s congressional hearings into the Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt on Capitol Hill, it does not take much for members of that fringe to turn to violent ends – especially at moments when they realize that the American people are not remotely on their side.
Eugene Robinson (American journalist of color), at the Washington Post:
… It is comforting to believe there is still more that unites us as Americans than divides us. I can allow myself to hope that is true. But it is hard even for me, an optimist by nature, to deny that the trend line is heading in the wrong direction, toward sharper division and greater strife.
And it is impossible for me to pretend that this conflict is anything but asymmetrical. The Republican Party is trying to realize a revanchist vision of America in which much of the progress toward a fairer, more equitable society that we’ve seen over the past half-century is rolled back. The Democratic Party is mostly trying — and failing, thanks to a Supreme Court painstakingly packed by the GOP — to hold on to an increasingly diverse nation’s hard-won gains.
The court’s recent rulings on abortion, guns and the environment all come in defiance of public opinion, according to polls. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is fond of citing another Lincoln quote: “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.”…
Many conservatives who are antiabortion and pro-gun, I realize, see what the Supreme Court and Republican-run state legislatures are doing as a necessary corrective to the direction the country has been heading. But there is an asymmetry. The history of the United States has been a long, hard struggle to make the stirring words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution apply to all of us — Black people, women, the LGBTQ community, Latinos and others who have been marginalized. Freedoms that originally applied only to White men who owned property have been made universal, at least in theory. Laws and rulings that attempt to claw back some of those freedoms are ahistorical attempts to un-ring a still-resounding bell.
Americans who want to live in a nation where women have autonomy over their own bodies, where appalling levels of gun violence are not seen as the price of freedom, where science is valued over superstition and where faith is a matter of personal belief rather than public imposition are no less passionate in our views than those who disagree. And we have numbers and history on our side. A minority that wants to take the nation backward cannot, in the end, prevail. But the coming months and years of struggle over the soul of this nation will be arduous and angst-ridden. One thing Lincoln never said was that the American experiment would be easy.
Who says TV isn’t educational?
This makes me think of the Great Partition in India, which is being shown currently in Ms. Marvel, and how it displaced 15 million people, 1 million were killed, and the legacy of it is still felt to this day, 75 years later. I think we should just work hard to save our country. https://t.co/4GtJF2Nhce
— Mandice Aiston, a dude, a bro, an actual man (@CandiceAiston) July 2, 2022
Burnspbesq
The Constitution was designed to prevent oppression of minorities by a majority. It’s doubtful that the Framers ever envisioned that those institutions could be co-opted by a radical minority to oppress the majority—but that’s where we are.
Kathleen
Anne: I want to thank you and rikyrah for the uplifting clips of Madame VP. It was so refreshing. I’m sick of the hatred and disrespect leveled against her.
Sister Golden Bear
The Framers also never envisioned that the Constitution would be set in stone for all eternity. In fact, they fully expected the Constitution to be completely rewritten someday. And thus “original intent” eats itself.
Sister Golden Bear
One thing I William B. Fuckley gets wrong is that it’s not merely that:
Rather it’s — as Lincoln noted in his Cooper Union speech — that they’re throwing a massive fit because we don’t “distinctly and expressly affirm” their pretty tyranny.
Daoud bin Daoud
California will never join Talibama. More likely there will be two large Blue federations, on the West Coast and the Northeast. Goddess only knows what happens to Illinois and Blue cities in Red States. Whatever happens will be bloody and nasty.
lollipopguild
@Sister Golden Bear: There is nothing about steam boats and railroads much less airplanes and nukes yet suddenly the country has to be run as if it was 1850 all over again.
raven
You have to tell people who Eugene Robinson is????
raven
@Daoud bin Daoud: Let it begin here!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
as far as dividing up the country: Everybody’s gonna have to move to the Upper Midwest where the water is before too long
@Burnspbesq: Someone on twitter quote from Gouverneur Morris dismissing the absurdity of the notion that any new states would ever have more power than the Big 13.
Burnspbesq
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The Northeast is also likely to be mostly ok, water-wise, although significant investment will be needed to keep the infrastructure up to snuff.
I’m only half kidding when I say that someday Syracuse will be the avocado and almond capital of the world.
craigie
@Daoud bin Daoud:
For a while I have felt like the east coast and the west coast would become their own tjhings, and join Canada as new provinces or maybe just in alliance. The values are similar enough…
Villago Delenda Est
The reactionary scum of the Federalist Society, and their parasite overclass backers, need to be removed from power, across the board. Period. Until this happens, we will continue to teeter on the cusp of Civil War.
Spanky
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Are we talking football again?
When the populace rises up against the institutions, that’s not a civil war, that’s a revolution.
HumboldtBlue
Sheesh, we have seen some massive and destructive fires here in California over the past decade, and now we see similar fires in southern France and the Iberian Peninsula.
Farmer had the clothes burned from his back as he fled a raging wildfire.
Ohio Mom
@Sister Golden Bear: Isn’t a constitutional convention a right-wing fantasy? Well, maybe fantasy isn’t the right word, I think they are quietly working on it.
Whatever they come up with, it will be a disaster.
sab
@raven: I am so very old I know already. Very smart Black journalist who grew up in an SC town with reknowned HBCU, where he said “we knew all the white people had more money, but we knew we were more intelligent.”
Spanky
This go-round, the opposing sides aren’t going to be neatly geographically bifurcated. Your neighbors are already sizing you up, so it would behoove you to take some time to assess your local neighborhood, and get to know who your friends are.
Matt McIrvin
The West Coast is bluer than the Northeast.
But the two sides are mixed through every city, town and village in America. I don’t want anything like a new American divorce to happen because I have no intention of being a mass shooter, and shooting millions of our neighbors is what it would entail.
sab
@Spanky: We all had yard signs, some of them pointed with hostility. Hopefully nobody is poisonimg neighbor cats, but lines have been drawn. I put up a few tiny American flags to keep RWNJ tiny terriers from peeing on my roses. Manners should have worked, bit where manners failed PATRIOTiSM PREVAILED. Tiny right wing dogs don’t pee on American flags.
Omnes Omnibus
Oh yippee! It’s the “Break up the US because that will certainly cause no problems like who gets the gets the nukes and how do you move the 40 or so percent of people who disagree with new government to the other place without a level of bloodshed and violence that would make the Partition of India look like a Sunday picnic” chorus. Prenez un grip, kids.
Matt McIrvin
@Ohio Mom: The problem with a constitutional convention is that, if it’s conducted according to the existing Constitution’s prescriptions, the power to amend it through that process is still lopsidedly granted to the same people who hold minority power under the existing Constitution. So there’s no way to do with it what we’d want it to do.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus: You saw the last tweet in my post, right?
Too many Americans have been very badly misinformed about our own Civil War. If some of them watch a superhero tv show and think Woah, that partition stuff seems hella unpleasant to live through!, well…
sab
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Everyone in CA will live in apartments because not enough water to have lawns. My sister in San Diego lives in a condo where a lovely old magnolia tree is expirimg because she can’t water it.
My yard in Ohio is full of wild trees ( Walnuts, Wild Cherry, Buckeye, Alder, Oak) that are eating our yards. Grow into trees, huge trees, if not timely chopped.
Water is wonderful.
Matt McIrvin
@Anne Laurie: Well, a superhero TV show was what got people to notice that the Tulsa massacre was a thing, so I suppose there’s precedent.
Mike in NC
Max Boot has noted that the US House hasn’t grown since 1912 and the Supreme Court since 1869. Absurd.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: I was talking about the commenters in this thread.
Betty Cracker
I have zero patience for people who advocate for partition. It’s unworkable because of the rural/urban divide, which exists in EVERY STATE, including Mississippi and Alabama. I’ve been to rural California and Oregon, which seemed as overrun with wingnuts as any Southern state.
Sometimes I think if democracy can just hang in there for another 10 years or so, the GOP’s minority rule plot will fail because the rural/urban populations will shift sufficiently to tip big states over and neutralize the GOP’s structural advantage.
Here are 2020 vote totals in Texas, which has 38 electoral votes:
Trump: 5,890,347
Biden: 5,259,126
I mean, that’s not close, but it’s not an insurmountable gap either. If Republicans lose Texas, they are completely screwed in the electoral college, which is probably why they’re gerrymandering like there’s no tomorrow and entertaining batshit notions like the “independent state legislature” theory. The question is will we reach that tipping point before they turn us into Hungary.
danielx
@sab:
I used to think of Indiana as a place to get out of, as opposed to a place in which to live, and I say that as a more-or-less lifelong resident. Due to gerrymandering and an overall Republican-leaning populace, state government is a wretched hive of scum and villainy (to steal a phrase), but climate and water-wise…it ain’t bad, barring water quality in certain areas. This has not gone unnoticed, as farmland is changing hands a lot. There are a lot of places where you could plant bootlaces and bigod you’d harvest bootlaces.
There’s a lot wrong with it, but your chances of being roasted or running out of water are pretty slim.
Old Man Shadow
There can’t be any partitioning.
Red states and Blue states might be useful for political purposes, but it’s shit for actual demographics.
California is overwhelmingly politically blue, but we have large sections of empty land that are overwhelmingly red. Texas has huge cities full of blue voters. Dividing us up is gonna result in 50 states with prolonged rebel uprisings.
No neat and simple solution.
Not to mention that suddenly being cut off from blue state money would result in the red portion of the land being dirt poor and probably lead to war with the blue states anyway.
RSA
I hate these recurring break-up-the-US-along-geographical-lines hot takes. Over 5 million registered Democrats live in Texas, more than the entire population of all but a few blue states on the East Coast. Sucks to be born in the South, I guess.
MomSense
@Kathleen:
I made the mistake of trying to engage with some young progressives on Twitter. There is a contingent of Sandernistas who are completely lost. It’s infuriating.
Matt McIrvin
@RSA: The civil rights movement was about the rights of the people who are currently the Democratic minority voters in a whole bunch of mostly red states.
The people who want to break up the US are looking to write that whole effort off as a loss.
Spanky
@RSA: Along those same lines, I continually refer to where I live as “Confederate Southern Maryland” for a reason. And not historical.
Blue states ain’t all that blue.
Roger Moore
@Old Man Shadow:
A very edifying statistic from the 2020 election is that there were more Trump voters in California than in Texas, and more Biden voters in Texas than in New York. We consider a state to be out of reach when one party wins 60% of the vote there, but that still means 40% of the voters are unhappy with the outcome.
UncleEbeneezer
satby
@danielx: I still think of it as a place to get out of, but I’d just move back to Illinois if I did
Old Man Shadow
@Roger Moore: Yep. And how will all those Trump voters react if the California government opts to create the New California Republic?
Not well.
Paul Begala's Pink Tie
@raven: maybe it’s to differentiate from the retired Bishop Gene Robinson? That was what I thought…
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s not a coincidence. The New Deal was built on social programs that favored Whites, and there are a lot of racists who would still like it that way. We pay a lot of attention to the people on the right who were willing to destroy those social programs to keep minorities from benefiting, but there’s still a substantial contingent on the left who are unhappy about the situation and are only willing to let minorities benefit on sufferance.
Jerzy Russian
I think the two countries should be named Smartlandia and Stupidia. Smartlandia should include parts of both coasts.
frosty fred
@Spanky: I no longer live there, but there’s a lot of history too.
Splitting Image
@Mike in NC:
The last time the U.S. House was expanded, Iowa had a larger population than California.
It occurs to me that one consequence of keeping the House at the same number and redistricting every ten years is that a stable state can feel like a declining state due to the ongoing loss of electoral votes. Iowa’s population has actually grown since 1912, but not very much. California’s population has grown exponentially in the same time, and there was much more space for people to settle.
So while California has gone from 13 electoral votes to 55, Iowa has gone from 13 to 6. Aside from giving the G.O.P. the opportunity for redistricting shenanigans every ten years, it occurs to me that this process makes it easier for them to tell their voters that the “coastal elites” are taking something away from them because in the House and the electoral college, at least, they literally are.
danielx
@Spanky:
Truth – where I live is relatively liberal (for Indiana) and reasonably cosmopolitan, due to the proximity of a Roche Diagnostics complex locally and Eli Lilly in downtown Indianapolis, both of which employ a lot of highly educated immigrants. There’s a mosque and madrassa for chrissakes, neither of which (amazingly enough) have been burned down or vandalized, at least to the best of my knowledge. Sort of like Atlanta that way; an island of sanity in a sea of redneck madness. Flip side is that within twenty miles there are any number of places where having a Biden sticker on your car is an invitation to getting your car keyed, windows broke, or getting shot at or otherwise injured.
The people who would do such things are not going away, they hold all too much political power, and they’re getting madder and madder. Maybe GOING madder and madder would be a better way to put it. They have a shitload of AR- and AK-type guns which they are not going to give up under any circumstances, laws be damned.
Those who want to go back to the 1950s are relatively liberal by comparison with those who want to go back to the 1850s, not that there’s much to choose between them. They want to return to a time when women, children and people of color knew their place and by god kept to it, or else. I don’t know how things will come out, but I’m not optimistic.
SamIAm
@Omnes Omnibus:
THANK YOU!
SamIAm
@Anne Laurie:
Twitter and TV are not the gauge of anything.
Both are sewers, toxins for the mind and you’re spreading the contagion by repeating it.
danielx
Talk about futility…..
Dear Liberals: Come On Down!
My inferior understanding prevents my grasping the unquestionable soundness of this idea.
SamIAm
@Betty Cracker:
Yay! Another rational, reality based person.
Thank you Betty!
Scout211
Just announced, testifying in person in the next exciting episode of “J6, the Hearings” will be former Trump National Security Council advisor, Nathanial Pottinger .And former White House aide Sarah Matthews will also be appearing in person.
Steve in the ATL
@danielx:
I nominate this for understatement of the year!
Matt McIrvin
I do think these arguments would not work on many of the people advocating for breaking up the US, because they figure an apocalyptic bloodbath is coming anyway. If the alternative is just the Republicans slaughtering us all to depopulate the US of Democrats, then, yes, partition is better.
PaulB
I’m puzzled by the reaction to the “we need to break up the US” takes, as the anger seems a bit extreme for what seems to me to be just people letting off some steam. It’s akin to the “I’m moving to Canada if Trump wins” movement. I don’t take either group seriously.
Please, just let it go; it’s not worth the trouble to get irritated and to point out the obvious.
GregMulka
@Burnspbesq: I’ve come to the opinion that the constitution was written to keep the continental aristocracy in power. The only tyranny of the majority they were trying to prevent was that of the non-slave owning class telling the slave owning class they couldn’t rape their way to wealth anymore.
schrodingers_cat
WTF? Do you even know the scale of mass murder and human misery that the Partition gave rise to? There is no need to minimize the Partition of British India to prove your rhetorical point.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
“I have zero patience for people who advocate for partition. It’s unworkable because of the rural/urban divide, which exists in EVERY STATE, including Mississippi and Alabama. I’ve been to rural California and Oregon, which seemed as overrun with wingnuts as any Southern state.”
This.
There are rural areas not that far from me in eastern LA County that are rather red, and the primary voting results from my area had an unreasonable red tint.
This country is made up of liberals and people who think progress is the the same as regression because they think they should get ahead but anyone that isn’t paler than bright white should be allowed to be. The liberals are winning most of the wars (elections!) than the other side but of course the other side has scammed the country and used every point of entry into power that was designed in for that express purpose almost 2 1/2 centuries ago. Money talks and every thing else takes a back seat, and always has. It is going to come to a head and it won’t be pretty and I suspect it will happen sooner than later, unless we can win at the ballot box this time around and use the law and history to make changes to protect democracy.
We need better and more representation so that the senate, almost always made up of power people – those that are acceptable to or belong to the money class has less power and the people’s house has more. We need better representation in the house – it has to be expanded. The original idea was normal expansion but conservatives changed that by restricting the size of the house. We need to expand the SC. I like 15 but with 13 second level courts that would be an acceptable/reasonable number. Would a bigger house make it harder to run? I find that to be an asinine concept, considering the current house.
patrick II
@Betty Cracker:
The Texas attorney general has claimed that his suppression of mail-in votes saved Texas for Trump. That is probably not true, but if they had been as liberal as many states during the pandemic, it would have surely been closer.
docNC
I can’t believe that stuff from Mississippi drives what can and can not happen in the United States of America. A huge fucking taker state tells us all what to do.
Let’s cut the taker states off. dot com
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: I had no intention of minimizing it. I think that, as horrific as it was, a partition of the US would be far worse in terms of violence and bloodshed. YMMV but I was not minimize what happened.
Scout211
And in news that will shock no one, the the Capitol Police announced that the US attorney’s office declined to prosecute the nine people who were arrested for unlawful entry of the Capitol on June 16, 2022.
So Stephen Colbert’s team is in the clear. No surprise.
Baud
I don’t mind fighting a bloody partition if that’s what it takes. Just don’t ask me to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Matt McIrvin
@PaulB: I take it seriously because, generally, I take the threat of an impending second Civil War seriously. I think that major large-scale political violence in the US is a real possibility and that we might need to prepare for it.
James E Powell
@PaulB:
I agree that the reactions can be a little overdone considering that no one takes “Break up the
CanadiensUnited States!” laments seriously.But you have to admit it’s tiresome & unhelpful. Okay, you don’t have to admit it, but it would be nice.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: That may not be your intention but that is certainly the effect. I think you are saying this because you have no idea of how truly horrific it was in terms of lives lost and the mass displacement it caused.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
The good news is that, per Article V, a Constitutional convention only bypasses the Congress’ role in ratification of Amendments. Either way, they need approval by the legislatures of 3/4 of the states. So 13 blue states can block whatever crazy-ass shit a right-wing Constitutional convention came up with.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: And that just means that nothing ever happens, which is better than bad things happening but it’s not good either.
Uncle Cosmo
@craigie: Um, been there & done that, 18 years ago…
Uncle Cosmo
@Spanky: Politically, MD is a rather stubby blue claw-type wrench with a solid butt floating in a pond of red. The claw end is Monkey & PG counties, the shaft Howard and SW Baltco, the butt Baltimore City.
West of the Rockies
@Baud:
Seriously, very wry and funny.
gene108
India, at the time of partition, had approximately 340 to 350 million people.
The death toll due to Partition exceeded losses of several Allied nations during WW2, including the USA.
The bloodletting was done with knives, clubs, and other crude weapons.
If a partition of the USA happened, with all the guns right-wingers have and all the anger they have pent up, it’d be a massacre as people try to flee cities in Missouri for Illinois, and god knows where people in cities in Kentucky, Tennessee and South Carolina would flee. North Carolina would be in all out war between rural areas and its cities and university towns. I could see the same sort of thing happening in Virginia.
Partition is one of the dumbest ideas out there. It is mind bogglingly stupid.
The real issue the USA has is how to make Democrats competitive in states that used to be competitive in 20 years ago, like North and South Dakota or Ohio. Their shift to being solidly Republican has a distorting effect on federal representation.
craigie
@Uncle Cosmo: Ah yes, totally forgot about that.
Kelly
Rural Oregonian here: Yep, lots of right wing crazies out here in the sticks. My precinct went 70/30 Trump in 2016. In 2020 after 4 years of cruelty and incompetency went 75/25 Trump. Populous blue dots save the state. My old SE Portland precinct went 92/8 Biden in 2020. The rural nuts love to hate Portland. Many small blue dots from Ashland down by the California border to Hood River up on the Washington border. Bend is a really interesting case. The bigger it grew the bluer it got. Once a cowboys and loggers town with a a bit tourism now it’s liberal Jamie McLeod-Skinner’s base.
gene108
@Splitting Image:
Arizona and New Mexico had not yet qualified for statehood.
The 1911 redistricting law set the seats in the House at 433 for the existing 46 states and 1 seat for Arizona and 1 for NM, when they became states later in the decade.
SamIAm
Apparently MSNBC has obtained a copy of a memo from Merrick Garland that extends Bill Barr’s 2020 rule that no one working at the Justice Department can open any investigations or prosecutions of anyone running for president or anyone working for a presidential candidate without explicit written approval from the Attorney General.
Now why the hell would he revive something from Barr’s mal-administration? This makes no sense given the Jan. 6th committee’s work.
Why would he kneecap them? I’m hoping it’s wrong.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Please see gene108’s comment.
Jay
@SamIAm:
how many Trumpists still work in the Federal AG’s bureau?
Scout211
@SamIAm: I wish that rule was around when Hillary was running for president. Comey’s last minute announcement would not have happened.
There is more than one way to look at this, though.
ETA: preventing the FBI from investigating candidates for president to affect the outcome of an election is crucial. Making sure it goes through the AG first hopefully will prevent rogue FBI agents with a political agenda from interfering in an election. Like was done to Hillary.
But it’s Trump. And we all want him prosecuted. So I share your frustration.
Kent
I am of mixed mind about all of this.
I have rabid MAGA relatives who tell me that the fury is building to a white-hot pitch out there in “real America” but when I ask them what SPECIFICALLY people are angry about, like give me an actual specific list of grievances it is mostly crickets or hemming and hawing about stuff like Covid restrictions on churches or critical race theory that and other nonsensical Fox News idiocy.
When I see actual right wing manifestations of this supposed “rage” I mostly see stuff like the pathetic tiki torch parade by guys dressed like Best Buy clerks in polos and khakis. Or the pathetic truckers protest that was supposed to close down Washington DC but ended up with some lonely trucks circling the beltway aimlessly and getting stuck behind bicycles when they decided to “brave the belly of the beast”
The biggest manifestation was, of course, 1/6 but that took the herculean efforts of a deranged president and his thousands of willing enablers to pull off. It is quite clear that it was nothing organic or grass roots.
Mostly this is about demographics. The red/blue split is an rural/urban one and states that are rapidly urbanizing like Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado are trending blue. Those that are not urbanizing like West Virginia and Wyoming are trending more red. I expect North Carolina will be the next state to tip blue. Wisconsin might be slipping the other direction as it doesn’t really have fast growing cities. Milwaukee is not growing like say Minneapolis and Madison just isn’t that big. It certainly isn’t growing like Phoenix or Atlanta.
TheTruffle
The civil war never really ended, didn’t it?
Some days, I suspect that the final national breakup will happen in the next 10-15 years. Spare me the “we’re all in this together” talk. That isn’t true in America, and hasn’t been for years.
Regardless of how anyone feels about the idea, I have a feeling some sort of national divorce is coming.
At best, we could hope for what happened with Czechoslovakia, where the split was relatively painless
@Kent: Wisconsin is a purple state with a progressive tradition. It also has Ben Wikler, head of the state Dem party, who is really good.
SamIAm
@Jay:
Fantastic question, given the infestation of the Secret Service, the FBI, and other investigative departments I’d say a sickeningly large percentage
Kent
Right, but it used to be part of the famous blue wall and elected lots of progressives. It seems like it is slipping the other direction compared to say MN or my own home state of WA which was more purple decades ago and is now solidly blue but also much more urban
My own pet explanation for that is the cities in WI really aren’t growing. The two big cities that attract young Wisconsinites are Minneapolis and Chicago and they are both in neighboring states.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I suspect it was, and for whatever reason– it was an FBI investigation, not a DoJ prosecution, some hair-splitting like that– Comey didn’t feel bound by the rule. That thing Maddow read out oh-so-dramatically (and I’m a fan) sounded like boilerplate to me.
Is/was there a 1/6 hearing tomorrow afternoon, or is Thursday evening the next event?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: Scott Walker was the darling of Fox News, if memory serves, in between Chris Christie and Marco “The Savior” Rubio.
Trying to remember if Tommy Thompson was considered a “moderate”? Made a quick google to see if he were a never-trumped, and it looks like the answer to both is “no”
Looks like TT was considering another run for Gov but opted out. I wonder if he was looking for an endorsement.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: and the usual suspects are keening and wailing about Garland’s betrayal. Nice work, Rache.
Meanwhile:
Maybe she was tying flies when Steve Benen posted that
SamIAm
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Rachel Maddow repeatedly said that it was standard practice for the Justice department to avoid the appearance of interfering with the election process. She made it abundantly clear ” the bulk of the memo is boilerplate practice during Presidential elections”.
What was NOT boilerplate was the explicit call out to Bill Barr’s rule especially with the January 6th committee’s work.
I’m not saying Garland is actually halting investigations. But it sure as hell gives the Republicans all kinds of ammunition that when indictments start they can point to this memo and shriek.
TheTruffle
@Kent:
Wisconsin also elected Joe McCarthy. I’m really hoping Wikler keeps up the good work.
SamIAm
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Apparently Garland walks on water.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Phys.org – Did Gonorrhea Give us Grandparents?:
Worth a click.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SamIAm: well, that’s a very rational response, not at all petulant or childish
Princess
@craigie: leave Canada alone. It has enough to do without cleaning up the mess Americans have made of their country. Canada is no more a part of the aunties States — any part of it — than Ukraine is part of Russia.
Scout211
Thursday at 8pm ET is the next one.
https://january6th.house.gov/
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: Also… I like Canada, have known many Canadians admire many values of Canadians… but Canada is still not my country. The United States is, as grotesque as I often find it.There’s a lot we don’t understand on a gut level about each others’ politics.
Urban Suburbanite
@TheTruffle: If that happens, there are going to be at least 4 (maybe 5, if the Mormons decide to go hard) different nations. And they will be fighting over water shortly after.
NotMax
‘@TheTruffle
Every coin has two sides. Wisconsin gave us both Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette and Joe McCarthy.
Go figure.
Gretchen
I get so tired of the people who want to just abandon the middle of the country. I live in a county in Kansas that went for Biden and we have had a Democratic rep for the last 4 years. On the other hand, 3 of my 4 kids have lit out for the coast, and people are busy telling them they should stay there because Kansas and the middle of the country is a lost cause.
Violet
I used to joke that we should have let the south secede and my son would respond that then we’d have Pakistan on our border. Even Massachusetts had 32% voting for TFG.
Kristine
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’ve thought about leaving Illinois many times–I love mountains and well, kinda flat around here. Friends have considered moving for different reasons. Now when we talk about it, the list of advantages to remaining here is not insignificant. A blue state with water.
TheTruffle
@Kristine: Come to New York. We have lots of mountains.
Having lived in this state most of my life, I’m pretty annoyed when people shit on it. New York has problems, but we also have lots of things going for it. Lots of biological and geographical diversity. We have mountains AND beaches AND valleys. Something for everyone. Wheeeeee! We have the world’s tenth-largest economy. We have museums, an extensive and great public university system, farms, wineries, scenic driving, and a really interesting history. NYC is wonderful, but there is more to the state than just the Big Apple.
Oh, and our state song is a disco song.
https://youtu.be/ptdQUJEEpyM
J R in WV
As I sit and read B-J in WV I listen to the rain on the roof again for the Nth day in a row. Plus flash flooding in steeper parts of the mountains, like western Va. SW WV is really steep which makes excess rainfall potentially deadly.
I like the rain, it prevents forest fires, which is a good thing. I remember when drought stricken E TN had a forest fire, it ate Gatlinburg and Dolly Wood both up in no time. It can happen anywhere, any time.
At least this rain is slow and gentle.
misterpuff
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, Calls for Partition can’t address the multitude of problems in forced migration.
I think we’ll end up like Neal Stephenson described in his novel Fall, or Dodge in Hell where there is a tacit truce between the red and blue states to stay together but on the ground the states are run by the ideology. Obviously, most of the blues “fly over” the reds but if you have to drive through, the blues have to stay on the interstates (if you get off I-70, you are subject to their laws, their militias and religious extremists) Ugly future.
I hope Betty is right about demographic shifts but confederates seem to be genetic.
TheTruffle
@misterpuff: On the other hand, some of those “flyover” states are bluish purple (Minnesota, for one) and Illinois is blue.