Red country mice and blue city mice
by digby
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece today examining the urban rural divide and came to the conclusion that country folk are different from city folk. Shocker, I know. Still, it's true, and it's probably a better way to think about the political divide than just Red State vs Blue State because even many of the Red state cites vote Democratic and the Blue state rural areas vote GOP. In statewide and national contests it comes down to the total population and how many of them are urban dwellers.
Unfortunately, due to House gerrymandering and the twin undemocratic features of our system --- the Senate and the Electoral College --- the country mice have a lot more individual clout than us city mice do.
Anyway, the divide is nicely illustrated with this graph:
The article features some colorful anecdotes that are fairly predictable but fun to read. But this actually made me go back and read it twice:
At the Rusty Jug, a barbecue restaurant decorated like an old-West saloon, owner Todd Leonard suspects beer sales could help his shaky bottom line. But home-brewed root beer remains the strongest drink on tap for diners enjoying the deep-fried ribs and deep-fried potato salad.
Mr. Leonard, age 45, is afraid one of his customers might drive home drunk and kill someone if he served alcohol, he said. He also worries his pastor and neighbors might lose respect for him.
Deep fried ribs and deep fried potato salad? And he's worried about people dying from a couple of beers?
(I'm just kidding really --- I don't judge other people's eating habits. And I'm sure deep fried ribs and deep fried potato salad tastes great. But yikes ...)
Anyway, rural America has a big demographic problem --- young people move away for jobs, education and the freedom of the modern world. Of course that's always been true, right? But this economy sure isn't helping to stem the bleeding. But for some reason those salt of the earth folks seem to believe it will all be fixed if only we stop taxing Wall Street investment bankers and wealthy CEOs.
What an awesome con job ...
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