A deeply divided nation?

We keep hearing the mantra that America is a "deeply divided nation", torn between the "progressive" view of what America should be and the "radical right wing conservatives". Nothing could be further from the truth, obviously, but that doesn't stop the pundits from repeating the canard ad nauseum ad infinitum.

Looking at a county by county election map provided by USA Today, tells a different story. It appears that America is a conservative country with a few outlying posts of "progressiveness". Even in California and New York, those supposed bastions of liberalism and Democrats, the "progressives" are confined to the Pacific coastal areas and the waters of the Hudson bay respectively. True, there are scattered islands of blue throughout the country, concentrated around metropolitan areas and our borders with Mexico and Canada (and what does that say about open immigration?), but the country is almost solidly red otherwise.

What strikes me is that my parent's generation was fiercely loyal to the Democratic party primarily because FDR got them through some of the worst years America had ever had. It didn't matter who the politician was. So long as they were a Democrat, they got their vote. That generation is dying now and its children are split into two camps; the "radicals" of the sixties and "the rest" of us.

Many of my black friends also have great difficulty pulling the lever for a Republican even though our views are very similar. Their parents passed down to them the reality of their times, when Republican leadership in the South meant that families on the edge had to make do with less (or at least that's what the Democrats claimed to be true.)

Those times have changed. Republican leadership is generally more sensitive to the plight of the less fortunate, although they still believe that education and opportunity are the solution to the problem, not massive federal assistance. Blacks are moving in increasing numbers into the middle class, becoming members of Bush's "ownership society". Decreased taxes, strong defense and a less meddlesome government are becoming more attractive to them now.

In this election, Bush got 44% of the Hispanic and Asian vote and 11% of the black vote. (All of this assumes, of course, that the exit polls are accurate. I use the data simply because it's all we have, without endorsing it or insisting that it's 100% accurate.) He also increased his share of the Jewish vote, a traditionally solid Democratic bloc.

What does all this mean? I think, if President Bush is successful in establishing democracy in Iraq, as he has already begun to do in Afghanistan, and democracy begins to spread through the middle east, as he thinks it will, that he may become the "FDR" of the young generation. If so, his legacy could be years of Republican domination on the political scene reminscent of the legacy of FDR.