Suppose instead that Southern politicians had decided not to leave the Union but to stay and fight—in the halls of Congress. Suppose that they had pursued a politics of obstruction, a political counterpart of trench warfare—blocking every measure, stalling every policy, jamming the works of government to prevent even appointments of federal postmasters in Southern states. What might have happened?The result might well have been a cycle of frustration and resistance that would have made today’s brawls look like child’s play.
This is all moot because the real divide in today's America is not Red vs. Blue States, but Rural vs. Urban, as the article, Red State, Blue City: How the Urban-Rural Divide Is Splitting America, clearly shows: "Partisan lines that once fell along regional borders can increasingly be found at the county level":
The new political divide is a stark division between cities and what remains of the countryside. Not just some cities and some rural areas, either -- virtually every major city (100,000-plus population) in the United States of America has a different outlook from the less populous areas that are closest to it. The difference is no longer about where people live, it's about how people live: in spread-out, open, low-density privacy -- or amid rough-and-tumble, in-your-face population density and diverse communities that enforce a lower-common denominator of tolerance among inhabitants.The voting data suggest that people don't make cities liberal -- cities make people liberal.
Check out these voting maps from 2012 if you don't believe me. Suddenly the Red States don't look so red, do they? Even Paul Ryan admitted it in November 2012.
This truth has tremendous implications for urban development and retail politics alike. If conservative politicians realize -- and I think they do -- that they cannot win over America's cities, then their policy choices will favor rural communities and suburban sprawl over urbanization. But if conservatives try to fight the urbanization trend, either by gerrymandering or by depriving cities of the infrastructure that they need to flourish, then they'll be swimming upstream, to say the least, against global economic trends. And in the process they'll also be restraining America's economic and social dynamism. I put nothing past their selfish desire for political power.
By R.B. Berstein
March 11, 2013 | Daily Beast
By Josh Kron
November 30, 2012 | Atlantic
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