What if the country balkanized along those lines?
You'd need a visa to enter Pennsylvania from Ohio.  Possibly two types of money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_state_vs._blue_state_divide

How about county to county?

It's different.

Bot gets his shotgun and cocks it.

So it is clear based on the map in 2004 which one needs to leave.

That is ironic.  Am I the only redstater on here.  I think someone on here was from North Carolina?

I am.
The state may be red, but I'm not.

(I'm not blue, either)

We had a civil war 170 years ago divided along slavery/states-rights lines. 

What if the current politcal partisanship got out of control, and the country fragmented?

The whole red state/blue state thing is absurd -- often the difference is a percentage or two.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/2004_US_elections_purple_counties.png

Much of America is purple, indicating a split. There isn't the grand split that people imagine.

Indeed. Blame the media.

That makes sense.  And I will argue there are a large majority that follow a liberal ideology that don't get out and vote.

I think we should drop this red/blue, republican/democrat and follow a Buddhist philosophy and not really have a government.  But people are too stupid for that, maybe over the course of a couple hundred years or so.  People need somebody to tell them what to do and then they argue because they don't like what is said.

> There isn't the grand split that people imagine.

What matters is the electoral votes. And there the split matters a lot.

"But people are too stupid for that, maybe over the course of a couple hundred years or so."

Hehe, Karl Marx predicted this long time ago :)

There is game theory to this. It's a natural stable equilibrium of the way our government is setup.

Because 51% means you can do whatever the fuck you want. So our political parties will always be nearly evenly matched, since they iteratively adjust their platform the minimum amount necessary to capture a slight majority.

The real Republicans, the one with the money and power, could really give a shit less about the Christians. If gay people were as big as Christians, the Republican's could easily be the party of money and gays.

"If gay people were as big as Christians, the Republican's could easily be the party of money and gays."

So what is the motivation of Democrats?  They don't want to control that power group either?

I believe the Democrats grudgingly added LGBT's to their mix to drive voter turn out for progressives who get excited about civil rights issues. Civil rights is part of their platform, but it was a whole lot more accessible to moderates when civil rights was about standing up for Black people. But the Republicans were on the losing side of that so they toned down their racism slightly to get closer to 51%.

Sorry, I had to delete my second paragraph, out of caution if I even break anonymity.

It's more of a big city tends to be blue, rural area tends to be red divide, rather than by state.  That's probably true in every country.

I really wish that the gays had waited to push their cause until after Bush was out of office.  We just handed the righties a perfect weapon to use to scare the fundamentalists.  With that plus abortion, the Dems are always fighting an uphill battle.

Abortion is tricky - every poll I see indicates a supermajority of USAians are pro-choice. So it's seriously a vocal minority banging the "abortion is murder" drum.

Unfortunately it's a very well-organized, vocal, and visible minority. :(

How ya gonna have a "horse-race", if you can't point out when a RED state has gone PURPLE, or a BLUE state is leaning RED, or...

Yeah, artificial excitement.  2004 was a fluke, where parts of the country went solidly red or blue.  2006 was much more representative.

Yes, when given the choice of either abortions are always legal or always illegal people will choose "pro-choice".

Funny - well, to me, at least - how often those who identify as "pro-life" also support the death penalty.

"We'll let you into this world, but only because we can take you out"

Yeah, because it's not about the "sanctity of life".  It's about forcing irresponsible people to have to live with the consequences of their irresponsibility.

Oh, POOR irresponsible people should be forced that way.  Because anybody with any money at all can afford to send their daughter to Switzerland where abortion is legal.  Because RICH people who can afford to buy their way out of their irresponsibility aren't really being irresponsible.

Capital Punishment laws make perfect sense in that frame of reference -- more accountability.

No, when they have a chance they will even punish those who seek abortion oversea.

It won't stop them if you commit "drug crimes" overseas.

> Capital Punishment laws make perfect sense in that frame of reference -- more accountability.

This is a laugh. Republicans don't want accountability at all. They want to enforce their will. Has the president been accountable for any of his crimes? Is creating a debt that will last for your childrens childrens children being accountable? No. It's giving yourself exactly what you want when you want it. I want money, lower taxes and spend. I want other people to behave how I want, so make a law.

People are accountable when you let them decide and live with their decisions. It's called freedom. Accountability isn't a republican judging and punishing while hiding behind childish justifications.

There has been no more irresponsible and unaccountable group of people in this nation's history.

Too bad the Republicans under Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.

"The Republicans denounced the northern anti-war Democrats as disloyal Copperheads and won enough War Democrats to maintain their majority in 1862, and reelect Lincoln by a landslide in 1864. During Reconstruction, 1865-1877, how to deal with the ex-Confederates and the freed slaves or Freedmen were the major issues. "

Ah, if only we had the 1800 Northern Republicans, all this would be so much easier.

Instead, the Dixiecrats all went Republican around 1964, and ever since the Republicans have been the party of anti-Civil Rights, Separate But Equal, Jim Crow, Anti-Affirmative Action.

It was Kennedy and Johnson who did the Civil Rights thing, not the Republicans.

Bot, that happened two centuries ago.

The parties have more or less traded names since then in a sort of Orwellian twist of Eastasian/Eurasian nomenclature.

Most sports switch sides midway. No news there.

Are you suggesting that we are peaking?

Or I guess, already did... makes sense.