U.S. Voters Are Red, Blue and Messy

As long as I have lived in Canada (having arrived in Vancouver from the US in 1969), I have never ceased to be amazed when Canadians say, "Americans are aggressive," or "Americans are ignorant of Canada," or "Americans are.… Everything Bad."  Actually this is a form of bigotry that few Canadians would apply to other nationalities or minorities in their midst, but I will let that go here. The point I would make is that the United States is a huge and extremely diverse country, a loose container for all sorts of different kinds of divergent peoples.

Despite appearances of sameness represented on the media, endless malls and countless McDonalds, this diversity is not decreasing but multiplying. In fact, Americans are anything but unitary and do not share a set of values, although they do agree to contend certain divisive issues more than others.

Regionalism remains a central divider in the United States, though race is even bigger and so is class, something Americans find hard to discuss directly.  I would argue that New York City is as at least as far from rural Alabama as Vancouver is from rural Quebec, culturally speaking.  Seattle is much more like Vancouver than it is like Miami.

Parallels with Quebec

Political pundits call the sectional divide the Blue States (hereafter BS) and the Red States (RS), named from the electoral maps used on election nights--red for southern and western, essentially Republican states, tinted red when they vote Republican; blue for the northern tier of essentially Democrat states when they vote that way. As we saw in 2000, this divide is almost 50/50, and it is deep.

The RS/BS parallel for Canada is Quebec and the rest of Canada.  Thus almost all modern Canadian Prime Ministers have been Quebec-Canadians, the theory being that to be elected a good showing in Quebec is a prerequisite, while a non-Quebecois has little chance in Quebec. Paul Martin, descendent of Franco-Ontarians is for some reason not clear to me considered almost a Quebecker in Quebec, and Brian Mulroney, a Montreal Irishman who, like Martin, was perfectly comfortable in French, amounted to being another crypto-Quebecker. Hence the bilingual Bernard Lord, premier of a province with a big French speaking Acadian population, would have been the prize Tory candidate. Harper et al will never do.

So back the red and the blue and who resonates with whom in the States. The in-your-face Evangelical religiosity of George W. Bush is hardcore RS; Howard Dean's inability to locate the Book of Job in the Bible (he placed it in the New Testament), is certainly BS. Texas drawling Bush contrasts with New England sounding John Kerry. There is some irony here as the Bush family is highly patrician and from Connecticut, and Bush is a Yale grad--High BS--but he plays up the Midland, Texas in his past and denies his class and regional origins. 

RS are more Protestant, especially evangelical, more Anglo-Saxon and black, less Catholic and immigrant. They are more military-minded, especially as the armed forces are stationed there. They are also growing more rapidly as the BS deindustrialize, and they are in the process of becoming increasingly complex.  Florida is filled with retired Yankees and Cuban immigrants for example.  So there are many crosscutting political tendencies in both sections, and yet there is still a considerable divide between them.

Redder than thou in the South

This fall, Republicans aiming at the RS will try to ramp up the issue of gay marriage, because many Catholics and working class people in the BS agree with them on this issue.  BS Democrats will press the question of job loss, as this will appeal to workers and lower middle class voters both at home and in the RS whose economies are often still more marginal than in the blue states.

Come to think of it, the President is the only national political figure in the United States. All other national politicians are in fact local (the House of Representatives) or state (Senators) figures. To win in Georgia, a Democrat has got to be pretty damn RS, far more conservative than his northern counterparts. To be elected in New York or Michigan, a Republican must be at least partially more progressive in his politics than his Mississippi brother.

So presidential candidates are the only ones who must cobble together a national coalition in order to be elected. They must find a way of reaching into the other section while maintaining their home base.  In 2000, for example, George W. Bush's slogan was compassionate conservatism, meant to soften the hard edges of his RS image in the BS. He has not governed that way, however, which may become part of his undoing.

This configuration helps explain the stump speeches of the major Democratic candidates--mild populism linked to compelling life stories. On these grounds, Wesley Clark and John Edwards tell us rags to riches personal stories. John Kerry has gone from riches to greater riches (he is a Boston patrician, who married the wealthiest widow in America the second time around, the inheritor of all of Heinz's 57 varieties).

Kerry stresses not his origins but his searing military experience in Vietnam--combat being a kind of social leveler that democratizes him. Democrats all talk about the special interests versus the people, with the wealthy as the source of all problems. Edwards, for example, sets the top 2 percent against the other 98 percent, the parasites versus the producers, in what amounts to class analysis in American mainstream politics.

Kerry and 'character'

Much of this talk is vapid, but it is intended to unite the majority of people across the BS/RS divide. The other and more significant thing voters learn in the primaries is something about the public personalities of the candidates, what is called "character:" voters get a pretty clear sense of who handles himself well and who does not.

On these grounds Kerry is hot, Edwards might become so, Dean is rapidly fading, and Clark's amateurism is showing, but he is hanging in there for now. 

After the first two contests, we will see next Tuesday if BS Kerry can sell himself in more reddish states, or whether Edwards (or Clark, the other RS man), will suddenly rise. South Carolina is next, along with Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona, more RS, tiny Delaware and North Dakota, both BS, and Missouri. I once wrote a book about Missouri and spent a lot of time there and never figured it out, as it is northern, southern and western--bluish red or reddish blue.  And four days later it will be Washington and Michigan, two big BS.

Edwards is counting on South Carolina, where he was born before moving next door to the northern Carolina, and he is counting on doing well in the other RS. This would be in emulation of Jimmy Carter and especially Bill Clinton, of whom he is a kind of clone in all but the act-it-out libido department. 

The underlying theory here is that only a person with that southern accent--something Edwards emphasizes about himself--who can appeal to a significant slice of RS voters, can win a national election as a Democrat. The corollary is that BS Democrats will hardly turn to the alien and alienating Bush, and so are bound to join in with a southern candidate while the vice is not versa for a BS candidate.

Will that line work this time around, or will enough RS Democrats decide that Kerry is a significantly better candidate, swallow their anti-BS sentiments and vote against homeboy Edwards?

The anything but Bush push 

Here I believe that the potentially decisive figure is George W. Bush. So many Americans, independents and Democrats, detest Bush, that defeating him seems to be driving primary voters towards a focus on one central point in a Democratic candidate--electability. Edwards and Kerry are not very distinct on policy matters. But Kerry is more experienced, and he matches up well against Bush in national security issues. He is a real war hero, and Bush is a military poseur. Kerry also was a major anti-war figure, which many antimilitary BS voters have not forgotten either. Edwards is younger and very attractive, but not sophisticated in foreign or military affairs.

Strategic considerations, growing from Bush hatred, may well overcome traditional regional prejudices enough to nominate Kerry. According to the polls in New Hampshire, those who voted on grounds of electability chose Kerry over Dean something like 60 percent to 10 percent.  Will the same be true in South Carolina and those other RS next Tuesday?

If he sweeps these primaries, Kerry will be the Democratic nominee after next Tuesday. Although Kerry is rising like a shot even in RS South Carolina, where the leading black congressman has endorsed him, I expect Edwards to win South Carolina but not much else, which, if he does, will keep him going, but just barely. If Edwards or Clark surprise us all and do very well Tuesday, Kerry's potential in the RS will be dimmed.

Red and blue, then, with fear and loathing of the incumbent X factor.

Historian Michael Fellman, author of several books on the Civil War including The Making of Robert E. Lee, is Director of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Simon Fraser University. He writes an occasional column on the unfolding U.S. presidential election for The Tyee.