There was a time when Republican candidates could rely on small-town America to take them to the White House. Now even that's changing
At a fundraiser on 16 October in Greensboro, North Carolina, Sarah Palin spoke of how glad she was to be in a "pro-America" part of the country: "We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation."
Two days later, a John McCain adviser said in a TV interview that McCain faced challenges in northern Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC, but these could be overcome, as "the rest of the state, 'real Virginia', if you will, I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain's message".
The comments elicited predictable protests from Democrats, but they needn't fret too much. Because one of the big stories of this campaign is that the "pro-America areas" conjured by Palin are getting smaller. This helps explain why the Democrats are poised to make a strong showing, and it portends lasting problems for the party that relies so much on "real" America.
George W Bush won two elections by dominating in rural and small-town America, but that country is shrinking as farming towns in the Midwest and Great Plains and manufacturing or mining towns in the Rust Belt fade away. Now, two-thirds of Americans live in the country's 100 largest metro areas. Within states, the more urbanised areas are assuming more influence - the Republican vote in central and western Pennsylvania is countered by the south-eastern corner of the state around Philadelphia; the textile and hill towns of North Carolina lose sway to the growing Raleigh-Durham area; the mining and farming towns of Colorado lose out to the Denver megalopolis along the Front Range of the Rockies.
The areas conjured by Sarah Palin are getting smaller. This portends lasting problems for the party that relies so much on “real” America
Bush managed to win twice, despite the waning influence of rural America, by also getting enough votes in the suburbs. But here the Republicans' hold is weakening. As the Grand Old Party oriented more around socially conservative voters in their new Sun Belt base, the Democrats gained with the college-educated business and professional class, which is growing as the white working class shrinks. In the process, the Democrats have worked their way out from the cities to take over the big, formerly Republican inner suburbs outside cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.
The Republicans countered this by winning big in the fast-growing exurbs, which, at their outer edges, blur into their rural base. Yet the Democrats are advancing the line even here, as these suburbs grow more dense and moderate voters hit by the housing crash turn against what they view as incompetent Republican governance.
Take northern Virginia, a small corner of the state map that has absorbed 60 per cent of the state's population growth this decade. Bush won its exurbs in 2004. But two years later, Jim Webb - a fiercely independent former marine who became navy secretary under Reagan, turned bestselling novelist then Democrat - narrowly won the exurbs, snatching a Senate seat from George Allen, who probably would have run for president this year had he won. Allen sealed his defeat with his own "real Virginia" comments, mocking a Democratic campaign worker of south Asian descent who was videotaping an Allen event in the state's rural south-west by calling him "Macaca" and telling him, "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia." This didn't go over well in "unreal" Virginia, where a growing south Asian community (among others) rallied to defeat Allen.
There are other barometers of the Republicans' plight. For the past decade, young voters have been moving towards the Democrats, a trend exacerbated by Barack Obama - voters under 30 favour him by roughly 2-1. History has shown that such leanings are not just a youthful enthusiasm - most of those who came of political age under Franklin D Roosevelt stayed Democrat, just as those who started voting under Ronald Reagan have tilted right. The younger generation is also less religious, a key marker of Democratic proclivities.
And there is the racial divide. Even before Obama, close to 90 per cent of black voters voted Democrat, and Hispanic voters are swinging to the Democrats in response to the vitriol they see in the Republican push against illegal immigration. There has not been a black Republican governor or congressman in six years, and only 36 of the 2,380 delegates gathered at the GOP national convention were black. These are troubling figures in a country where white people are expected to lose their majority status by 2042.
On Sunday, the country's best-known black Republican, Colin Powell, endorsed Obama, lamenting the rightward turn his party had taken and the attempts to portray Obama as a Muslim. That same day, Palin's genial husband, Todd, campaigned at a stock-car racetrack in southern Virginia. Joining him were two Republicans: a local congressman who made waves last year by attacking a newly elected Muslim congressman from Minnesota for swearing his oath of office on the Quran - and George Allen.
Alec MacGillis is a staff writer for the Washington Post
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