it's not about Red States vs Blue States

[pstokely]

it's about Rural Vs. Urban, the suburbs are the battlegrounds

[XNASA]

1. Actually it's Metro vs. Retro

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040824/dctu030_1.html

[Catfight]

4. That's the only comment that made me even crack a smile today. nt

[tridim]

2. It's about stupid people vs. smart people

That's crystal clear to me now.

[President Jesus]

6. bingo

although I would change "stupid" to "stupid and used"

[ClassWarrior]

10. You sound like a bunch of elitist, know-it-all, smarter-than-thou...

...latte liberals. Nice job. You've just played into one of the Radical Rightwing's most enduring scripts.

You're not going to earn anyone's confidence by calling them idiots. They're overworked and uninformed.

NGU.

[hollywood926]

3. it's C-Span viewers vs. Fox viewers n/t

[Bill McBlueState]

5. yes

Unfortunately urban dwellers have to deal with the repercussions of the rural voters' choices, magnified by the bias of the electoral college toward small states.

Terrorists don't fly planes into silos.

[mark11727]

13. I was just thinking that this morning...

...the folks in the red states that voted for * are in NO DANGER of bin Laden trying to plow a 747 into their freaking CORNFIELD! No, that honor will fall to the urban-dwelling blue-staters, us, the ones with all the BIG TALL TARGETS!

[MuseRider]

7. Being a liberal rural

I would say that you are certainly partly right about that. Our needs are far different than the Urban needs but they never get addressed or even considered. Now, that being said I do not know why that leads to voting Republican.

The smart vs dumb may point to rural America as being less smart than you urban folks but the rural folks are smarter in some things than the smartest urban folks and vice versa. We have to be able to figure a way to do this with understanding the differences in our worlds.

Not that this helps much but that is part of the view from here.

The suburbs? I have NO clue.

[mrgorth]

8. You're right. It's about marketing

We can't just make ourselves appealing to the north or the south or the cities or the suburbs. The conservatives have figured out a way to make themselves the "big dick" party. They're not just about low taxes anymore. They're whole ambience is "toughness", "responsiblity", and "morals" even if we know they lie. We need to be able to take that away without turning into them...somehow.

[BamaGirl]

9. Smart vs Stupid?

I live in a city surrounded by a large rural area. Didn't matter. Seventy percent of them voted Bush, rural or in town. It's fundies vs. the enlightened here.

[ClassWarrior]

11. It's about informed versus uninformed.

The fiscal conservatives can manipulate the moral conservatives because the MCs are overworked and uninformed. We can manipulate them too - with the truth - but we're not going to do it by calling them morons.

NGU.

[nonconformist]

12. At this point, I think it's about informed vs. uninformed

Good vs. Evil
Hope vs. Hate
Reality vs. Fear

Those are all divisions. But it's mostly the informed aspect.

I read a great article a while back about why people in urban areas are usually Democrats. It went over the usual assumptions - urban dwellers are more likely to be educated, high concentration of minorities - but it pointed out that it boiled down to being more informed.

In urban areas, news is all around you. You can't walk down the street in NYC without passing newsstands, headlines blazing. In public, people talk about national and domestic issues more openly. For an urbanite, your "local paper" is likely a large publication read by millions by people around the country (and the world). You're more likely to have easy access to high-speed internet and a variety of cable news stations.

In rural areas it's the opposite. In public, people discuss more mundane and localized topics - especially because, particularly in the south, some people are taught that you shouldn't talk about politics or who you vote for in public (I've witnessed that personally since I've lived in a rural southern town too). Your only exposure to the news might be your local paper and local newscast, of which the main focus is only local happenings - with usually only a couple of stories or quick run-downs on national and world events. You're less likely to have access to high-speed internet, or to even own a computer. And unless you have a satellite, your choices in cable news are limited to the options provided by your small-town company.

To me, this makes a ton of sense. People in rural areas are generally happy to just go about their day, discuss the weather and maybe some scandal about the new town jailer. It's a more simple life. Of course not everyone is like that, but a LOT are. This is not to say that they're stupid - they're not. Well, most aren't.. but there are stupid people everywhere. But they're uninformed, and they're ill-informed by their clergy.

I don't know what can really be done about that - if one wants to know enough, the info is out there and easily available to most - but this makes a lot of sense to me.

[ClassWarrior]

14. Excellent analysis.

I guess we need to figure out ways to reach out. And I think adopting their language - or crafting ours to match theirs - is key as well.

NGU.