WP, E.J. Dionne: Painting the Suburbs Blue

[DeepModem Mom]

Painting the Suburbs Blue
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, September 14, 2007; Page A13

As Virginia goes, so goes the Senate -- and the nation?

The decision of former Virginia governor Mark Warner to run for the seat of retiring Republican Sen. John Warner is more than just bad news for the GOP. It reflects fundamental shifts in the balance of political power in the country, the growing force and volatility of suburban voters, and the fact that the old red-state-blue-state maps are becoming obsolete.

Republicans have never had much chance of recapturing the Senate in 2008, but Mark Warner's bid and the decision of Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) to step down combined this week to make the difficult almost impossible. If Bob Kerrey, Nebraska's former Democratic senator, decides to go for Hagel's seat, Republicans will have to defend two states they until recently could regard as bastions. And in Warner and Kerrey, Senate Democrats could add two ideologically unpredictable voices.

The Republicans are in danger of being pushed into a Southern redoubt. Their increasingly narrow regional and demographic base bears a remarkable resemblance to the old areas of Democratic strength during the Republican heyday after the Civil War. The GOP controls both Senate seats in 17 states. Nine of these are in the South or border South, and four are in the inner West. (Three of those four states, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, are about as solidly Republican as any in the country.) There are two states far outside the Republican comfort zone where the party holds both seats, Maine and New Hampshire. And in both of those, an incumbent faces a serious challenge from the Democrats next year.

Democrats have both Senate seats in 18 states, counting the two independents who caucus with the party. Eight are in the East, and four are in the Midwest. But over the past two elections, they have begun an advance into what had been Republican territory, picking up Senate seats in Virginia, Montana, Ohio and Colorado. The map of the Senate is increasingly divergent from the patterns of those red-blue maps in President Bush's two elections.

But trends within the states are as important as national geography. Outside the Deep South, Democrats are on the verge of becoming the dominant party in the suburbs and are pushing into the exurbs. In Virginia, that offensive was central to the Democratic victories of Gov. Tim Kaine in 2005 and Sen. Jim Webb in 2006. But the implications go beyond a single state. Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who headed the Democrats' 2006 effort in the House elections, regularly reminds his colleagues that 16 of the 31 Democratic pickups were in suburban or exurban areas. He has been talking about a new "suburban populism" or "metropolitan populism" that he characterizes as "a revolt of the center." The suburbs are changing demographically as more nonwhites move in, and many suburban voters are turned off by the ideological politics of the right, particularly the Christian right....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/13/AR2007091301681.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[BeyondGeography]

1. So nice to see the Pubbies lose their way

That's what happens when you keep selling shit on a stick.