Are the Democrats essentially a regional party today?
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Anonymous
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After the 2016 election and following a trend that started in the 2010 mid-terms, the Democrats are becoming a regional party. Take a look at these two maps showing state legislatures and state governors following the recent election. It really is quite striking. I thought that demographics would cause the Republican party to fade into irrelevance but it seems to be going the other way.
Do the Democrats have a plan to reverse this trend? Right now, it seems that they are just lost and sticking with what does not seem to have worked over the past several years. I am not convinced that Hispanics and to a lesser extent African-Americans are not likely to trend Republican if the party shows some receptivity to their aspirations without the sort of pandering we have seen from Democrats. There are those within both these demographics who feel they have been taken for granted by the Democrats. If the situation had been reversed with Democrats dominating the maps the way the Republicans are today, we would be seeing obituaries written on the Republican party. 
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Anonymous
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Isn't this literally an attempted obituary???
State legislatures moved Republican because of gerrymandering. |
Anonymous
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Urban/Rural
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Anonymous
| In most states, 40% or more of voters are democrats. So the answer to your question is clearly "no" |
Anonymous
When you have 33 Republican governors, it is not gerrymandering. |
Anonymous
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Democrats are basically New England and the West Coast plust Illinois because of Chicago only
They are losing the Upper Midwest and the federal results finally caught up with the trend |
Anonymous
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No. Democrats are not a "regional party" - the notion of "red states" and "blue states" is wrong because there are many Democrats in every community. It's just that in more sparsely populated rural counties Republicans outnumber the Democrats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states Color coded by county: 
Cartogram scaled proportionately to population: 
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Anonymous
There were only a tiny handful of outlier states like Oklahoma and Alaska where Trump won with anything that could be called a landslide. In all of the other states that he won, he only won by a few percent. |
Anonymous
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This thread just represents yet another attempt by Trump supporters to try and marginalize half of the country.
Shameful. |
Anonymous
I am the OP and am a liberal and have been one for decades - and certainly did not vote for Trump. I supported Sanders in the primaries. More than the presidential election, I am concerned with what has been happening in state legislatures since 2008 when I think we had 30 Democratic governors. |
Anonymous
| As much as GOP was in 2008. |
Anonymous
The issue is that the Republicans have put together a strong machine and have managed to get megadonors and folks like Koch and ALEC and others focusing on winning governorships and state legislatures, pumping billions into those races because they want to push policy that favors corporate oligarchy from the bottom up. And the results are glaring and scandalous, with many instances of state officials signing their names to legislation and policy that was literally written in a corporate boardroom with zero citizen input. Trump's appointee to head the EPA was exposed in such behavior from when he was in state office. Democrats on the other hand have the numbers and the mission and could really rally and crush if they supported more folks like Sanders and Warren, but sadly they are disorganized and unfocused and largely resting on laurels, denial and the old way of doing things. |
Anonymous
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If the Clinton campaign wasn't run by people with their heads up their asses, she would have won and we wouldn't be having this conversation until 2020 when I believe she would have lost to any empty suit Republican due to the obstructionism the Republicans in congress would have certainly put in place like they did with Obama, except times 10.
She lost by about 11,000 votes in MI, about 30,000 in WI, and about 70,000 in PA. So there was NO WAY the Democratic campaign could have campaigned harder, done more rallies, and more GOTV events, amongst their base? I don't buy that for one second. Clinton got 2.2 million votes, Obama got 2.5 million votes in 2012. Romney got 2.1 million votes in 2012, and Trump also got about 2.2 million votes. Trump did slightly improve on Romney's numbers, but Clinton plummeted from Obama's 2012 results. It was pure (lack of) voter turnout that cost the Democrats. I'm sure there were a few normally Democrats who voted Trump, just as I'm sure there were a few normally Republicans who voted Clinton, as well as people from both parties who voted for a 3rd party candidate. It seems like it all cancels out in the end. But because the Clinton campaign thought they had these states in the bag, they didn't bother to campaign as much there, and then they lost because they couldn't turn out their own voters. |
Anonymous
This is accurate. The electoral college was extremely close and Trump lost the popular vote by 5 times the widest margin ever. The republicans are in trouble. They got lucky on a fluke that white americans are more sexist and racist then they had hoped but they've lost all control of their party to a populist agenda completely at odds with a conservative fiscal agenda. Republicans can draw back civil rights, try to ban abortions, detain Muslims and attack the constitution all they want and it isn't going to change any of the economic problems. They'll be left with working class voters who feel betrayed. The white supremacists surrounding Trump will continue to keep out minority voters who ironically often hold social and cultural values far more conservative than democrats. All the democrats need to do is to get a white guy - no women, minorities, or LGBT candidates- that won't scare white men and women and is an energetic speaker. Politics is entertainment now. Showmanship counts and casting counts far more than platforms with many voters. Get the casting right and the democrat platform connects more to the middle than than the republican ones does. |
Anonymous
I am thinking better now that in 2020. And better to lise with Trump so the GOP can deal with it, as opposed to counting on Hillary to do the work for them. They are already sniping at each othet and he hasn't started yet. |