Blue England

Have you ever been to Piscataquis County, Maine? It is one of the largest counties (in area) east of the Mississippi River. Baxter State Park and Moosehead Lake are in Piscataquis County. Despite its huge size, this county has less than half the population (17,235) of Arlington. Piscataquis County is the only county in the six New England states that was carried by John McCain. (Yes. That means Barack Obama carried every county in New Hampshire.) McCain won Piscataquis County by 355 votes, 4,785 4,430. Consider there are 67 counties in New England, and Barack Obama carried 66 of them. McCain carried a tiny county by 355 votes. Welcome to Blue England.

New England elects 22 members of the House of Representatvies. With the defeat of Christopher Shays in Connecticut, all 22 members will be Democrats. This is amazing, when you consider that it wasn't long ago when New England was the most reliably Republican region in the country. In 1932, New England provided four of the six states (ME, NH, VT, CT) voting for Herbert Hoover over FDR. (The other two states were PA and DE.)

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The rise of the Republicans as a predominantly socially-conservative and southern party conflicts with the socially-tolerant but frugal nature of New Englanders.

If the 2008 elections prove anything, good old New England common sense seems to be spreading. Not only are we solid blue, but the colors are running south and west. How far? Here's two examples.

If you have ever driven south on I-95 toward Florida, you know the signs for South of the Border start appearing after you pass Washington. This famous tourist stop is just south of the North Carolina-South Carolina border. According to Google Maps, it is 816 miles, more than 13 hours of driving time, south of Arlington. If President-Elect Obama maintains his lead in North Carolina, South of the Border will be at the bottom of the first exit on I-95 in the first red state you encounter on your southbound trip.

If south isn't your preferred direction, you can head west on I-90. Head west and you will be driving through beautiful blue Obama states until you reach Brandon, SD. It's the first town in the first red state on that westbound trip. It's 1,545 miles and about 24 hours west of Arlington.

It's nice to know the next president, and the majorities of both houses of Congress, share our values. I look forward to some good old-fashioned Blue England common sense reflected in our new government.

Making history

This is an emotional and historic day. I keep looking back to 1968, the last time our nation was on a terribly wrong track, and it seems that we lost lots of hope for America with the loss of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Today, I can feel that hope, that the dreams of the past were merely dreams deferred.

My electoral vote predictions

The Cohen-Langhart Effect

The polls show Barack Obama leading by a large margin in Virginia, and is flirting with a lead in North Carolina.

What's going on here? The Democrats have nominated a pair of liberals, neither of them are southerners. These states have large military populations and a history of voting for Republicans in presidential elections. North Carolina elected Jesse Helms to the United States Senate in 1972, 1980, 1986, 1992, and 1996.

It may seem counterintuitive, by my hypothesis is that the military population is a significant key in this shift. Despite John McCain's military service, and his outreach to military voters, could there be some other effect that is moving this population toward Obama?

Could there be a Cohen-Langhart effect?



It may seem counterintuitive, by my hypothesis is that the military population is a significant key in this shift. Despite John McCain's military service, and his outreach to military voters, could there be some other effect that is moving this population toward Obama?

On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, ordering "equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin."

As a result, we have a military that has become a the most colorblind meritocracy in the nation. It's the norm to live in an environment where rank, not color, defines hierarchy, where people routinely work and live with people from diverse backgrounds, and where looking up the chain of command involves people of many colors.



Racial lines have faded in the military to the point where rates of interracial marriage are significantly higher in the military than in the population at large. At the conclusion of the Clinton administration, this included Defense Secretary William Cohen and "First Lady of the Pentagon" Janet Langhart.

Barack Obama is a candidate to become Commander in Chief, and the military looks at a son of an African father and white mother and sees nothing unusual. While he doesn't look like any of the dead presidents, he does look like someone who belongs up the military chain of command.

When we count the votes, look at individual precincts and exit polls, I suspect we are going to find that Barack Obama will do very well among a military population that has traditionally been GOP-friendly.

Yes on 3: Dogs against corporate welfare

An editorial in the New Bedford Standard-Times presents the argument that I believe is central to the discussion of Question 3. Greyhound racing is an industry that is sinking deeper into the corporate welfare system, and this ballot question is a way to end the suffering of dogs and Massachusetts taxpayers.

Two greyhound tracks remain open: Raynham Park, right here in Bristol County, and Wonderland Greyhound Park in Revere.

Money gambled at the tracks has declined substantially in recent years, dropping 37 percent in Raynham and 65 percent in Revere between 2002 and 2007. Officials from both tracks have said they will go out of business soon without state intervention, and they are asking for slot machines to shore up their revenue.

The editorial continues:

Raynham Park owner George Carney's own testimony at a legislative hearing last year revealed how tracks would fare without state help: "I'm telling you there's no money left in the racing. If you want to keep us going, you've got to give us the slots," the Boston Globe quoted him saying.

So without slot parlors, the dog tracks would fail. And why bail them out?

If I want to watch greyhound races, I'll sit alongside the Mass Pike.

The ultimate undecided voter

A car parked in the center of Lowell, Massachusetts, is sending mixed messages about the 2008 presidential race. This Camry, parked across the street from Lowell High School, has a McCain bumper sticker AND an Obama bumper sticker.

Wheels coming off the Straight Talk Express

Sitting in beloved Arlington, Massachusetts, it's tough to get a feel for national politics. We are one of the bluest towns in one of the bluest states, so when it feels like everyone is for the Democrat, it comes as a surprise when the results turn out differently.

Four years ago, it seemed as if every other car in town had a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker, and the line at the polls was deep with indignant people who couldn't wait to rid our beautiful nation of the shrub in the White House. Eight years ago, Arlington gave Al Gore a bigger plurality (9,494 votes) than Bush's margin of victory in Florida (537 votes) or New Hampshire (7,211 votes). Think about it. If we could have somehow gerrymandered Arlington into New Hampshire, Gore would have been elected president.

That said, it's hard to ignore evidence of wholesale abandonment of the McCain campaign from the rest of the country. From Jay Severin to William F. Buckley's kid, they're running away from the McCain train wreck.

My first sign of trouble on the McCain horizon came the day Sarah Palin was announced as the GOP VP choice. The one-two punch of Obama's speech and McCain's choice of an unqualified running mate was too much for my Republican parents. Granted, they are the kind of northeastern moderates who were comfortable in a party of Nelson Rockefeller, Lowell Weicker, or Thomas Kean. They are for fiscal responsibility, but against the social conservatives who want to infuse religious beliefs into governance. They were the kind of Republicans who loved the 2000 McCain, and probably voted for him in the 2008 primary. After that conversation, I sent them two Republicans for Obama bumper stickers.

With less than four weeks to the election, the McCain exodus is booming. Christopher Buckley, the son of William F. Buckley Jr., wrote a column this week with the message: Sorry, Dad, but I'm voting for Obama.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

Then there's former governor William Milliken (R-Michigan), who is clearly displaying backup lights in the Grand Rapids Press.

GRAND RAPIDS -- He endorsed John McCain in the presidential primary, but now former Republican Gov. William Milliken is expressing doubts about his party's nominee.

"He is not the McCain I endorsed," said Milliken, reached at his Traverse City home Thursday. "He keeps saying, 'Who is Barack Obama?' I would ask the question, 'Who is John McCain?' because his campaign has become rather disappointing to me.

"I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues."

The article continues:

Milliken stopped short of saying he will vote for Obama, but said he differs with McCain on the Iraq war and his choice of Palin.

"I know John McCain is 72. In my book, that's quite young," said Milliken, 86, Michigan's longest-serving governor. But he added, "What if she were to become president of the United States? The idea, to me, is quite disturbing, if not appalling.

"Increasingly, the party is moving toward rigidity, and I don't like that. I think Gerald Ford would hold generally the same view I'm holding on the direction of the Republican Party."

And then again, there's Jay Severin. No, he's not on the Obama bandwagon. Far from it. Jay is just saying McCain is a loser, and it's more fun to vote for Bob Barr. The theme seems to be that Obama is going to win anyway, so the right might as well vote for a real libertarian-conservative as opposed to whatever McCain has become.

Clearly, McCain's actions of late have eroded his core support. For everyone who admired the old McCain, this version is too-Bushy, too inauthentic, too nasty, and not presidential enough to earn a vote. Those are verdicts that are hard to escape, and negatives that are hard to overcome.