I have read many, many, many articles, diaries and posts about "Why America hates Democrats", "How the Red States Have Taken Over", "I guess there's just more of them than us", "How do we remake ourselves now?" blah, blah, blah.
Consider this for 1 minute: if not for "The Elite 8", Bush would not have won the presidency.
"The Elite 8" are:
- Alabama
- Idaho
- Kansas
- Nebraska
- North Dakota
- Oklahoma
- Texas
- Wyoming
These 8 states favored Bush by a
3,572,401 vote margin.
How much did Bush win the popular vote by? 3,554,414 votes
How many electoral votes did they give him? 71
How many electoral votes did Bush win by? 34
How many electoral votes does Texas have? 34
Without The Elite Eight, Bush was behind in the popular vote by 17,987 votes and the electoral by 37.
Finally, what percentage of the popular vote do these 8 states represent? 11.9%
What does all of this mean? This is very much a divided country and these 8 states are controlling the national political conversation even though they represent not much more than 10% of those who voted in our last election.
Why don't we (and the media) take a look at The Elite 8 and question why THEY are the way THEY are instead of making all of the vast, sweeping generalizations about the country at large.
Bush did not win an overwhelming majority of the votes in the last election. He by no means received any kind of mandate from the country at large.
Why do 8 states with a combined voting population of under 14 million people have the right to control our whole country?
Let's not forget the ringleader of the group is Texas with over half of those voters.
So is Texas really controlling our country while the rest of us fight it out?
Let's get rid of this CW that "the country is going Red" and "America hates Democrats", instead looking at "The Elite 8" who are trying to dictate this CW.