I am going to start out here with a disclaimer, namely, that while state by state comparisons are often revealing of important political, economic, social and perhaps even cultural differences across states, it is perhaps more difficult to draw simple conclusions and to make blanket assessments.
That said, I would want to make an argument. While recognizing that there may be progressive individuals in the most deeply red states, the most deeply red states have gotten so deeply red as to be an indicator of a type of social/political/cultural backwardness that will, inevitably, hold the whole country back. Given that, I need to ask, is there a more backward state right now than the state that just allowed its dominant political faction to place a bigoted, Islamophobic ballot measure, which then passed, on its state ballots?
To review, Oklahoma is the state that has:
*passed a law that is now being blocked, as unconstitutional in federal court, that expresses anti-Islamic bigotry and a fear of a made up threat, i.e., the unlikely possibility of Sharia law being somehow used in the U.S.
*has repeatedly elected a dim US Senator who is a factually deprived leader of the global warming skeptics in the US Congress, who supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and who has proposed the Inhofe Amendment to make English the national language of the United States.
(This same moron was one of only nine senators to vote against the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 which prohibits "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of individuals in U.S. Government custody.)
*has repeatedly elected an extreme rightwing fanatic and who is quoted as having said "I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life." He also is on record blocking two bills honoring the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson, calling Carson's work "junk science," and proclaiming that Silent Spring "was the catalyst in the deadly worldwide stigmatization against insecticides, especially DDT."
The rest of Oklahoma's GOP Congressional delegation is just as bad, filled with global warming deniers, deniers of the need for gay rights or hate crime legislation, and filled with antiabortion extremists who care much more about fetuses than about thekids in Oklahoma who live in poverty.
How has it come to this? The answer, it seems to me, is a lethal combination of oil and gas money, concentrated in the hands of a plutocratic and privileged few, inadequate schooling, and reactionary, ignorance-inducing Christian fundamentalism.
While I am glad that the courts are wanting to negate a bigoted and thus unconstitutional ballot referendum, written by and for mobocracy, it continues to disturb me that there are large bastions of ignorance and antidemocracy, red states, like Oklahoma, which are holding all the rest of us back.
Again, I'll ask my opening question: is there a more backward state right now than the state of Oklahoma?