I thought 'red' meant 'lefty' and 'blue' meant 'right wing conservative.' When did this change?
'Blue-blood' meant rich, privileged, old money. Tories in the UK are blue. Labor is red. Same in Canada. 'Better dead than red' was the slogan of reactionary McCarthyists. Mao's little red book, the soviet flag, the Chinese flag. This is old time-honored stuff.
So now, some genius in the US has confused this tidy symbolism and we talk about red states and blue states in exactly the opposite way that they have been traditionally assigned. Who did this? When did it happen? It seems like both sides would have had to agree on it, and I wonder what the rational was. I think it's bad and confusing and I wonder about the implications.
As people hash out the failings of the Democratic party and how it's forgotten its base, and fret about how Clinton and Frum pulled the party right and how ultimately, the 'Republican-light' strategy of the DLC is what got us into this current mess, I think it's probably relevant that this symbolism is also confused.
Does anyone know how it happened? Is it a good thing?