Trump country

Until last night, like everyone else I had mentally divided the country into blue states and red states.  We on the two coasts were blue, as were portions of the industrial mid-West.  Most of the rest of the country was red.  Ghastly red.

What I saw last night, as the election returns were posted by CNN and other networks, was that reality was more complex.  Most states had red sections and blue sections.  When the analysis was fine-tuned, it was apparent that even single Congressional districts had red areas and blue areas.  For example, the district in south central Florida to which the announcer kept returning -- in the southern portion, it was urban and blue, but in the north it was rural and red.  Which section would produce the most votes, and thus determine the winner?

It appears that the most crucial predictor in guessing whether a voter is apt to be be pro-Trump or anti-Trump -- which in today's world means Republican or Democrat -- isn't whether  he is undereducated, or unemployed, or White, or over the age of 60, or fears loss of status.  All of those factors do affect the calculus, but the most critical factor is whether he lives in a city or suburb, as opposed to a rural area or small town.

Last night, sitting before our television sets, we looked for hours at the map of Texas.  A big red state, but with small blue islands representing a disproportionately large number of voters in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso.  Enough voters in those small blue islands to almost give Texas a Democratic senator.  In Kansas and Missouri, the districts including the two parts of Kansas City were two tiny specks in a mass of red.  In the center of Oklahoma -- the epitome of a red state -- was a spot of blue, representing Oklahoma City.  And even in Utah, the district including Salt Lake City is -- as of this writing -- trending blue.

My own Washington has long been a blue state, but on the map you see a large red state with a splash of blue surrounding the shores of Puget Sound.  Those are the most urban portions of the state, joined together with their great suburban areas -- suburbs once pure red that have, like suburbs across America, turned blue in recent years. 

The House went decidedly blue while, at the same time, the Senate has gone a bit redder.  It seems odd.  But it isn't.

Although the national map showing House victories is mostly red, away from the coasts, it is thus sprinkled with blue representing urban areas.  But on the Senate map, those areas are pure red.  Senators are chosen by statewide majorities.

The Great Compromise, at the time the Constitution was written, gave every state equal representation in the Senate.  It was "undemocratic" -- but it was a necessary concession to persuade small states like Delaware and Rhode Island to join in a union with large states like Virginia and Pennsylvania.  Those colonies had all been equal after independence, and the smaller colonies were understandably nervous about surrendering their total independence without some protection against rule by a nationwide majority in the newly created Republic.

But the unintended consequence is that protection of states with small populations is only of incidental importance in today's politics.  What is being protected -- and greatly magnified -- is the dominance of the interests of rural areas and small towns over the interests of the more populous urban and suburban populations.  Oklahoma and Kansas, for example, may each send a Democratic member to Congress, but their senators will always be Republican.  State after state through the farm states of the prairie Mid-West and the southern cotton-growing regions each sends its two Republican senators off to Washington.  North and South Dakota together send only two representatives to the 435-member House, but they together send four senators to the 100-member Senate.

Quite apart from the question of gerrymandering in House districts, the constitutional arrangement for the Senate's composition virtually assures that for the foreseeable future rural America will have an outsized institutional advantage over the rest of the country.  Only when people with urban interests and background begin living in great numbers in rural states -- as is perhaps beginning to happen in Montana -- will  this bias cease to be so obvious.  (Not many red states, of course, have Montana's scenic and recreational attractions.)

One solution would be for our national population to become increasingly uniform in interests and concerns, regardless of whether they live in cities or farms.  I might have predicted such a confluence of characteristics, because television and the internet interconnect us so radically.  But the opposite appears to be happening -- rural people are digging in their heals and increasing in their disdain of "city folk."  And something analogous is obvious among urban residents.

Solution?  I have none.  I just observe the problem with interest.  And note that Article 5 of the Constitution prohibits any amendment changing the way the Senate is constituted, insofar as that amendment would permit a state,"without its Consent, [to] be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."