John Conyers is a perfect example of why Congress needs term limits. My latest at The Federalist.
Democrats
Hutchinson, Clinton, and Moore
StandardAlso today at The Federalist, I discuss antinomianism in religion and politics, and what it means about partisan defenses of Roy Moore and Al Franken.
Two Directors, One Office
StandardIn the CFPB fight, history repeats itself as farce. What it means, and what it says about the parties involved, in my latest at The Federalist.
Makers and Takers?
StandardWhich states pay more in taxes? I looked into the numbers today at The Federalist:
How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Gerrymandering
StandardWhat if the reason your party loses elections isn’t gerrymandering? What if it’s just that no one wants to vote for you? My latest article at The Federalist takes on the idea that gerrymandering permanently rigs elections.
Palin v. The Media
StandardToday at The Federalist, I wrote about Sarah Palin’s defamation suit against the New York Times and why it should go to trial.
Democrats Won’t Take Yes For An Answer on Comey
StandardAlso today at The Federalist: why Democrats are still mad that Trump fired the man they all hate.
Soda tax
StandardToday at The Federalist, I wrote about a subject that’s close to home: Philadelphia’s soda tax, and what it says about the moral bankruptcy of the city’s six decades of one-party rule.
Philadelphia Votes, Part 2
StandardAfter posting that map of Philadelphia’s presidential votes the other day, I wanted to see how much had changed since 2012. So I came up with this:
You’re still looking at a vast sea of blue, but the differences jump out at you. Clinton and Obama both won the city easily, but Obama won it much more thoroughly. Trump won wide swathes of the 45th ward where Obama had carried every single division four years earlier. Trump’s victories in the Northeast were also much deeper and widespread. Even in the dark blue areas of North and West Philly, we can see that Obama was the stronger candidate. Where Clinton had three divisions with 100% of the votes for her, Obama had twenty-seven. The pattern held throughout the area. Clinton didn’t lose much of Obama’s totals, just a handful of votes in each division. But it was enough.
Diverging Dominions
StandardIf you look at election maps as much as I do, you may have noticed that West Virginia, once among the most Democratic states in the Union, has trended Republican, while more Republican Virginia has been going the opposite way. What’s amazed me, though, is how rapid the change has been.
I’ve written before about the deepening of Republican control of Appalachia (see these two blog posts about Kentucky,) and the same pattern holds true in West Virginia. It has also been true in the mountainous regions of Virginia, but the simultaneous trend toward the Democrats in suburban Washington D.C. has been even more powerful. Take a look at this chart:
What that chart represents is how much the state’s presidential vote diverged from the national totals. In 2000, Virginia was 8.5% more Republican than the country, and West Virginia was 6.8% more. Pretty similar, and George W. Bush carried both states. He won both in 2004, too, but they switched places. This time, Virginia was closer to the national average, at +5.7% Republican, and West Virginia was a deeper red at +10.4.
Barack Obama’s election exacerbated the trend, just as it did in Kentucky. In 2008, Virginia was 0.9% more Republican than the national average–close enough for Obama to win the state. John McCain carried West Virginia, which was now +20.4% Republican. In 2012, the states divided the same way, only more so. Virginia was now 0.02% more Democratic than the nation, an almost exact bellwether. West Virginia was one of the best states for Mitt Romney at +30.6% Republican. A state Al Gore was shocked to lose in 2000 was, by 2012, not even worth campaigning in for his fellow Democrat.
The Republican margin of victory in West Virginia is so extreme that, if it were reunited with the much larger mother state of Virginia, the result would have been a narrow Romney victory (the combined state would be +4.5% Republican.) That’s not enough to change Obama’s electoral vote victory, but it is notable, in that West Virginia is usually so small compared to Virginia that combining the two means the smaller state disappears within the larger’s totals. That’s not particularly relevant, since no one is proposing to undo West Virginia’s 1863 separation from the Old Dominion, but it’s worth noting that the two states haven’t been this politically divergent since they separated.