Green Is the New Blue
It’s no secret that since 2000, the Democratic base has been on the West and East coasts, nor that the concentration of American wealth lies in the major cities, many of which also happen to be on the coasts. As Michael Franc, writing in Monday’s FT, would have it, while the South went “red,” Democrats failed to adapt their message to the new reality: that now their principle constituency includes the most affluent of Americans.
He makes an important, if apparent point:
Democrats now control the majority of the nation’s wealthiest congressional jurisdictions. More than half of the wealthiest households are concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats control both Senate seats.
Certainly Democrats did not count on the sorry state of the economy or a mandate to increase taxes in November of last year, as they swept the leadership of both the House and Senate. While the war in Iraq captured the mind of most voters in 2006, who is to say that much of this discontent did not stem from financial concerns, i.e. that Bush policies, the War in Iraq among them, raised the national debt and struck fears up Wall Street.
A year later, the Democratic Congress, by some accounts, has even lower approval ratings than President Bush. Franc (full disclosure: he is a vice president with the Heritage Foundation in Washington) suggests Democratic voters will not stand for fiscal badgering for long: in time, he says, they will respond and limit the extent to which they—the upper echelon—must carry the tax burden.
As context for the internal Democratic Party dialogue, these demographic figures are quite relevant when it comes to trade and other fiscal issues. One wonders, however, which came first, the politics or the wealth.