Reply #94: Yes, I got your PM and responded [View All]

Thanks. You have to understand that ever since that book came out we've been fighting an uphill battle. We're just a little sensitive to criticism that seems to be directed at our state. We've got Fred Phelps and traveling sideshow of a family from Topeka, we've got Brownback and Roberts and the whole evolution thing. It's been rough for us.

I was just at our "Washington Days: Hope in the Heartland" Democratic meeting and it was the largest turnout I've seen and I've been going to these events for years. The biggest reason, all the ground work we've been doing. By "we" I mean the party. The help from the DNC because of Dean has been incredible. There are Republicans defecting because of the fundamentalists.

You might be interested in reading "Purple America", a study "Drawing on three decades of survey research, we examine how the electorate divides along economic and moral issues. While showing that moral values are not irrelevant, the survey data roundly reject the basic claims of the culture war thesis.

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The great divide across the American states is not really much of a divide at all. The difference between “strongly Republican” states like Kansas and “strongly Democratic” states like California is, on average, only 8 percentage points in the vote. That difference pales in comparison with the divisions of a century ago. Over the course of the twentieth century – a period of impressive economic and cultural convergence – we have not seen a great political chasm opening between the states, but rather a noteworthy political convergence."

The file is in pdf format at http://web.mit.edu/jrodden/www/materials/purplefinal.pdf