Urban archipelago revisited

After the 2004 National Election, the editors of The Stranger, the alternative weekly published in Seattle, wrote a screed about the urban vs. suburban/rural political divide. See "The Urban Archipelago: It's the Cities, Stupid."

After looking at the map of party distribution in the House of Representatives printed in yesterday's Washington Post, I have to say it's pretty damn scary at how much of the county, by land mass, is "conservative."

Election results by district, House of Representatives, Washington Post graphic

Then again, while Gov. O'Malley whupped Bob Ehrlich pretty decisively in the Governor's race in Maryland,even there, most of the state went for Ehrlich in terms of land mass, while O'Malley garnered tremendous numbers of votes in Prince George's and Montgomery Counties and Baltimore City, a decent enough win in Howard and Charles Counties, and was even in Baltimore County (a win in a way, since Ehrlich is from Baltimore County and rolled up big numbers there in 2002), while he was outpolled in every other jurisdiction (although not too far off in Anne Arundel and Frederick Counties).

2010 Election results by county, Maryland Governor, Washington Post graphic. (Blue denotes a majority of Democratic voters, Red a majority of Republican voters.)

It would be interesting to map both of these results by level of educational attainment. Today's Post includes a column by Harold Meyerson, "A post-election numbers game," that does provide some demographic information and statistics regarding voting in Tuesday's election. Younger people voted Democrat. Less educated people voted Republican--unless they were members of Unions, and had access to union organizing campaigns and information.

Still, I think the major lesson of this election, to me anyway, is that you can't stop "organizing, educating, and engaging" citizens on the issues. If you do, especially when you take on issues that have built in opposition, you are setting yourself up for longer term failure, even if the legislation passes.

Frankly, the kind of opposition faced by the Democrats and the President in this election go around doesn't feel much different from that faced by President Franklin Roosevelt as described in the book When Washington Went to War, by David Brinkley. Much of the book describes the virulent opposition by the economic elite to the various regulatory changes and agencies and programs created by FDR.

For example, while I think providing universal health care coverage is vitally important, for the most part, there wasn't a high-quality discussion and groundwork laid in advance for people to fully understand why such a course was necessary. With regard to the bailout of Wall Street or even the financial services reform legislation, if citizens would have been better engaged, (1) they would have understood what was done and why, even if distasteful, (2) but by being engaged, it would have been easier to insert and maintain provisions that were harder core in terms of protecting the public interest vs. the interest of capital.

For a different perspective, see "Education of a President" from the New York Times Sunday Magazine from a couple weeks back.