BETTER DEAD THAN RED
by Dan Savage
Tired of Red-State Rubes Calling All the Political Shots?
Dan Savage Promotes a New Urban Vision Where Cities
Make the Decisions, and Country Bumpkins Get Left
Behind
http://www.portlandmercury.com/current/feature.htmlLook at the map on this page.
It should be familiar. It's one of those red-state/blue-state
maps that have been tormenting Democrats, liberals, and
progressives since November of 2000. That was the first
presidential election in which states that went for the
Republican candidate were colored red, and states that
went for Democratic candidate were colored blue. As
George W. Bush and Al Gore fought for the White House
in Florida, "red" and "blue" became metaphors for
America's divided electorate. Red vs. Blue--Republican
vs. Democrat; conservative vs. liberal; pro-life vs. pro-
choice; gun-huggers vs. gun-haters; gay-haters vs. gay-
huggers.
This red-state/blue-state map shows the results of 2004's
presidential election--red states won by George W. Bush,
blue states won by John F. Kerry. But the red-state/blue-
state map is misleading. If a Republican presidential
candidate takes a slight majority in any given state, the
whole state is colored red; if the Democrats take a slight
majority, the whole state is colored blue. But painting an
entire state one color or the other creates a false
impression, an impression that we believe is hampering
the Democratic Party's efforts to pull itself out its
tailspin.
However, if this same map showed a county-by-county
red/blue breakdown, it would provide a clearer picture of
the bind Democrats find themselves in. The majority of
the blue states--Oregon, Washington, California, Illinois,
Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, New
Jersey, Delaware--are, geographically speaking, not blue
states. They are blue cities.
Look at our famously blue West Coast. But for the cities-
-Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San
Diego--the West Coast would be a deep, dark red. The
same is true for other nominally blue states. Illinois is
almost entirely red--Chicago turns the state blue.
Michigan is almost entirely red--its cities turn it blue.
And on and on. What tips these states into the blue
column? Their urban areas do, their big, populous
counties.
It's time for the Democrats to face reality: They are the
heart of urban America. If the cities elected our
president, if urban voters determined the outcome, John
F. Kerry would have won by a landslide.
Urban voters are the Democratic base.
THE URBAN ARCHIPELAGO
It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have
been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and
Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic
to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of
islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United
Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and
compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland,
Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on.
And we live on islands in red states, too--a fact obscured by that
state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in
Colorado; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort
Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban
Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism,
racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of
Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the
real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the
exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-
mongers.
Never mind civil unions, red Virginia prohibits any contracts
between same-sex couples. And Florida bans gays and lesbians
from adopting children. Compassionate? Texas allows the death
penalty to apply to teenaged criminals and mentally retarded
criminals. Dumb? The Sierra Club has reported that Arkansas,
Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee squander over
half of their federal transportation money on building new roads
rather than public transit.
If Democrats and urban residents want to combat the rising tide of
red that threatens to swamp and ruin this country, we need a new
identity politics, an urban identity politics, one that argues for the
cities, uses a rhetoric of urban values, and creates a tribal identity
for liberals that's as powerful and attractive as the tribal identity
Republicans have created for their constituents. John Kerry won
among the highly educated, women, Jews, young people, gays and
lesbians, and non-whites. What do all these groups have in
common? They choose to live in cities. John Kerry won every city
with a population above 500,000. He took half the cities with
populations between 50,000 and 500,000. The future success of
liberalism is tied to winning the cities. An urbanist agenda isn't a
recipe for winning the next presidential election--but it may win
the Democrats the presidential election in 2012 and create a new
Democratic majority.
For Democrats, it's the cities, stupid--not the rural areas, not the
prickly, hateful "heartland," but the sane, sensible cities--including
the cities trapped in the heartland. Howard Dean had it wrong
when he tried to woo the "Pickup Truck with Confederate Flag"
vote. That's a waste of time. Again, look at the blue spots in red
states like Iowa, Colorado, and New Mexico--there's almost as
much blue in those states as there is in Oregon, Washington, and
California. And the challenge for the Democrats is not just to
organize in the blue areas but to grow them. And to do that,
Democrats, liberals, and progressives need to pursue policies that
encourage urban growth (mass transit, affordable housing, city
services), and Democrats need to openly and aggressively
champion urban values. Focus on the cities. The Dems need a
tribal identity to combat the white, Christian, rural, and suburban
identity that the Republicans have cornered. And it's sitting right
there, on every electoral map, staring them in the face: The cities.
The urbanites.
We need a new identity politics, one that transcends class, race,
sexual orientation, and religion, one that unites people living in
cities with each other and with other urbanites in other cities.
Certain distressed liberals and progressives are talking about
fleeing to Canada or, better yet, seceding from the Union. We
can't literally secede and, let's admit it, we don't really want to live
in Canada. It's too cold up there and in our heart-of-hearts, we
hate hockey. We can secede emotionally, however, by turning our
backs on the heartland. We can focus on our issues, our urban
issues, and promote our shared urban values. The Republicans
have the federal government--for now. But we've got Seattle,
Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, New
York City (Bloomberg is a Republican in name only), and every
college town in the country. We're everywhere any sane person
wants to be. Let them have the shitholes, the Oklahomas,
Wyomings, and Alabamas. We'll take Manhattan.
EMBRACING URBAN SELF-INTEREST
To all those who live in cities--to all those depressed Kerry
supporters out there--we say take heart. Clearly we can't control
national politics right now--we can barely get a hearing. We can,
however, stay engaged in our cities, and make our voices heard in
the urban areas we dominate, and make each and every one, to
borrow Ronald Reagan's phrase, "a city on a hill." This is not a
retreat; it is a long-term strategy for the Democratic Party to cater
to and build on its base.
To red-state voters, to the rural voters, residents of small, dying
towns, and soulless sprawling exburbs, we'll say this: Fuck off.
Your issues are no longer our issues. We're going to battle our
bleeding-heart instincts and ignore pangs of misplaced empathy.
We will no longer concern ourselves with a health care crisis that
disproportionately impacts rural areas. Instead we will work
toward winning health care one blue state at a time.
When it comes to the environment, our new policy is this: Let the
heartland live with the consequences of handing the national
government to the rape-and-pillage party. The only time urbanists
should concern themselves with the environment is when we are
impacted--directly, not spiritually (the depressing awareness that
there is no unspoiled wilderness out there doesn't count). Air
pollution, for instance: We have a right to meddle. If coal is to be
burned, it has to be burned as cleanly as possible so as not to foul
the air we all have to breathe. But if West Virginia wants to elect
politicians who allow mining companies to lop off the tops off
mountains and dump the waste into valleys and streams, thus
causing floods that destroy the homes of the yokels who vote for
those politicians, it no longer matters to us. Fuck the mountains in
West Virginia--send us the power generated by cleanly burned
coal, you rubes, and be sure to wear lifejackets to bed.
Wal-Mart is a rapacious corporation that pays sub-poverty-level
wages, offers health benefits to its employees that are so
expensive few can afford them, and destroys small towns and
rural jobs. Liberals in big cities who have never seen the inside of
a Wal-Mart spend a lot of time worrying about the impact Wal-
Mart is having on the heartland. No more. We will do what we
can to keep Wal-Mart out of our cities and, if at all possible, out
of our states. We will pass laws mandating a living wage for full-
time work, upping the minimum wage for part-time work, and
requiring large corporations to either offer health benefits or pay
into state- or city-run funds to provide health care for uninsured
workers. That will reform Wal-Mart in our blue cities and states
or, better yet, keep Wal-Mart out entirely. And when we see
something on the front page of the national section of The New
York Times about the damage Wal-Mart is doing to the heartland,
we will turn the page. Wal-Mart is not an urban issue.
Neither is gun control. Our new position: We'll fight to keep guns
off the streets of our cities but the more guns laying around out
there in the heartland, the better. Most cities have strong gun-
control laws--laws that are, of course, undermined by the fact that
our cities aren't walled. Yet. But why should liberals in cities fund
organizations that attempt to get trigger locks onto the handguns
of NRA members and Bush supporters? If red-state dads aren't
concerned enough about their own children to put trigger locks on
their own guns, it's not our problem. If a kid in a red state finds his
daddy's handgun and blows his head off, we'll feel terrible (we're
like that), but we'll try to look on the bright side: At least he won't
grow up to vote like his dad.
We won't demand that the federal government impose reasonable
fuel-efficiency standards on all cars sold in the United States. We
will, however, strive to pass state laws, as California has done,
imposing fuel-efficiency standards on cars sold in our states.
We officially no longer give a shit when family farms fail. As far
as urbanists are concerned, fewer family farms mean fewer rural
voters. We will, however, continue to support small organic
farmers, as we're willing to pay more for free-range chicken and
beef from non-cannibal cows.
We won't concern ourselves if red states restrict choice. We'll just
make sure that abortion remains safe and legal in the cities where
we live, and the states we control, and when your daughter or
sister or mother dies in a botched abortion, we'll try not to feel too
awful about it.
In short, we're through with you people. We're going to demand
that the Democrats focus on building their party in the cities while
at the same time advancing a smart urban-growth agenda that
builds the cities themselves. The more attractive we make the
cities--politically, aesthetically, socially--the more residents and
voters cities will attract, gradually increasing the electoral clout of
liberals and progressives. For Democrats, party building and city
building is the same thing. We will strive to turn red states blue
one big city at a time. And while we build the cities, you can
continue to ruin the rest of the country. We're glad you live in
areas where guns are more powerful and more plentiful, cars are
larger and faster, and people are fatter and slower and dumber.
This is not a recipe for repopulating the Great Plains.
And when you look for ways to revive your failing towns and
dying rural counties, don't even think about tourism. Who wants to
go to small-town America now? You people scare us. We'll
island-hop from now on, thank you, spending our time and our
money in blue cities. You can starve out there in red America for
all we care. Hell, we already give you enough money anyway, you
big government leeches. Although you like to complain about
"tax-and-spend liberals," guess where that big-government money
gets spent: North Dakota, New Mexico, Mississippi, Alaska, West
Virginia, Montana, Alabama, South Dakota, Arkansas. These red
states top the list of federal spending per dollar of federal taxes
paid. And who's paying the most? That's right, you government-
handout parasites: blue states. New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois,
Massachusetts, California, New York, Minnesota. We pay the
most and receive the least.
You've made your choice, red America, and we urban Americans
are going to make a different choice. We are going to make
Portland--and New York, Chicago, and the rest--a great place to
live, a progressive place. To borrow Reagan's phrase again, we
will make each of our cities--each and every one--a shining city on
a hill. You can have your shitholes.
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