A Short History of Red-Blue Tribalism

Leading to the baffling paradox that Bidenomics is right now benefiting red states more than blue ones. Hey election truthers, you're welcome!

I am looking at a book review I wrote for the New York Times about red and blue America. “By now,” I wrote, “the country is divided not so much by competing ideologies as by competing realities.” The quote itself is horribly banal, but let me say in my defense that I penned it two decades ago. The red state-blue-state designation arose from the delayed count in the 2000 presidential election. Previously, TV news graphics had followed no consistent color pattern in depicting states that voted Democratic versus states that voted Republican. But the Long Count, which went unresolved until December 12, lengthened the tallying so much that graphics had to be consistent to avoid confusion. NBC News had a habit of designating blue whichever party held the White House on election day. In November 2000 that was the Democrats. Tim Russert, very possibly the last TV network newsman to wield significant influence in the national culture, started calling the Republican states red states and the Democratic states blue states. Et voilà.

Many thought this designation wouldn’t last. At Slate, my employer at the time, Jacob Weisberg, was soliciting ideas for e-books that the magazine could publish. I proposed a humorous guide to the red states for bleary-eyed, chad-addled blue-staters who didn’t get out much (a defensible description of Slate’s readership at the time and an indisputable one of Slate’s readership now) and were struggling to adjust to a most unwelcome Bush restoration. Jake said it was a great idea, but unless I could get the manuscript to him in three days it wouldn’t work because by the time the book came out the red-blue designation would be obsolete. Subsequent history tells a different story. An Illinois state legislator electrified the 2004 Democratic convention by declaring the red-blue distinction illegitimate:

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But … we worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States…. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

But after Barack Obama was elected president four years later, he couldn’t make the red-blue business go away, and the guy who succeeded him got there by exploiting pathological resentment of the blue state Other.

Now it’s 2023 and President Joe Biden’s approval rating is stuck at 41 percent, with the economy cited as the top concern. Biden’s approval among Democrats is 78 percent and his approval among Republicans is 5 percent: competing realities. But even Democrats question Biden’s handling of the economy. Here’s Monica Potts in Five Forty-Eight:

Republicans are the most likely to disapprove of his handling of the economy, and they really disapprove. In the AP poll, only 10 percent ranked him positively on that score. But the surveys are picking up more than just partisan differences. Only 60 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners approved of his handling of the economy, and in many cases that approval is lukewarm.

The punch line, as I point out in my latest New Republic piece, is not only that the economy is thriving under Biden—the latest indicator being a significant inflation drop to 3 percent in June—but that the biggest income gains are in red states. The prerequisite to enjoying a big wage boost, it turns out, is to loathe and despise Joe Biden. You can read my article dissecting and, ultimately, explaining this paradox here.