Saturday, August 29, 2015

Dave Roberts Puts It into a Few Words

Here's some reading for today, if you haven't already seen it: David Roberts's analysis of why tech nerds -- successful at so many things -- fail at politics.

I haven't actually finished reading it yet, but when I got to this bit of synthesis I had to share it somewhere:

the Republican Party has increasingly become the voice of white people who live around other white people in rural and suburban areas, where they have been radicalized by burgeoning right-wing media and a network of ideologically conservative think tanks and lobbying groups.
This, of course, is in contrast with Democrats, who are most likely to be people of color, "single women, young people, LGBTQ folks, academics, and artists — clustered in the 'urban archipelago' of America's cities."

Time is not on the side of the Republican Party, given the demographic shifts happening in our country, but for now, as Roberts points out:
aggrieved older white men still punch above their weight, politically speaking. Democratic constituencies cluster in urban areas, where many of their votes end up wasted. GOP demographics are more spread out, covering a larger geographical area, thus giving them a reliably large bloc of low-population states in the Senate and a built-in advantage in the House of Representatives.
None of this is the main point Roberts makes in the article. I just want to be able to find these quotes at some time in the future when I need to explain our political situation.

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Roberts writes for vox.com, though until recently he was a long-time writer for grist.org. His tweets are a regular feature in my monthly Twitter roundups.

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