White-State America

It is a commonplace of contemporary duopoly ideology that the American electorate is "split down the middle," with roughly half the country represented by the Democrats and the other by Republicans. Daniel at Investment Watch reflects on the American-style accumulation of stuff, which leads into a critique of Obama's stimulus plan. He then writes:

I have made my many objections very clear to those that say they represent me. They disagree with me. They believe spending is the way out. So because we strongly disagree I am no longer represented . . . This two party system is a failure in that the losing party which usually makes up half the country is thus not represented. Nothing good can come of the failure to be represented. (Emphasis added.)

Of course, the situation is much worse than this. With approximately 56% voter turnout in 2008 (which represents a forty year high!), Obama was voted into office with 53% of the vote, which comes to just over one third of eligible voters by my calculations. This correlates roughly with Americans' stated party affiliation, according to Rasmussen, which reports that over the last four years roughly a quarter to a third of Americans consistently claim affiliation with a party other than the Republicans or Democrats. By framing the political disposition of the populace in terms of the red-state/blue-state divide, the conventional wisdom effectively obscures the fact that a significant number of Americans simply do not find their views represented by either of the two major parties, call it white-state America, if you will, to round out the tricolor of the good old stars and stripes.