Swing States from 2000 Election

[MAS117]

nice map

[jravnsbo]

only solid when they nominate a liberal?  It will be solid GOP then.  Only moderates are Lieberman ( no chance) and MAYBE clark.

Rest are very much liberals, Kerry, dean and Edwards is too when you look at his voting record.

What the "trend map" fails to recognize is that US politics from 1976-2000 underwent a tectonic shift whereby the "Solid South" of Democrat Jimmy Carter became the "Solid of South" of Republican George Bush.    

Since 1988, California has done nothing but pick up electoral votes and trend more solidly Democratic.   Illinois is likewise firmly in the Democratic column.   What choosing 1988 as a starting point for the "trend" comparison obscures, however, is that these two electoral goldmines, which used to be the *Republican* base, are now bastions of the Democratic Party.   All that's happened is that the bases have shifted... but the Democratic Party remains solidly competitive in a close race.

TheOldLine

I disagree that the South is now a solid GOP base.

It's only solid when the Dems nominate a liberal.

If we consider a 13-state South, the trend map shows that only 5 of these states went with the GOP in all of the last 4 elections - that's no republican Solid South.

On the other side, WV was the only Southern state that went for any of the left leaning Democratic nominees in the past 32 years.

The rest went for Clinton at least once - that's recent history, and the only blueprint the Democrats have for winning back the White House.

And Edwards is no Bill Clinton.

[© tweed]

Rest are very much liberals, Kerry, dean and Edwards is too when you look at his voting record.

Simply not true.  National Journal only gives Edwards a 56% social liberal rating.

[zorkpolitics]

Edwards is modestly liberal.  A mathematician did a correlation analysis of voting records over 498 roll call votes from 1998 to 2000.  This ranked the 100 Senators.  On his scale the most liberal Democrat has the lowest score, Feingold  CA (1), and the most conservative Senator Kyl AZ (102).  Adding Bush in based on his support of various positions yielded a ranking of 71.  Edwards ranks 38, above all Republicans, and 13 other Democrats.  I don't have a web link but here is the journal reference:
"Non-Parametric Unfolding of Binary Choice Data." Political Analysis, 8:211-237, 2000.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Edwards is certainly left wing but he isn't really a liberal.
He is basically a populist Democrat, the BBC did a "candidates on the issues" thing. Go to http://news.bbc.co.uk go to "in depth" click on "Vote USA" then go into "candidates and issues"

[opebo]

Edwards is certainly left wing but he isn't really a liberal.
He is basically a populist Democrat, the BBC did a "candidates on the issues" thing. Go to http://news.bbc.co.uk go to "in depth" click on "Vote USA" then go into "candidates and issues"

I don't understand how you distinguish between 'left-wing' and 'liberal'.  Of course I consider myself a classical liberal in the European sense, but here in American Liberal and Left wing are synonymous.