What would it take for the Rockies/Great Plains to vote Democratic?

[FerrisBueller86]

Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma are all states that voted for LBJ in 1964 but haven't voted Democratic ever since.  Montana voted for LBJ in 1964 but hasn't voted Democratic since except for 1992 (attributed to the Perot factor).

Everyone keeps talking about why the Democrats can't win in the South and theories on how to change this.

I haven't heard people talk about why the Democrats can't win in the  Mountain states and Great Plains states.  These places are considered conservative.  But they're different from the South.  Except for segregationists like Strom Thurmond and George Wallace, insurgent candidates like Ross Perot have had their weakest showings in the South but often have their strongest showings in states like Alaska and Montana.  Also, while the South and the Northeast tend to vote against each other (except in the biggest landslide elections), the crazy Western states have always voted Republican.  While this means that they vote with Mississippi and Alabama today, they voted with Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the previous partisan alignment.  While the South is known for slavery and segregation, the crazy Western states were the birthplace of Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive movement and were the first to give women the right to vote.

The Democrats need to compete in all 50 states and stop writing off so many of them because that sends a message of wimpiness and insincerity.  I think that the crazy Western states will vote Democratic again before Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina will.  I predict that the next time there is a Democratic landslide, the electoral map will look similar to that of 1964.

So what will it take to get the crazy Western states to vote with Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as was the case before 1960?

[FerrisBueller86]

What exactly makes these crazy western states so heavily Republican?  I realize that the gun control issue is one of them, but these crazy western states were heavily Republican before the issue became divided along partisan lines.  The fact that these states were heavily Republican back when the Northeast was Republican and the South Democratic leads me to believe that the crazy western states aren't hardcore conservative like the South.

I am sure that the crazy western states would only vote for a Democrat who looks credible as a reformer.  I think Howard Dean would have put these states in play had he been the nominee.  In 2008, Russell Feingold might be able to.  However, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman wouldn't stand a chance.  (They don't fire up anyone and don't fight back hard enough.)

[FerrisBueller86]

I would like to say that you should probably separate the Rockies from the Great Plains, since despite their similar Republican margins, they are two very different regions. I would guess that the Rockies would favor a more libertarian candidate while the Plains would favor a more populist candidate...so I don't think the Dems can win both regions at once.

So why can the Republicans win both regions at once?

[FerrisBueller86]

I think the first thing you need to do is stop calling them the "Crazy Western States."

But "Crazy Western States" is shorter and catchier than the "Rocky Mountain/Great Plains States".  These are the states where the third party candidates and insurgent candidates usually do best.

By this definition, Dixie is the "sanest" part of the country.  Most people in Dixie have the good sense to vote for "real" candidates rather than waste their vote on a third-party candidate.