An interesting demographic set me to thinking recently.  Half of the US population lives in just nine states: California, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia and Florida.  This aggregation is actually much more dramatic.  Half of the country lives in the darker counties below.  Fully eighty percent of the population live in urban areas and the suburbs that surround them, and this number is growing increasingly larger. If you happen to be one who sees the leaves, and not just the forest or the trees, The New York Times has a detailed 2016 election breakdown that zooms in on even greater detail. If the conventional wisdom that more populated areas tend to be more liberal is the case, the United States should be much less conservative than our current political climate seems to be.  Voters in denser areas should be electing representatives that promise more government, and yet our Congress has grown anything but friendly to such traditional liberal ideas. The conservative control of the House of Representatives is attributed by many to the gerrymandering of district lines to maximize the number of predictably Republican districts.  How predictable?  Over 90 percent of Representatives who run again are reelected. … Continue reading Red and Blue, Left and Right