Forget Red-State, Blue-State

America is not divided by states and not even by county. 

It is divided by precinct.

The marriage of the fifty states just isn't working out. I hear casual talk of political divorce. 

People on the left say let Texas and Alabama and Wyoming and the Dakotas should do their own thing. They are standing in the way of what Blue-America wants and the planet needs. Go do your own country, where abortion is banned, where the minimum wage is $7.50, and where you can spread COVID to each other. Good riddance. Meanwhile people in "Heartland America" scoff at high-tax California and its West Coast ilk, with its expensive housing, the fussing over pronouns, and where people there illegally find sanctuary. There are blue states and red states and we don't even like each other anymore. 

The problem isn't at the state level. 

The New York Times publishes an "Extremely Detailed Map of the 2020 Election. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/upshot/2020-election-map.html

There is an urban consciousness that votes Democratic and a rural one that votes Republican. Since there are urban counties, suburban counties, and rural counties, details at the county level reveal significant differences. But the real difference takes place at the precinct level. County numbers obscure the reality by aggregating diverse precincts. I looked closely at Jackson County, Oregon, my home. A large precinct in college town Ashland had 5,995 votes for Biden and 927 for Trump, an 84%-13% margin for Biden. Moving the curser two precincts away into a rural area showed a geographically large very rural precinct with a vote of 859 for Trump and 274 for Biden, a 74%-24% margin for Trump. Same county.

It is a mistake for Democrats to dismiss the Texas of Governor Abbott as foreign territory. After all, there is Austin, home of the University of Texas and a growing technology center. It is part of Blue-America, educated and diverse. It shows up as a big splotch of blue precincts with a 80%-20% Biden margin. But it isn't just Austin. All the big Texas cities are bright blue. A Dallas precinct shows a vote of 782 for Biden and 25 for Trump, a 95%-4% margin.

Pick an area of interest. I looked at Massachusetts. It is undeniably a blue state, but there are areas west of Springfield that are Trump country, with 10%+ margins for Trump. 

The differences in political orientation by neighborhood suggests both the sorting of people by lifestyle and the limitations of the message of each political party. Democrats are turning off rural people. Losing rural precincts 90-10 is a sign that Democratic message and policies have problems that go beyond race and cultural symbols. Rural people are the biggest beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act, with its expanded Medicaid that saved rural hospitals, yet they vote decisively against the Democrats who voted it in. Democrats are not being realistic about where a city-dweller's food and energy and building materials come from and what takes place to extract those things and get them to market. I liken it to the convenient blindness of people who eat meat but oppose slaughterhouses. 

Republicans speak of urban areas as hell-holes of violent crime, protests, arson, and racial conflict; something they will fix with better borders and hard-knuckle policing. The GOP under Trump represents and advocates for an America that was not so great for Blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, and people who are succeeding in the 21st century American economy. They lose those urban areas decisively. 

An American civil war won't take place between the states. It is taking place right now, as ongoing political disfunction because each party has retreated to the corner of its best precincts. It doesn't need to be that way. My U.S. Senator Ron Wyden gets out and around. His political home base is Portland, but until COVID he visited every one of the counties in Oregon every year, all 36, of which about 28  are undeniably rural. He won a majority of the votes in Oregon's sole bright red congressional district. He has said to me he isn't interested in running for president. 

Jon Tester of Montana, a Democrat with the approximate political orientation of Joe Biden, is doing the things a senator does, when he is eyeing a run. He wrote his book, Grounded. Could a guy who operates a wheat farm and who looks like this possibly win a Democratic primary? Maybe not. He just doesn't look like a Democrat, and that is the problem.