<H4>Now, it’s city slickers against the rest of the country</H4>

The Sarasota Herald Tribune appears to be putting a new spin on the old conservative idea of class warfare.

The thesis of Jim McNeil is that it’s not blue states vs. red, but big cities and New England enclaves against everybody else. Even without the soon-to-be apparent culture war slant of the editorial, I think they are a bit overstating things.

For example, even in urbanizing post-WWII America, there's not always been a rural-urban gap at the national level. The largely rural South was yellow dog Democratic, but the Midwest was then as today stereotypically rock-ribbed Republican or leaning that way.

Besides urban New York “married” the rural South 215 years ago to found Jefferson's Republican party.

In any case, what’s the semi-hysterical deal? In some of the states you mentioned, midsized cities may have voted the same direction as big cities, i.e. Youngstown and Cleveland.

More importantly, though, elsewhere, suburbia, and even more so, borderline exurbia, voted against central city areas in many of these urban conglomerates.

I have an example right here in conservative ground zero Dallas.

In Dallas County, voters elected the first Democratic sheriff in more than a generation. Democrats also picked up three state judgeships in Dallas County.

Meanwhile, Sessions beat Frost in a district partially outside Dallas County, with personal involvement by the president, etc. Smokey Joe Barton won easily in his suburban/exurban district. (It takes in a fair amount of rural territory, but the majority of voters would be demographically classified as either suburban or exurban, whether they recognize the exurban term or want to accept it if they do.)

Finally, the fact that the editorial's last graf ends by plugging Bush's “mandate” should have made people look at the whole thing skeptically.

The second-last graf ends:

”Clearly, this is not a blue-state vs. red-state issue; it is a large-cities vs. the rest- of-the-country issue.”

Can't you just see how McNeil’s setting up the culture warfare issue here? I mean, to me, it's slipping out like Ghostbusters ectoplasm.