Check out Urban Archipelago - a strategy based on "blue" cities

[T Roosevelt]

An interesting manifesto, similiar to fuckthesouth, but with a strategy based on using the strength of blue cities to influence state and eventually federal politics.


THE URBAN ARCHIPELAGO

It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers. Red Virginia prohibits any contract between same-sex couples. Compassionate? Texas allows the death penalty to be applied to teenaged criminals and has historically executed the mentally retarded. (When the Supreme Court ruled executions of the mentally retarded unconstitutional in 2002, Texas officials, including Governor Rick Perry, responded by claiming that the state had no mentally retarded inmates on death row--a claim the state was able to make because it does not test inmates for mental retardation.) Dumb? The Sierra Club has reported that Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee squander over half of their federal transportation money on building new roads rather than public transit.

If Democrats and urban residents want to combat the rising tide of red that threatens to swamp and ruin this country, we need a new identity politics, an urban identity politics, one that argues for the cities, uses a rhetoric of urban values, and creates a tribal identity for liberals that's as powerful and attractive as the tribal identity Republicans have created for their constituents. John Kerry won among the highly educated, Jews, young people, gays and lesbians, and non-whites. What do all these groups have in common? They choose to live in cities. An overwhelming majority of the American popuation chooses to live in cities. And John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000. He took half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000. The future success of liberalism is tied to winning the cities. An urbanist agenda may not be a recipe for winning the next presidential election--but it may win the Democrats the presidential election in 2012 and create a new Democratic majority.

<snip>

EMBRACING URBAN SELF-INTEREST

To all those who live in cities--to all those depressed Kerry supporters out there--we say take heart. Clearly we can't control national politics right now--we can barely get a hearing. We can, however, stay engaged in our cities, and make our voices heard in the urban areas we dominate, and make each and every one, to quote Ronald Reagan (and John Winthrop, the 17th-century Puritan Reagan was parroting), "a city on a hill." This is not a retreat; it is a long-term strategy for the Democratic Party to cater to and build on its base.

To red-state voters, to the rural voters, residents of small, dying towns, and soulless sprawling exburbs, we say this: Fuck off. Your issues are no longer our issues. We're going to battle our bleeding-heart instincts and ignore pangs of misplaced empathy. We will no longer concern ourselves with a health care crisis that disproportionately impacts rural areas. Instead we will work toward winning health care one blue state at a time.

<more>

[Ian David]

1. Preaching to the choir! Where do I sign-up?

[Speck Tater]

2. Hmmm...

Sounds like somebody forgot where all the food comes from. Let's declare cultural war on our food suppliers. Sounds like a winning strategy to me.

Also, urban folks are conveniently gathered together in concentrated target zones while those rubes and fools are decentralized and spread so thin that only they would survive any large-scale hostile attack from an outside enemy.

Sort of looks like they are holding all the trump cards.

[Maple]

3. Cities hold the trump card

who else are the rural people going to sell to?

[ianna_kur]

7. Ah, but that is where the Pacific Northwest comes into play....

As a proud dweller of the west coast...

We have a great deal of food :-) Year round also.





Ianna

[democratic4ever]

4. Agreed. eom

[GetTheRightVote]

5. Add me to that list

:kick;

[Lauren2882]

6. Unfortunately, central cities are currenlty losing population,

... while exurbs are booming.

[pstans]

8. Brain Drain helps Red States stay Red

This part of the article hit me.
"They choose to live in cities. An overwhelming majority of the American popuation chooses to live in cities. And John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000. He took half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000."

I was born and raised in Iowa. I am 24, married, and will be graduating college in the next year (with my 2nd college degree). What do I do then?

My wife and I are going to leave our families behind and move to a city. We haven't decided which one, but we just know that we will be moving to a city not in Iowa. This is very common here in Iowa (and Nebraska, the Dakotas, and many other rural states.)

This pattern just keeps those states going Red. Kids grow up, some go to college, some stay clueless. The ones that go to college leave the state once they graduate, leaving their home state full of clueless wingnuts who only go to Church and the bar for escape of the dull life they are stuck in.

[El Fuego]

9. That is exactly what is happening.

Sad but true. And so the most educated, intelligent Americans are subject to the will of the ignorant and clueless just because of population distributions.