The designation of states since 2000 as Red for Republican and Blue for Democratic long ago became a psychological operation and should be rejected as such.
BACKGROUND:
Since the ascendancy of color TV, blue and red have alternated as the colors assigned to the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates on the election night maps used by the TV networks. Many readers may remember that Reagan states were shown in blue in 1980 and 1984. Bush was given red in 1988, but Clinton states were red in both 1992 and 1996.
An informal rule has governed color selection since 1972 and has almost always been followed by every network: color alternates for the incumbent party. Since incumbency varies, the same party can get the same color several times in a row.
If the rule is followed in 2008, then the Republican states will be shown in blue and the Democratic states in red.
All this is described, neutrally, in what I think is a right-wing blog, which features a table showing what colors were used in different election years:
http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2006/02/a_tale_of_red_a.htmlCONTENTION
After the 2000 election, something changed. For the first time, the colors used arbitrarily on the election night maps came into common usage as permanent symbols of the parties. This may have arisen because the election took more than a month to resolve, so that the TV coverage constantly featured maps with Gore in blue and Bush in red. But since then Blue and Red have remained widespread as terms describing a dichotomy.
Democrats and Republicans may often sound and act the same, but to call them Blue and Red generates a spectacle of true and irreconcilable differences. The two-party system is both legitimated as genuinely adversarial, and enshrined as a natural state. But there is more to it than that.
Colors are beyond rationality. They are abstract and yet emotionally powerful. To speak of Blue and Red is to turn political ideologies into essential aspects of geography, culture and identity. A state no longer votes Republican but simply is Red by nature. The country is graphically polarized. The discourse of the culture wars is given primacy over mere debates on issues. Thus the Blue/Red terminology encourages a manner of thinking about politics that I would argue is skewed to favor "Red."
November will bring a test: if the networks follow their own longstanding informal rule, they will designate blue as the Republican color and red as the Democratic. If they instead stick with the color scheme of 2000 and 2004, they will be intentionally endorsing the role the colors have come to play.
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