How the (Mountain) West was won

Nice article by Eli Sanders in The Stranger about how the Democrats are making inroads in the recently red "inner West" states -- e.g., Idaho, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona. On the one hand it's a tribute to Howard Dean's 50 state strategy. On another, it seems to confirm a possibility I began to think about after the 2000 election, which is that the Greens (whom I voted for that year) might actually end up pushing the Democrats to the right rather than pulling them to the left. So we have anti-abortion Democrats like Harry Reid, promoted to Senate minority leadership, and Bob Casey, who looks to be taking rightwing nutjob Rick Santorum down in Pennsylvania. (By the way, everyone should read calimac's wonderful Tolkienian analysis of Santorum's bizarre comparison of the war in Iraq to Lord of the Rings.) We also have Democratic candidates like Jon Tester in Montana who opposes the estate tax and gay marriage, although he also opposes a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Then again, with gay Republicans coming out of the woodworks lately, that whole issue seems to be moving in directions that neither party has a good handle on, which may be a good thing in the long run.

Sanders' article is also a rebuke to The Stranger's own widely-read Urban Archipelago manifesto following the 2004 election. That was something that seemed very powerful to me at the time, because it follows Jane Jacobs' idea that cities are the economic engines of the nation. But there are other analyses that look at the country in terms of nine or more regions, and it appears that some parts of the Democratic coalition think that the Mountain West can be turned blue. This year is a test of the theory, and it's starting to look as though they're right.