Political Reality

A handful of facts to bear in mind for this election season.

1. If any state is a microcosm of the U.S. it is Missouri. (See this Atlantic article which may require registration/subscription).

2. The Washington press portrays the political mainstream as running from Denny Hastert to Nancy Pelosi. Thinking in terms of Missouri we can see that the mainstream is more accurately portrayed as ranging from John Ashcroft to Dick Gephardt.

3. Publicola points out that the DEMOCRATIC governor of Missouri just lost a primary because he vetoed a CCW law. Inside the I-95 echo chamber the renewal of the AWB is a mainstream position and CCW is an extreme idea. For the nation as a whole it is just the opposite. Many democrats support CCW and the AWB is a wedge issue that hurts the party.
[Update: I apologize for the acronyms. AWB="Assaust Weapons Ban", i.e. that Clinton gun law that is due to sunset next month. CCW as used here are the state laws that allow civilians to carry concealed weapons. Thanks to the reader who emailed me.]

4. Pennsylvania is a key swing state. We can expect to see dozens, maybe hundreds of stories trying to gauge the mood of the electorate here. My state has been described as Pittsburgh on one end, Philadelphia on the other, and Alabama in the middle.

5. Pennsylvania has 147,000 miles of highways. Most reporters will only travel a few hundred miles of that network. They will shuttle from the airport to an arena and then back to the airport. Or they will be on busses sweeping down the Interstate. They will spend very little time walking around the "Alabama" part of the state. Their "reporting" will reflect that.

UPDATE: I know this really isn't a response to Classical Values's post. In truth, I posted this hours before i saw the link to CV on Instapundit. But I do think that the point about Missouri directly applies to his argument about the "Republican base." You can't extrapolate California to the nation as a whole. While it is true Arnold was the only republican who could have won in the recall election, it is also true that Arnold would have had to run as a Dem in Missouri (i.e. in the mini-US). And McClintock would probably have cleaned his clock in that state.