How did the 2004 election map of the United States come to look like a color-field painting by Barnett Newman? In fact, if you adjust the map`s colors for votes by county (as at the Web sites for CNN and USA Today), even the blue states turn mostly red. Pennsylvania is blue, but between blue Philadelphia and Pittsburgh every county in the state is red. California, except for the coastline, is almost entirely red. This didn`t happen last Tuesday. The color-coding of the 2004 election began around 1965 in the politics of the Vietnam era. The Democratic Party today is the product of a generational shift that began in those years.
Read Original at: Wall Street Journal