The changing politics of New England
[NOTE: This post was sparked by a back-and-forth yesterday in this thread.]
Most of now-liberal/left New England was for many years the center of rock-ribbed Republicanism, with native Vermonter Calvin Coolidge a typical product.
In 1932 there were only six states that didn’t vote for FDR, but the ones that didn’t were mostly in New England, four of the six: Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. In 1936, only two states voted against FDR: Maine and Vermont (I believe that may have been the origin of the old saying “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont”). In 1940 eight states in the midwest and west joined Maine and Vermont in voting against him, and in 1944 ten midwest and western states again voted against FDR, plus Maine and Vermont. In 1948 every New England state except Massachusetts voted against Truman. In 1952 (Eisenhower landslide) even more-liberal Massachusetts joint the other states in New England – all of them – to vote Republican, and 1956 was the same. In 1960, even Massachusetts son JFK didn’t appeal to Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, who all voted for Nixon. 1964 was a turning point of sorts; as part of LBJ’s landslide, New England voted for Democrats for the very first time. But in 1968 New Hampshire and Vermont were back in the Republican fold again. 1972 was the enormous Nixon landslide that saw only liberal Massachusetts voting against him. In 1976 only Massachusetts and Rhode Island went for Carter; the rest of New England voted for Ford. In 1980 New England went solidly for Reagan except for tiny Rhode Island; even Massachusetts voted for him in 1980. By 1984 even Rhode Island had jumped aboard the Reagan train. In 1988 only Massachusetts and Rhode Island went for Massachusetts favorite son Dukakis; the rest of New England voted for Bush.
It really wasn’t till 1992 that New England suddenly went solidly Democrat for Bill Clinton, and that held true in 1996 as well. This marked a real turning point, but it was not till then that it occurred, and then in 2000 holdout New Hampshire (“live free or die”) went for Bush, alone of the New England states. In 2004 all of New England voted for Kerry, and in 2008 as well as in 2012 solidly for Obama. Then in 2016, Trump lost in New Hampshire by a hair, and in Maine (which splits its electoral votes into districts) Trump won in the 2rd district there. If you follow that link I just gave, and look at the map of Maine, you will see a sharp division between the urban south and the rural north.
What happened in New England was a combination of two factors: the rural areas lost population while urban centers gained, and the gain was mostly from out-of-state people moving in. Like what’s happened in certain other states, particularly Texas and some western states.
For example, here’s an article from 2016 that describes the history of what happened in Vermont. Vermont is probably the most extreme example of the phenomenon of New England leftism, but it didn’t start out that way. Here’s a summary of what happened:
It all started in the 1950s. From the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, the Republican Party had an unbreakable majority in Vermont. But by the mid-1950s, this majority began to show signs of weakening…the 1950s were a pivotal point for transitioning away from Republican control of the state.
Unfortunately for the Republicans, it was in part due to their own infighting that led to their downfall. Starting in the 1940s, the Republican stalwart regime broke into two factions: one led by the traditional, conservative Republicans of the “Proctor” family, and another led by a new progressive wing of Republicans, which included Governor Ernest Gibson. The once unified GOP was broken…The disorganization of the Vermont Republican party in the 1950s left the door open for the increasingly well-organized Democrats to step in.
However, the change was not only the product of the Republicans self-inflicted wounds. Several other crucial factors were at play. For example, during the 1950s, Vermont’s urban population centers increased by 6.2 percent, while its rural population actually fell. Similarly, during the same period, Chittenden County’s population grew by 20.9 percent. The growing urbanization of Vermont did not help Republicans who traditionally relied on rural communities for their support. Furthermore, much of this population growth was driven by the “importation” of Vermont residents from outside the state. By 1970, one in four Vermont residents had been born elsewhere, according to Doyle, and many came from more liberal northeastern states, bringing their ideologies with them. The building of the interstate highway, I-89, likely contributed to this outcome. Additionally, in the early 1960s, legislative apportionment was determined by “one-man, one-vote” rather than the traditional “one-town, one-vote” method. Overnight, legislative Republicans representing rural areas had their seats taken away.
Those changes have occurred to a lesser or greater extent in all of New England, although Massachusetts has always been more liberal than the other states, and New Hampshire and to a lesser extent Maine remain somewhat purplish – for now.
From my comment in the previous thread Neo alludes to:
Neo places a lot of the Demo transformation of New England on migrants to New England. In support of that, I would add that the “our shit doesn’t stink” attitude that I disliked in New England was much more prevalent among my peers whose parents were migrants to New England. I didn’t find that attitude among the old Yankees I grew up with, who were neither pretentious nor self-righteous. (No, I didn’t grow up with Boston Brahmins. Many of the old Yankees I grew up with were dairy farmers.It’s rather hard to shovel cow manure and remain pretentious. )
The majority of self righteous city dwellers and suburbanites are Liberal > Socialist > Dependent. They are far more dependent upon the efforts and competence of others… than are rural citizens.
A physically healthy adult who is dependent upon others is by definition dysfunctional. Self-generated dysfunction typically externalizes blame, which breeds resentment and resentment externalized results in a contemptuous, patronizing attitude toward the people upon whom they are dependent.
At least on a subconscious level, liberal city & suburbanite dwellers have to know that they are utterly dependent upon the deplorables; farmers, blue collar workers, the police and the military.
Self righteous liberals are ingrates and the source of their ingratitude is their self-hate, arising out of their infantile helplessness. They cannot feed themselves nor protect themselves from lawlessness. They are utterly dependent upon others for the very neccessities of life itself.
Lacking the moral fortitude needed for self-examination, they externalize that helplessness into active dislike and even hatred of those upon whom they depend.
Self righteous liberals have long been contemptuous of those who “cling to their Bibles and guns”. In the past decade or two rural citizens have begun to see just how dysfunctional are the majority of city dwellers, having reluctantly concluded that dysfunction to be a case of malicious ignorance. A maliciousness that arises out of their dependence being exposed by the very competence of the rural citizen.
A physically healthy adult who is dependent upon others is by definition dysfunctional. Self-generated dysfunction typically externalizes blame, which breeds resentment and resentment externalized results in a contemptuous, patronizing attitude toward the people upon whom they are dependent.
Unless you’re Robinson Crusoe, you’re living in a society where you produce goods and services, get paid, and purchase other goods and services. Enjoy.
Of course, self-righteous libs totally lack humility. They are their own gods, and, as gods, are never wrong, though their errors litter the planet physically and its ether also.
The thing is that libs lack reality-testing, one of the psychiatric hallmarks of psychosis and other serious mental disorders. And the vast majority of mental health workers, including psychiatrists, are….liberal! So once aboard the Progressive train to nowhere, they never jump off.
They leave their permanent (unfortunately) footprints everywhere, metaphorically tearing down human history in their nowhere march.
I read this in First Things, a most worthy journal, last night, about a NYC development which demonstrates the squalid bankruptcy of the march we are forced to take, like prisoners on Bataan:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/02/building-to-no-purpose
Cicero:
Be of good cheer. The Day of the Helicopter is not far off 😛
If you really want to feel depressed about being ruled over by Those Who Hate Us and their architects expressing this contempt in our public buildings and spaces, pray google up ‘Federation Square Melbourne’. It’s really something.
What’s curious about New England is that it has wide swaths of exurban, small town, and rural territory which vote Democratic. There are splotches of Republican sentiment in central Massachusetts, western Massachusetts, and outside of New Bedford and Fall River; pretty much all are to be found in the countryside or in small settlements surrounded by countryside. The towns suburban to Worcester are blue as are (with a number of exceptions) those suburban to Springfield. Connecticut has a column of Republican sentiment in the rural and small town portions of the western section of the state and a few tract-developed towns on the southern coast (among them Greenwich, home base of Prescott Bush), but its otherwise blue. All of Vermont’s counties are blue. In Rhode Island, the Republicans win the inland countryside, but not the coastal countryside (much less greater Providence and Woonsocket). In Maine, the split is between the coastal counties and the interior counties. About half the population lives in one set, and half in the other. New Hampshire is odd. The most Republican area is in the remote north. Still favoring the Republicans would be Hillsborough and Rockingham counties on the state’s southern border; they are the most urbanized counties.
Northern New England has little in the way of a city population. The concentrated tract development around Burlington, Nashua, Manchester, and Portland has maybe 440,000 people living in it. The three states in question have a population of over 3 million. It’s not dreadfully surprising that Burlington and Portland are Democratic areas. It is a surprise that the county containing Nashua and Manchester is.
Now, move just to your west, and the small town and rural areas in New York, Pennsylvania, and (to a lesser degree) northern New Jersey remain Republican. Where you see blue counties, it’s in the Hudson Valley, cheeck-by-jowl with New England. There is a definite distinction in political culture between the non-metropolitan sections of New York and New England.
In the rest of the country, (non-metropolitan) counties which vote Democratic typically have a large local black population (Mississippi Delta) or local hispanic population (Rio Grande Valley). The only notable place like New England is the Iron Range in Minnesota, and adjacent parts of Wisconsin.
I’m wagering sussing this out would require meticulously conducted survey research supplemented with a mess of ethnographic study.
I dislike characterizing GOP or conservative area as “red”. That was a MSM ploy some 20 years or so ago.
Everywhere else on the planet, red has been the color of communists. For >100 years. See Mao’s Little Red Book, etc., etc..
Zaphod:
The Hudson Yards is almost 4x the land area of Melbourne Sq, but the effect is entirely the same. Dehumanizing, vulgar, with zero connection to the past.
Being a CT resident since 1981, I put the downward slide beginning with GOP governor Lowell Wieker who introduced the income tax. Voters were pissed and started voting D, which was like letting a 3 yr old loose in the candy store with all that new state money plus the casino revenues.
As I mentioned in another thread, the presidential electoral vote is controlled by the cities: Hartford, New Haven, etc. The 2016 map showed the rural areas for Trump, cities for Clinton, and thus Clinton carried the state. However, in a fit of contradiction, the rural areas are voting in Dems at the state level, and so CT continues its downward spiral.
Art Deco
The towns suburban to Worcester are blue as are (with a number of exceptions) those suburban to Springfield.
The WBUR: 2016 Massachusetts Election Results: How Your Town Or City Voted map inform us that west and south of Worcester, there are a fair number of towns that voted for Trump. The suburbs of both Worcester and Springfield had mixed allegiances.
There are two western Massachusetts small town/rural areas that are strongly Demo: 1) the CT valley towns of the five-college region and 2) Berkshires- lot of affluents from Noo Yawk- also for Yankees instead of Red Sox.
Art Deco,
You can’t be a self righteous liberal, one who views those who disagree with them as “deplorables” and also value the ‘necessities of life’ contributions of blue collar citizens. The vast majority of those who live in the cities and suburbs, unthinkingly take for granted the most basic of services, without which they would quickly perish. Their arrogance and ingratitude is only matched by their ignorance. It’s a fascile superiority complex that conceals at base a profound inferiority complex.
How did Massachusetts get so liberal?
I lived in Boston/Cambridge from 1977-82. Even that late I remember bumperstickers boasting that Nixon was not their fault.
Yet it was also quite a racist place. Was that the busing? Never figured the place out. I was glad to leave.
In the “The Emerging Republican Majority”, published in 1969, Kevin Phillips predicted New England would evolve into a Democratic area. I read the book so long ago I don’t remember his entire thesis for the change, but it didn’t involve migration patterns. Maybe more in the area of a Puritan culture embracing a smothering stateism.
there are a fair number of towns that voted for Trump.
My bad. The towns of Millbury, Leicester, and Spencer voted for Trump. AFAICT looking at GoogleMaps, their pattern of settlement vis a vis Worcester or towns adjacent make them more exurban than suburban. Judgment call, to be sure.
Maybe more in the area of a Puritan culture embracing a smothering stateism.
Bill M: I wonder along those lines myself. The beliefs of today’s progressives are of course quite different from puritans, but the structure of their beliefs are similar — especially the desire for the state to enforce “religious” standards.
As to “red” v. “blue”, here is what mentalfloss.com says:
“the first use of “red states” and “blue states” occurred about a week before the [2000] election on the Today Show. Matt Lauer and Tim Russert were discussing what states would go to which candidate with a map and the color scheme that MSNBC had used a few days earlier—red for Republican, blue for Democrat—when Russert asked, “How does [Bush] get those remaining 61 electoral red states, so to speak?” In the days following the highly contested election, everything seemed to align: Both the New York Times and USA Today released maps with Gore’s states in blue and Bush’s in red, and then David Letterman suggested that a compromise would “make George W. Bush president of the red states and Al Gore head of the blue ones.”
So to speak! The identified actors calling the GOP “red” were lefties: MSNBC, the NYT, USAToday, Lauer, Letterman! Maybe Russert was a tinge “purple”?
“Everything seemed to align”! Sho ‘nuf!
Colorado has suffered by the influx of people from other, more Liberal Left states, notably CA. And it is getting worse here. They won the state house and governor mansion in 2018, and AG office. All, or almost all, the Supreme Court Justices are Dem. They did some harm last yr and are gearing up to cause great harm this yr. More on gun control, more anti fracking, more giving money for things that cannot be paid for when a recession comes around.
Not pretty.
“They did some harm last yr and are gearing up to cause great harm this yr. …
Not pretty.” – Lynn
Indeed.
Hard to get rid of that many, especially since the demographics have changed so much.
And they don’t seen to make any connection between their policies and what the same ones have created in California.
Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964) screwed a lot of rural areas, not just Vermont. It allows one or two cities to control whole states (e.g. Portland – OR, NYC – NY, Bay Area & LA Basin – CA, etc).
Is this a product of “white flight?” Liberals from bigger NE states fleeing the “diversity” they do adore?
Mike
MBunge:
I don’t think that’s a major reason. People come to NH, for example, for the favorable tax situation. In addition, people come from Boston and New York to all the New England states because money goes much further there, and life is much less stressful and harried.
You can sell a tiny place in NY or Boston and get a palace in NH, Maine, or VT.
huxley:
Let me help you out. The people with the “Don’t blame me – I’m from Massachusetts” bumper stickers were NOT the same people objecting to busing. Au contraire. Boston has many divisions, and there is the liberal world of the arts and the academy, and then there’s Southie. Or at least, there was Southie; I don’t think the neighborhood is quite as unified anymore.
I wrote a lot about the Boston busing fracas in this post. Please reread and the class issues will be clear.
The people with the “Don’t blame me – I’m from Massachusetts” bumper stickers were NOT the same people objecting to busing.
neo: Yes, I’m aware of that. Still, it was odd to find obvious racism chockablock with extreme liberalism in the same metropolitan area. (I worked in Charlestown for a couple years.)
So my question remains, why was Massachusetts so liberal, even when the rest of New England wasn’t? I guess the big cities and all the universities are the answer, but it would be nice to nail that down better than a guess.
huxley
Yes, that is an unexpected combination. What do “obvious racism” and “extreme liberalism” have in common? Group affiliation. I don’t need to explain group affiliation and racists- it is rather self-evident. Group affiliation is not so self-evident for liberals.
While liberals/progs/leftys may claim that their views are a result of much thinking and much knowledge, there is often a strong group affiliation- a.k.a. virtue signaling- to their positions. All us, liberals included, have in-groups and out-groups. Liberals may believe that they do not have in-groups and out-groups, as they consider themselves “inclusive,” but consider liberal attitudes towards “deplorables” or the “___-phobes.” Not very “inclusive.”
I became aware of the liberal tendency towards group affiliation in high school. One example from my New England high school will suffice. In the locker room, a peer said that his father had signed a petition against the Vietnam War that appeared in the New York times- along with a whole bunch of cool people. If cool people are against the Vietnam War, one has to follow along in order to remain one of the cool people.
Another example of group affiliation from my high school years came from Tom Lehrer. The Folk Song Army
At the time, I didn’t like this song, as I was a member of the Folk Song Army.
Which reminds me of another Tom Lehrer crack in his patter introducing National Brotherhood Week. “I know there are people who do not love their fellow man, and i HATE people like that.” Which reminds me, a half century later, of the “inclusive” liberal attitude towards “deplorables” et al.
Consider the scorn that many of the liberals residing in the tonier parts of Boston or in the suburbs had for the working class Irish in Southie. I submit that liberal scorn wasn’t all that different from Southie attitudes towards blacks, with one difference. Liberals weren’t forced to send their kids to schools in Southie.
You can pretty much chart the condition of American politics and society in the fifties and sixties by listening to Tom Lehrer’s songs.
He only published three or four records in his heyday, but the occasion of a new release in 2000 occasioned this interview, which explains why he stopped writing his songs, and IMO also explains why the Babylon Bee is now the best place to follow the news.
The connection to New England is his tenure at Cambridge; I’m not sure it’s possible to deduce his own personal political principles, other than more likely progressive than conservative, as he seemed to skewer just about everybody with equal verve.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jul/31/artsfeatures1
huxley:
I don’t find that combo odd at all. I think it’s inevitable when you have an ultra-liberal elite and a blue-color group that bears the brunt of the policies of that liberal elite, an elite that protects itself from the majority of those disastrous effects.
I don’t know whether you read that busing article I linked, but I think it’s very clear what was happening there.
huxley:
As for the political history of Massachusetts, see this.
neo: Maybe so, but that’s not my main question here. I rarely find clicking your suggested neo links much use and I didn’t this time either.
Why was Massachusetts so liberal, even when the rest of New England wasn’t? I guess the big cities and all the universities are the answer, but it would be nice to nail that down better than a guess.
huxley:
You didn’t think that busing post helped to explain why the blue-collar white people in previously self-contained Boston communities whose children were affected by busing might be acting racist in the same city where the elite progressives were shoving busing down their throats and yet protecting their own children from any exposure to it?
neo: C’mon.
Why was Massachusetts so liberal, even when the rest of New England wasn’t? I guess the big cities and all the universities are the answer, but it would be nice to nail that down better than a guess.
For the record I worked in Boston area factories and I went to bars with working class kids from Charlestown, Southie, and general Boston. One guy from Southie offered to kill the guys who murdered my brother.
I’m not completely unaware of how that aspect of Boston worked.
huxley:
I’m not sure who’s guessing about Massachusetts’ liberalism. I don’t profess to know the answer and I didn’t guess, either. I just referred you to a Wiki article about it.
Maybe some day I’ll decide to look into it more deeply. There is no question, though, that northern New England was conservative longer, and it also was far more rural. In fact, even today there aren’t any REALLY big cities in Maine, Vermont, or NH. Nashua NH, Manchester NH, and Portland Maine are the biggest, and they’re really not very big. Those states also have tiny populations in general compared to Massachusetts.
I’m not sure who’s guessing about Massachusetts’ liberalism.
neo: That was my guess and I don’t defend it as anything more. It’s all right if you don’t have an answer or even a better guess.
huxley
I’m not completely unaware of how that aspect of Boston worked.
I guess not. 🙂
I suspect that some of your acquaintances wouldn’t have found it hard to get in touch w Whitey Bulger.
neo: Those working-class guys in Boston — I’m sure were affected by the busing. But my impression was their attitudes towards blacks was more long-standing. One of my Boston work-friends still talks about blacks as “nigs” and makes no bones about his racism.
I suspect that some of your acquaintances wouldn’t have found it hard to get in touch w Whitey Bulger.
Gringo: Could be! Although the Winter Hill Gang was based in Somerville, north of Cambridge. Not all that close to Southie, in Boston terms.
Leo, the guy who offered to do the murders for me, was pure Southie. I don’t know what happened to him. The other guys ended up in the Boston Fire Dept.
Vermont was ruined by all the New York trust fund babies who moved there. New Hampshire was ruined by all the Massholes who fled Massachusetts taxes but brought the same tax-and-spend ideology with them.
So my question remains, why was Massachusetts so liberal, even when the rest of New England wasn’t?
I don’t think it was prior to 196?. It was a state without much of a starboard, however. A number of statewide positions were held by temporizers (Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr; Leverett Saltonstall) and by dissenting Democrats (David Walsh). John F. Kennedy didn’t much care for liberals and called them ‘honkers’.
I just started rewatching “Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House”
At the breakfast table, Cary Grant remarks on the foolishness of his kids “progressive” (his term) teachers.
And the kids disdain him.
There it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PX-rAsMdi8