Let me begin by saying Red State Blue State is a delight. First of all, every work of sufficient psephological sophistication ought so reassuringly to reference Dr. Seuss. But second of all, the book neatly and precisely sticks sharp pins in the fatuous media balloons that swell ever more each year, reaching alarming distention during presidential elections.

Roll up, and see punctured the original "real America/red America" fable; see the "trustfunder left" utter a dying sigh, see Obama's trouble winning white working-class voters--especially in "battleground" Pennsylvania--go the way of the dodo. Sean Quinn had it right--in the main, racism and other cultural indulgences are luxuries that worse-off voters can't afford. The "culture wars", as Andrew points out in his post, get fought principally between factions of richer people. Most of the rest of us vote for completely different reasons.

So you should read the book. (Or for Andrew's sake, at least buy it.)

But Andrew's also quite graciously used his post to open up a discussion beyond the book, suggesting we consider

how these voting patterns arose and what they mean for American politics

One of the factors that historians often remark upon is race--race, we say, works a certain way in American politics, particularly among white voters in the South. Republicans have set out to take advantage of that. As Lee Atwater said, "you can't say 'nigger'--that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff". And all that stuff indeed, down to "Harold, call me," and "Obama's Baby Mama."

Now, my assumption is, Republicans wouldn't do this unless they thought it would appeal to their electorate. But you get plenty of other Republicans--and even a fair number of scholars--saying that this is a misunderstanding, that racism doesn't work in quite that partisan way.

As I read Red State Blue State, it's not necessarily a misunderstanding--race does work in some important way to tell you things about who will vote Republican. And some of Andrew's later posts seem to say so too--consider one in which Andrew and, uh, a correspondent lobbed a few graphs back and forth just after the election and thought it looked as if race had a lot of influence on who would vote for Obama where. And I bet there's a pretty interesting story here, to do with white flight and the new, richer, more suburban South.

Yet I don't see race in Andrew's list of "speculations".