One thing to remember is a historical perspective. In the 40\u2019s and 50\u2019s New England was Republican, somewhere in the late 50\u2019s to early 60\u2019s a swing happened. Part of it I think was due to a shift in economy; much of manufacturing got up and left mostly for the South. Also, colleges shifted from very conservative to very liberal as the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s went on. The Universities are a source of much of our growth through the 60\u2019s as tech started to replace manufacturing.
\nThe general character of the Old Line New Englander was fiscally conservative and relatively socially liberal (old meaning). In the cities, a far more liberal (modern meaning) variant (with a hint of that puritanism blended in) runs strong. And the populations of the cities and their near suburbs overwhelm the votes in the more old line\/townie parts of the states.<\/p>\n
Can we dig out of this? I\u2019m not sanguine about that. MA, CT and RI and so overwhelmingly super liberal democrat in their legislatures that no reason reigns. On top of that RI and MA (and likely CT but I am less connected to that anymore) are rife with corrupt deals which feed back into the various Democrat politicians. VT and ME are overrun with hippy types that moved in and keep folks like Bernie and the other VT \u201cIndependent\u201d senator in office. NH gets whipsawed back and forth as the balance swings, it is the most purple of the New England states, but it has voting laws (same day registration in particular) that let havoc happen at the towns containing UNH and Dartmouth. Maine is oddly split: the interior North is clearly Old Line New England and is actually one of its remaining bastions. But the coast (Portland and south) is VERY much indistinguishable from Boston suburbs in political bent. Just taking statewide offices from time to time is NOT sufficient. The state houses MUST be changed as that is where the power really lies. Without that, the feedback loop of Graft-> seats-> graft (repeat) can not easily be broken. If I had a guess, NH has the best chance to break the cycle. Its oddly large house means power doesn\u2019t focus quite like it does in the other 5 states, so graft is less profitable. That combined with volatility in the seats weakens the loop. Unfortunately, when NH succeeds in starting to break away, it gets an influx of MA, VT, and ME folks who want the advantages but don\u2019t buy into the politics, and we see that familiar seesaw effect as NH swings back to the Blue. I fear things will have to get\u00a0MUCH<\/strong>\u00a0worse for the head in their lower colon liberals to actually pop out and view the real world. Boston is Bad, but Not yet Detroit. Chicago or San Francisco bad, although Mayor Wu is trying REAL hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One thing to remember is a historical perspective. In the 40\u2019s and 50\u2019s New England was Republican, somewhere in the late 50\u2019s to early 60\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1489,4833],"tags":[1596,339,971,4897],"class_list":["post-37886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-guest-contributors","category-tregonsee","tag-guest-contributors","tag-new-england","tag-politics","tag-tregonsee"],"yoast_head":"\n