Urban Archipelago needs to die.

What do they care? They don't get the urban vote anyhow. And lots of suburbanites consider themselves "country at heart" (unfortunately) as evidenced by all the pickup trucks at Bellevue Square.

Yup.

Meanwhile all those rural areas get overrepresentation in the US senate which is designed to represent acres, not people.

Let's just do away with Idaho, Utah, MT, ND SD WY and AK and make them one state. This frees up 12 whole senate seats. To better refelct America today, let's re-assign those senate seats to Chicago, SF, LA, Philly, BrooklynQueens, Detroit, DC, etc.

Then we could have like two gay senators and ten black and latino senators instead of all these right wing ultra conservative senators from palces that do't even deserve to be states in the first place, like Alaska or Wyoming. I mean, they just waited until there was enough whtie caucasions in those places till they could be states, say about 50,000 of them, meanwhile the minorities in the USA are locked out due to this archaic pro rural thing called the US Senate.

Or let's just dump states altogether and have 100 US Senators elected from 100 senate districts of roughly euqal population.

Then you'd see a party that stands for real change, year in and year out, and not just in total fuckup economic disaster years like this year. You'd have like 20 or 30 Senators who rae about as left wing as Bernie Sanders or Jesse Jackson or Jim McDermott or Ron Dellums.

Alaska has what 600000 people and gets 2 senators. wyoming, what about 500,000 people. But the rest of us, we have these huge cities inside "states" and the whole point is to take away power from urbanites.

So yes, once in a lifetime we win a big election. We would win every one if we had a system that was actually democratic and wasn't designed to represent acres, trees, plains and land. All of Alaska fits inside Seattle, population wise. All of Wyoming would fit inside Manhattan just on the west side between Columbus circle and what about 86th Street. The upper west side.

Urbanites who accept this accept their permanent disempowerment and as population of big cities increases and population of Wyoming and ND stays the same or gets smaller it just gets worse.

You think we won because we won the presidency. You will find we didn't because the Senate will stand in the way of everything Pres. Obama tries to pass.

BA, without the Urban Archipelago thingie the relentless editorial focus on national issues might come to seem a little pointless, the paper might start to bend toward local issues, and shit - then Bill Maher starts to forget phone numbers and Candy Sullivan's spare room at Ptown is full up all next summer.

Never. happen.

@4, i just hate how the stranger and especially 3 or 4 writers fall absolutely head over heels in love with their pet ideas and then take any available opportunity to push them. Like Dan Savage and Palin dude typeface. Or ECB and transit. Eli and the Urban Archipelago or Chris Crocker. Mudede and cement or scantily clad women.

Similarly: Posting signs that say "Don't Let Seattle Steal This Election" along I-5 between Vancouver and Olympia didn't push Dino Rossi over the top. News flash: lots of Seattleites will see those, and might not be too impressed. Duh.

"...BY declaring..."

You mean "by," not "be," Savage.

Would somebody get Savage a proofreader?

Once again, Savage proves to be the least capable copy editor at the Stranger. Other posters proof their posts.

the problem with this analysis is that it's exactly those suburbs and small towns that account for 150 million in the US that lean republican. One of the most telling examples is a county-by-county map of MN (i lived there for a few years - it reminds me of WA in a lot of ways)

The twin cities are awash in blue and the rural, working-class iron range and most of northern MN is blue, but there's a solid band of red that rings the urban areas.

Same thing with Bellevue, Renton, Marysville, etc. You can't count on voters to swing blue simply because they live *near* a city.

plus, those who live in the suburbs will often associate themselves with the primate city, but only because no one knows what the hell Edina is.

People move to suburbs because they don't like city living, and they're not exactly going to be offended when the cities they don't care about are attacked as elite or aloof.

@8 is exactly right. It was the same way in Louisiana. The parishes that have big cities (New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport) all went for Obama - though by a tight margin, and the entire rest of the state went overwhelmingly for McCain (except for three small, rural, predominantly African-American parishes in the northern part of the state, which were the bluest in the state), even the ones right outside the cities.

Do those lines of demarcation also apply to education levels? Just wondered.

I hope they don't stop bashing cities and everyone who lives in them. I hope the GOP hates on big cities forever, in defiance of every notable demographic trend, and further marginalizes themselves. The healthiest thing that could happen to the US would be for the American right wing to engage in exactly this sort of slow political euthanasia.

According to the story, "82 million Americans live in cities of 100,000 persons or more.

Which Dan interprets as, "Most Americans live in big cities..."

How 82 million out of 300 million gets him to "most" I'm not sure.

yeah, it's a big jump from "non-rural" to big cities...

@13 You beat me to the punch.

Dan, FYI, 82

Bellevue Ave (#8)

I totally agree. Sanders this autumn with the prescriptions for the electorate (Pollzac, Palium, etc) became really annoying.

Crocker, though, is the worst.

@11

I really do think education has a lot to do with it. Not so much education in and of itself, but basic critical thinking skills. Plenty of my grad school scientist friends are from the South or small towns, but none of them are Republican. Conversely, most of the kids I teach now in community college still believe Obama is a Muslim.

If you think through the issues and look at the facts, most of the "correct" answers fall on the Democratic side of the spectrum. Is there any compelling reason to deny marriage rights to gays, other than "The Bible tells me so"? Of course not. Is there any compelling reason not to do anything about climate change? No.

There are plenty of smart conservative people too, but I think most of them channel their energy into getting their people elected to power or writing their own moral code to impose on everybody.

The GOP needs to die. Or go into the wilderness for the next 40 years, until they wake up to the 21st Century.

Big cities are new Mercantilists.

They have to impose an archaic society on the new and free exurbs and agraria in order to survive by taxing the new to feed the old.