So...Kyle Kulinski, who I want to make clear is one of my favorite commentators, the reason i cover him so much is because of that, is calling for a "national divorce" on his program. He's mentioned it in several videos this week, including on this twitter post, which I'll include as a citation. I was thinking of doing a blog on this sooner, but given I have other things on my plate I want to expend energy on, I've largely not done that.
But yeah, let's talk about this a bit. The idea isn't new. And I ain't even talking about the original civil war in the 1860s where the south went full "national divorce" mode over slavery, er, i mean "state's rights" (a state's right to what?). It's been floated since around when I got into politics. In 2004, when the republicans won again, democrats shared a map where the blue states joined Canada to become "the united states of canada", with the rest of the country that voted for Bush the second time becoming "Jesusland." It was intended as humor at the time, but in this age of rising fascism and christian nationalism, and the republicans exerting control over our national government in potentially irreversible ways, some are talking about making it real.
However, yeah. I think this is unworkable. Here's why.
The reality of the political map
I know we like to decide political maps by state, and separate everything into red states, blue states, etc., but here's what the map REALLY looks like if you break it down further. "Red" and "Blue" states are largely a mirage. As we know from election predictions, a lot of swing states are decided by relatively small margins of like 1-3 points, sometimes even as little as 500 votes if we go back to Florida in 2000. What we call "red states" and "blue states" have margins that, while statistically significant on an election map, are actually quite nuanced. There's pockets of red in California and New York. There are blue parts of South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi (PS, those are the black voters that the GOP are currently trying to gerrymander out of existence by once again challenging the voting rights act in the supreme court). The reddest states probably are roughly one third democrats. The bluest ones are one third republicans. Now, keep in mind, when you get out voted TWO TO ONE, the "one" has virtually no chance of winning statistically. I consider "swing states" to be states within 8 points, as that aligns with a 95% confidence interval in my election model. But let's think about 8 points in practice. We're talking 54-46%. Yeah. That's an 8 point spread electorally. Keep in mind, 60-40 is considered a landslide politically. That's 20 points, but it still means for every 3, say, republicans, there's 2 democrats, or vice versa in a blue state.
The fact is, we're never going to have perfect representation to everyone. A nasty national divorce would leave tons of republicans in blue states, and democrats in red ones. The fact is, politics is primarily driven by a rural/urban divide. Most people in cities lean democrat. Most people in rural areas lean republican. Suburbs are battlegrounds, which is why the democrats are trying so hard to win them over. I am critical of this strategy as it doesn't suit me ideologically, but I get the appeal (quite frankly I think it is possible to win more rural/suburban/small city people directly by having a genuine progressive message and not playing these weird demographic games they play). Why is the map favoring the republicans? Well, because many aspects of our system are designed to give rural voters an outsized influence on our elections. For example, take the reapportionment act of 1929. It locked us at 435 members of the house of representatives, which was intended to preserve the influence of rural voters. Back then, districts had 250k or so people in them. Now it's closer to 800k. And fewer larger districts actually means rural people get more representation. If you're in PA outside of pittsburgh or philly, there are pockets here and there of smaller cities all throughout the state. And they all vote democrat. But often times, they show up as leaning red because of the rural areas around them. And that's the reality of the map. Islands of blue, surrounded by seas of red. This brings us to the next problem.
How exactly are we gonna split up America like this?
When you have America divided by urban vs rural primarily, how can you even properly divide America up? We got islands of blue in seas of red. To have your own country, you need a contiguous land mass. You can't just have like a piece of land here, a piece of land there. This is why i keep saying a two state solution between israel and palestine isn't workable as well. The land masses where israelis and palestinians live arent contiguous. They're all kinda mixed in with each other. Same thing here with republicans and democrats. Democrats keep acting like "were the blue states, we're the wealthy ones, we dont need those stinking red states, that's flyover country." Yeah, but you need country to fly over to go from one to the other. And honestly, it just reeks of the same cultural elitism that got us into this mess. Democrats struggle to win elections in part because they're so insufferable and this is how they talk. "We're the wealthy ones, we're the productive ones, we don't need you, screw you." Literally sounds like what turned me off from Clinton 2016 (being in one of those tiny islands of blue in the sea of red. And then people vote for MAGA because they hate these "cultural elites" who act so smart and look down on others. It's an attitude problem. The dems have an attitude problem. And that attitude problem manifests economically as well. I had a discussion with a neolib yesterday about basic income and he was like "why should we give our resources to these losers in these burnt out factory towns? they should just move." Like, no irony at all. Maybe he wasnt that bad with the exact verbiage but that's what he sounded like. It's like they want to drive people away from them.
But yeah, I know I'm getting off topic going on about dems, but the problem is twofold here. Not only is this idea of a divorce completely unworkable geographically, but honestly, if the dems, idk, GOT GUD at politics, and stopped doing this crap, maybe we wouldnt be in this problem.
Anyway, next point:
The land areas arent contiguous
This is true on a micro level but even if we split up states by blue and red, the red states are mostly touching each other, because again, "flyover country." Like, they're the ocean, we're the islands, but the blue states ARENT. You got new england, new york, new jersey, and then PA is swing, and then you got maryland and virginia leaning blue below PA. Then you got illinois in the middle. Minnesota in the far north. You got washington/oregon/california in the west. And yeah. Maybe if we went all "united states of canada" it could work, but you cant really have a nation like this, and relying on canada to connect stuff isnt workable either. You realize canada is connected by literally like one highway right? Seriously. They have one highway and if you cut it off, you split the nation into two. And then if we included canada in this national divorce, alberta would probably go red. Again, you can't have a nation like this. It makes trade harder. It makes national defense harder. It's the same reason im critical of a two state solution is israel. You arent exactly splitting israel down the middle. Same here. You arent splitting the US down the middle. Speaking of Israel
This is a recipe for civil war
Okay, so, we saw how messy national divorces work before. Israel/palestine is an example. Or remember Yugoslavia in the 1990s? Even if we were amicable at first, it would create an environment where the two nations would be suspicious of each other and one eventually landgrabs the other. This leads to outright fighting, which leads to violence, terrorism. One side becomes dominant, literally OPPRESSES the other. We literally will get an israel/gaza dynamic going on here. We dont want that here. NOPE. NUH UH.
And neither would let it go. There's a reason the north didn't let the south go in the 1860s. it's national security. As one big nation, we have no rivals in this hemisphere. We got the best land in north america, no one can challenge us militarily, and that's what allowed us to become the advanced superpower we are. If we split up, we dont have that. First, we'd be fighting each other. And we'd fight each other over trade routes (the mississippi river would be in the red area, for example), over strategic defensible points, etc. Like we think trump sending the texas national guard to invade chicago is bad? Yeah, wait until actual fighting starts. This is just gonna be bloody, and it will solve nothing.
The political landscape changes over time
Remember political realignments? yes yes, i know to some extent things remain the same. The south has, quite frankly, ALWAYS been a regressive thorn in the rest of the country's side over their flagrant racism, religious nationalism, and generally opposing good things. And despite so many realignments, they kinda have similarish politics to in the past. But a lot changes as well. The south was part of the democratic coalition in the 1930s. It had its own "divorce" from the democrats in the 1960s over civil rights, which led to the rise of the modern political landscape in the first place.
Even in the last 20 years, since "Jesusland" was announced, things have changed a bit. Florida and Ohio used to be THE bellwether states. They were the election deciders. Both are what I'd consider to be "likely R" if not "solid R" at this point, with them being generally R+8 in polling, and in 2024, they went like R+13. Colorado and Virginia, they used to be swing states in 2004. CO is like D+10ish now, and VA still went D+5 in 2024. New Jersey was supposed to not even be a swing state, but it kind of went down into that D+5-8 territory this time. New York and Illinois were even threatened somewhat. This is how bad the dems did in 2024. Or take the rust belt. it used to be called the "blue wall", because from 1992-2012, they regularly went D+3-6. Now they're the new bellwethers, replacing Ohio and Florida as the big deciding states. Minnesota regularly goes blue and has been blue since like 1972 or something, but it has been kinda getting close to flipping, as it's just a blue wall type state but a little more D heavy. On the flip side, Georgia used to be part of the "red wall" and regularly went R+5. It's been rapidly approaching swing state status. Arizona went red since 1964 or something with Barry goldwater, but after McCain died, they've been becoming more swingy. Nevada was blueish under the harry reid political machine but is now becoming more swingy. Texas, as red as it is, and being in the same rough category as Florida and Ohio now, used to be a lot more red and is urbanizing in a way where they could go blue some time in the 2030s (one of the reasons the trumpers are so intent on gerrymandering and deporting latinos, they fear this).
With all of that said, how can we run two different countries when the landscape reflecting red and blue america changes so quickly and regularly? Whatever borders we draw now might not even make sense in 20, or 40, or 60 years.
And...as a matter of fact, let's talk about what all of this is REALLY all about:
The aggressor here is the GOP
So....party alignments and realignments. 1964, Johnson starts passing civil rights stuff. 1968, the south defects. 1968-1972, nixon does southern strategy, gets the south on his side. 1980, Reagan has his grand realigning moment, "morning in america", blah blah blah. Much like how 1932 settled the debate for the future of the country, so did 1980. We were conservative, and the dems had to operate on the dems' turf.
What would I say is the next important realignment date? Well, it's not 2016, actually...it's 2008. In 2008, the GOP was on the brink of electoral oblivion. The reagan coalition was showing its age, and the emerging Obama coalition wiped them out. And it seemed like, for a while the answer was clear, the future of the country was liberal. You can see how even I seemed to think this back in 2016 when I started this blog. I thought the GOP was done. I noticed through the early-mid 2010s that the GOP only regained its advantages because they gerrymandered the house in 2010, and since then, the GOP went SCORCHED EARTH against the dems. Like, they went full on russia in 1812 when napoleon invaded. Like just burn everything down, and make any advancement miserable. And the dems were effectively shut down and lame ducks for literally SIX YEARS. And after a few of these years, I'm like...come on, DO SOMETHING, throw a punch. You have the actual majority support. You're sitting on a coalition. You got the majority. The GOP is in decline. They're just kinda holing up and making the natural process of transition miserable because all they had was obstruction, voter suppression, and gerrymandering. But if the dems really tap into their voter base, they could come back, have a huge blue wave election with sanders (I liken Obama to "Nixon" in 1972, with Sanders being a possible 1980s "Reagan" moment for the left).
But the dems blew it. Because they didn't fight. And because, as i pointed out, they were arrogant and insufferable. The democrats threw away EVERY ADVANTAGE THEY HAD coming off of the obama years. And the GOP exploited that. And because they fought harder, and because the dems were arrogant and prideful, the rest is history. Trump won, and the dems blew it.
And the dems NEVER LEARNED. They were more focused on stopping the progressive left than actually beating the right. They are openly hostile toward us, while expecting us to support them, while also seemingly being okay with the right winning.
And I admit, I didnt think the GOP and trump would get THIS bad in trump's first term. I was just thinking, ya know, if he wins, whatever, we can come back again and hopefully learn. We didn't. The left didnt learn. And while the dems did win in 2020, well, it wasnt a strong win. Trump did have a strong coalition. But despite all of their missteps, the dems still pulled it off. Barely, but they did.
But here's the thing. When trump lost 2020, he went BAT#### INSANE. He denied the results of the election. He tried to do a LITERAL FRICKING COUP to stop the certification of it. And at that point, once i realized the full depth of what had happened there, I was like, yeah, no, this guy can't win again. he should be in jail.
And while the dems did impeach, the GOP senate obstructed and let him off when they really shouldnt have. And while the AG did seek charges on various things, the judicial system acted GLACIALLY SLOW in actually pursuing it. And the whole time, trump got more paranoid, more pissed off, more violent rhetorically, and he was like, ya know what, tehy're doing this to me for political reasons (we werent, he was literally a criminal who did messed up things he should be held account for), im gonna do this to THEM when I got elected. And he started talking like a dictator, and going on about how he's gonna make life hell for the left, and project 2025 became a thing. And all this was out there. Trump outright ran on being a dictator. And at this point, the GOP got so insane that they were okay with a dictator. And the dems just...fricking imploded over the biden cognitive decline cover up and the dems just being the same undesirable alienating jerks they've been since 2016, and now we're here. And now we're literally dealing with a fascist trying to break democracy.
And why do they wanna break democracy? Because deep down, the GOP is unpopular. Their agenda is unpopular. But again, they dont wanna let go of power. They dont wanna go off into the night like the new deal democrats did in the 1960s and 1970s, or like the republicans did in the 1930s. They KNOW that their days are numbers. Demographically, they're outnumbered. Their coalition is aging. They lost most minority support and as america becomes browner they lose power. They're fighting against the clock. And because they KNOW they're inevitably going to become the minority and be outvoted, they're pulling a DBZ villain move and trying to take the system down with them. They're trying to turn us into a dictatorship. And right now, they're trying to be punitive toward the left. They're trying to deport immigrants. They're making all left leaners persons of interest to the FBI and law enforcement. They're trying to take down "the cathedral" to use right wing terms, which is basically the left's institutional support in the media, colleges, etc. They're trying to destroy the left. Because they know they can't win elections legitimately. So they want to skew the demographics in their favor, shut down speech, and break democracy. They want to gerrymander congress and shoot down the voting rights act so they can do it even harder. They want to make it harder to vote. They dont want everyone to vote. They want only themselves to vote. Basically, they can't win under fair rules, so they're changing the rules in their favor.
And this is what we have to do. Resist. Peacefully of course. Like, we got the no kings protests today. Millions turned out. That is the way. And you know what? We need the democrats to get it together, keep democracy functional through 2026, and then WIN. We need to take the house. We do that, we get a foothold in government where we can break their current trifecta over the entire government. And you know what? We need the dems to get their heads out of you know where. We are in this situation because of them. While the dems did technically "warn" us about this in 2016, i dont think they believed it. I think they were doing the left wing equivalent of ERMAHGERD, OBAMA IS A COMMUNIST that the GOP used to rile up THEIR voters. They didnt believe trump was an actual threat. They thought, like me, he was all bluster. And they decided to do the civility thing, the compromise thing, the "we need a strong republican party" thing.
But here's the thing. No we don't. While American politics, under fair rules, will always have two factions duking it out, the republicans as a party can lose relevance and die out for all I care. We shouldve been trying to push for a democratic led future. And that means when the GOP tries to mess around and change the rules, we push back. We shouldve pushed harder with the likes of HR1 during the Biden administration. We should try to get PR and DC as states. We should try to repeal the reapportionment act of 1929 and expand the size of the house to something around 1300 members (even 1000 would be a big change). We should try to put term limits on SCOTUS or pack the courts. And sadly, right now, even though i hate it conceptually, we gotta do our own gerrymandering in deep blue states if the GOP is gonna do it in red ones.
The point is, if they fight, we fight. Again, peacefully. I dont want a civil war. Although at this point im starting to wonder if we're in one and we dont know it yet with the GOP literally sending troops to invade blue cities. Seriously. I have to wonder, is THAT what the end game is? Just remember this. If one starts, I blame the GOP. Because they just wont let go of power. And they're the ones escalating to using force. THe dems have been nothing but cordial to them. TOO cordial in my view. Not saying it should escalate to violence, I wanna make THAT crystal clear in this era of lefties being scrutinized for everything. But, should we have been fighting back politically over the past decade and playing political hardball with the right instead of paddycakes like I mentioned in the previous paragraph? Absolutely.
We need to think in terms of realpolitik. In machiavellian terms. Not saying we should do that for evil like the GOP is doing, but we should recognize WHAT the GOP is doing and counter them when we can. Again, PEACEFULLY, no violence. But yeah. If they change the rules, we should try to change the rules too. If they obstruct stuff, we should obstruct too. If they gerrymander, we should gerrymander. We gotta get an upper hand against these guys. I feel like this is like LOTR, where we had that part where it was like "do it, cast it into the fire", and the democrats were like "no....". And now sauron is back. So yeah.
But yeah, that's what we need. NOT a national divorce. NOT a civil war. We need political hardball. And we needed it 10 years ago. We shouldve been the ones winning all along. The democrats abdicated their role in bringing about a future aligned with their values, and compromised their values with the right. And the right, knowing they're gonna lose the realignment battle long term, are going authoritarian to compensate. They cant win through democratic means so they'll try to make the system less democratic. That's what the real problem is. And that's what we need to address in the next few years.
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