The two nations and the new migratory politics

There is no "American nation" any more.

The United States is now a single political entity containing two distinct and mutually antagonistic nations struggling for power against each other, rather like Belgium.  There is no meaningful "we" embracing the whole country, and there is really no longer any such thing as a unified "American people".

Lately we and those who habitually vote Republican seem to be divided by a chasm of mutual incomprehension much larger than that which separates the peoples of, for example, Britain and France.  Different attitudes on religion, sexuality, race, the role of women, and many other issues certainly look like two distinct cultures.  The level of mass mutual hostility between the two groups probably exceeds that existing between Flemings and Walloons or between Anglo-Canadians and Québécois.  At least for now, the differences seem irreconcilable.  The fact that Red America voted for a man like Donald Trump was certainly a milestone.  Blue America is the successor and continuation of the progressive development of the US during most of its history, an open-to-the-world society with a great variety of cultural strands; Red America is becoming something dark and cruel and atavistic, hating the different and the new.

Moreover, the distribution of political power between the two groups is inequitable.  We live mostly in a few states with large populations, they live mostly in many states with small populations.  We outnumber them by a substantial margin, but the Electoral College and the set-up of the Senate give them disproportionate power.  2016 was the second election in 16 years in which the Electoral College gave a Republican the Presidency despite losing the popular vote.

But I was wrong to argue, as I did three years ago, that we should consider splitting the US into two separate nation-states.  The country is far too economically integrated; any imaginable border would leave too many people on the "wrong" side (such as blacks in the South); and the general pattern of blue metro areas surrounded by red hinterland doesn't lend itself to drawing workable borders.  There's a better solution, and it's already under way -- colonization.

As density and cost of living increase in the west coast cities, residents -- especially those with families or looking to start them -- seek out places where their dollars will stretch further.  This means migration to urban areas within nearby states with a decent climate.  Most of those states are, or were, red or at least purple, but the flow of migration has already changed some of them:

In Nevada, to which 500,000 Californians moved between 2008 and 2018, Democrats won the governor’s mansion and a second U.S. Senate seat in 2018.  There used to be more Republicans, by registration. But Democrats now have a 70,000-voter advantage, and they prevailed there in the last three presidential races.

Colorado, another favorite landing spot for those who can no longer afford California, is now reliably blue.  Democrats won majorities there by more than 100,000 votes in the last two presidential elections. The state is likely to flip a Senate seat, bouncing the inept Republican Cory Gardner for a popular former governor, John Hickenlooper.

Arizona could be the next to fall to Democrats.  The state known for retirees and tax-averse whites is becoming more diverse and younger and is full of ex-Californians. Between 2001 and 2014, Arizona added about a quarter-million people from its neighboring state to the west.

A total of 7.3 million people have migrated from California to other states since 2007.  A few hundred thousand people in any one typical destination state can be enough to change the balance of its politics, even though such numbers seem tiny in California.  Because in most cases, liberals who move to a red state remain liberals.  They don't change to fit the local politics, they change the local politics to fit themselves.  Similar effects are seen elsewhere in the country, as in Virginia and Florida, which have shifted away from the Red American monoculture to become diverse swing states through migration.

Ironically, as Trump continues to deliberately screw up California's fire defenses, water, etc. to punish the state for disliking him, he'll only encourage the very migration which is pulling other states away from his party.

The most popular destination state for Californian migrants is Texas, and of course Texas is different.  It already has a large population (29 million), and cannot be so easily swamped by migrants -- but that also makes it a bigger political prize, with 38 Electoral College votes, a number which will increase over time since the state's population is growing at a faster rate than the US as a whole.  Texas also already has several very large metro areas with a cosmopolitan culture where people from Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Portland could feel comfortable.  But unlike the west coast cities wedged in between mountains and ocean with no room to expand, the great cities of eastern Texas sit in the midst of a vast, featureless plain with no natural barriers to spreading out indefinitely.  This allows densities and cost of living to remain low by west coast standards -- a powerful draw for migrants.

It was long thought by some that Texas would become purple and then blue due to Hispanic immigration.  That isn't happening, because for a variety of reasons, the Hispanic voter participation rate is generally low.  What is changing Texas is the influx of liberals from elsewhere in the US.  Already several statewide political races in the last few years have yielded surprisingly close result even though the Republicans won.  We shouldn't count on Texas being in play for this year's presidential race, unless the blue wave is of unexpected magnitude.  But by 2024 it's likely it will be.

As migration transforms the underpopulated states of the inland west, Red America's unfair advantage in the Senate erodes.  And when the Republicans can no longer count on Texas's electoral votes, their odds of ever winning the presidency again will become negligible.

Yes, there are two nations, but forget about splitting the country.  It will be back securely in our hands again soon enough.