Do a little more math, and you'll see that before air conditioning redistributed the country's population, the Florida recount wouldn't even have been necessary. In the 1940s -- the last decade before the air conditioner became a must-have home appliance -- Al Gore's states contained a decisive 291 electoral votes. As Hofstra professor James Wiley pointed out back in 2004, air conditioning "induced a major population shift within the country that eventually led to the Electoral College defeats of the Democratic presidential candidates in 2000 and 2004." In 2006, an AlterNet story tracked the migration as well.
Without air conditioning, Bush might not even have become a Texan. ...If ['W"'s Father] Poppy anticipated that air conditioning would swell his adopted state's population and move it into the Republican column, he was right. No state embraced A/C more avidly than Texas. ...
In 1966, Texas became the first state in which half the homes were air-conditioned. That same year, George H.W. Bush was elected to Congress -- from Houston. Coincidence? Or does air conditioning make people vote Republican? After all, the GOP's rise in the South coincides with the region's adoption of air conditioning.
In his essay "The End of the Long Hot Summer: The Air Conditioner and Southern Culture," historian Raymond Arsenault wrote that air conditioning made factory work tolerable in the South, reduced infant mortality, eliminated malaria and allowed developers to build skyscrapers and apartment blocks. Air conditioning industrialized and urbanized Dixie, lifting it out of its post-Civil War funk. No longer a poor, defeated colony, devoted to government aid and hating on Abe Lincoln, the South could fully indulge its conservative leanings.
You can also blame air conditioning for John McCain's political career. In 1982, Arizona was awarded two extra congressional seats, thanks to the arrival of A/C-blasting snowbirds. McCain ... became its first congressman.
GT12 Observation: It is not helpful to the Democratic cause that Liberal writers from Chicago tell the world that you drive a beat-up Neon.
8 comments:
Thanks for the props, Jeffery. but, note: MISSOURI is NOT the South.
Baby, anything south of 163rd Street is the South....
Wiki clarifies for me the MO has "both Midwestern and Southern cultural influences, reflecting its history as a border state. It is also a transition between the eastern and western United States, as St. Louis is often called the "western-most eastern city" and Kansas City the "eastern-most western city."
Most important, may be the facts surrounding MO's birth: "Missouri was admitted as a slave state in 1821 as part of the Missouri Compromise."
Love St Louis and Love You Mr Anonymous
Sorry forgot to sign my previous post. All I know is my Southern cousins called me a Yankee. Although, just south of my home town, near the bootheel area, the accents do get quite Southern. I remain a Unionist at heart.
MR. JK, Damn Yankee
Oh it is all just toooo complicated.
OK, you're a Yankee. Which, as I think about it, is the only way I think about you. I mean when I think about you geographically....
It's so much simpler in the rust belt.
ferchrissakes
Plus, my passionate love for Air Conditioning should be noted, in spite of its detrimental influence. Indeed, I am complex.
MR. JK
OK OK OK
But what about this? Is the county line between Perry and Cape G a Mason-Dixon Line?
This here:
"In rural areas and cities farther south, such as (Cape Girardeau, Poplar Bluff, Springfield, and Sikeston), residents typically self-identify as more Southern." (WikiP)
OK, we'll go with that: south of P'ville, the south, at least along the Eastern side of the state. West of that is the Ozarks and Hillbilly country. So a small corner of the state has southern leanings. Missouri on the whole: NOT Southern. Thanks for thinking of me as a Yankee. And, the love.
MR. JK
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