To hear network commentators and read innumerable press stories, you would think the United States was divided into two bitterly opposed cultural worlds known as red states and blue states. As widely used political concepts, these phrases actually date back only to the 2000 presidential elections, when all the networks used the same color-coded maps to show which states went Republican or Democrat. But a very lazy press corps has increasingly used the terms as shorthand. They have now passed into the political language, reinforcing the image of an America split into hardened and warring camps.
The reality is quite different. In the very close 2004 election, for instance, the contest was decided by 10 points or less in 21 states. And a surprising number of states voted one way for president, the other for senator or governor.
Montana, which George W. Bush won by better than 20 points, elected a Democratic governor and gave Democrats control of both houses of the legislature. Wyoming, which gave John Kerry just 29 percent, has a Democratic governor, too. Likewise ''red state" Arizona and Oklahoma. Even Kansas, the poster child for working people who supposedly don't vote their pocketbook interests, has a Democratic governor, too. Maybe there's nothing the matter with Kansas.
Ohio, which seldom supports a Democrat for president, is presumably a diehard ''red" state. Yet a Democrat, campaigning as an Iraq veteran against Bush's war, nearly won the state's most heavily Republican house seat in a 52-48 special election to fill a vacancy.
Conversely, even the ''bluest" of the blue states, such as New York and California, send dozens of Republicans to Congress, and elect GOP governors. True blue Massachusetts also keeps electing Republican governors (who reciprocate by leaving town, but that's another story.)
Howard Dean, the Democratic national chairman, has recognized these realities in calling for a ''50-state strategy," just as Republican chairman Ken Mehlman is pursuing African-Americans, the Democrats' most loyal voting bloc.
Despite my own determination to avoid this sloppy language, I caught myself lazily describing Senator Bill Frist as hailing from a ''red state." In fact, Tennessee sends five Democrats to the House, and four Republicans.
The mischief is that this usage paints our country as far more bitterly divided than it is. Yes, there are Limbaugh ditto-heads (several reliably send me unprintable e-mails), just as there are crunchy lefties driving old Volvos with more bumper stickers than paint.
However, only a small minority of Americans are cultural warriors. Mercifully, most Americans hold appropriately complex views on contentious political or moral topics that demand complex thinking. These include the Iraq War, abortion, gay rights, religion, health care, the environment, and other issues that supposedly divide America into warring camps.
It is possible, for example, to believe that Saddam Hussein is a monster and still have major doubts about whether Bush's Iraq policy made sense. Polls show that a majority of Americans want to keep abortion legal, but have serious qualms about its widespread use. As citizens, most Americans want a clean environment, but as consumers we are addicted to polluting cars. A majority of heterosexual Americans think the government should stay out of the bedrooms of gay adults, but still have trouble with gay marriage, though not necessarily domestic partnerships. Most Americans believe in God, but most believers are tolerant of people of diverse faiths or no faith, and don't think the government should be in the business of proselytizing, much less that religion should dictate science.
Americans are capable of splitting tickets, and changing their views over time. Over the past two decades, we have become a country far more tolerant of difference. We have also become more skeptical about large institutions generally, whether big government or big business.
Political scientists have long celebrated the fact that Americans have multiple, cross-cutting identities. We are not defined just by religion or ethnic group, or region, like so much of the conflict-ridden world, but by occupation, hobby, civic activity, and much more. Our three-dimensional selves create multiple opportunities for empathy, and save us from being Yugoslavia or Iraq.
The pundits have lately introduced a new color -- purple -- into the political lexicon, but with the false implication that a state with both ''red" and ''blue" tendencies is something exotic.
The press is supposed to protect us from stereotypes, not reinforce them. Next election, the networks should give us the complex palette we deserve.
Let's hear it for purple mountains' majesty.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. This column originally appeared in the Boston Globe.
