In a Politico column, Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the House Democratic caucus, identifies a swing demographic based not on sex, race, ethnicity, or age, but geography: residents of the suburbs and exurbs. Am I missing something here, or is this pretty obvious? We all know urban areas are heavily Democratic and rural areas are heavily Republican. So yes, those folks in the suburbs and exurbs do, in large part, decide our national elections. If there's any significance to this, it is in a broad kind of pandering to the middle class, as opposed to tackling issues of poverty more straight-forwardly. And it means clinging for dear life to the myth that home-ownership is the be-all, end-all of the American dream, despite a mortgage crisis that indicates exactly the opposite. --Dana Goldstein
