Assumes without evidence that Democrats find methods currently being used by Republicans to be totally acceptable.
The "make Democrats leave swing states and migrate to blue ones" strategy for capturing swing states
It’s been some years now that the Republican party has been anti-science and anti-education. I really don’t see their base in Florida being worried about their state’s schools losing accreditation. They’ll just blame the libs from out of state. What you and I call political bullshit is what that base calls being persecuted.
The stuff that is actually pushing people out is the bigotry related stuff. You know, those companies (including the US military) who say they will pay people to move for the safety of their kids.
It takes literally being unsafe for people to really move.
Generally the people who suggest this sort of thing (and I’ve seen similar ideas from Dems saying people should move from blue states) haven’t really thought about the numbers. A back of the envelope calculation will usually show that the number of movers necessary to move the political needle is far larger than any reasonable estimate for the number that would actually move.
Like all the discussion in the twelve states that banned abortion all together once SCOTUS trashed Roe v Wade?
How about the discussion in Utah (18-week ban), Arizona and Florida (15-week bans) or Georgia (6-week ban)?
Or the three states, Indiana Ohio and Wyoming, where bans are on hold due to court challenges.
It’s rather like discussing options about where your wallet belongs with a guy hoding a gun to your belly.
So, first you’d want to register the Democrats. Some might try to hide their preference so you’d have to interview their neighbors and co-workers. Find some way to indicate if a business is run by a Democrat and how to tell if a Democrat is trying to pass as a Republican. Then resettle them somewhere away from good Republicans.
There must be a solution to the Democrat Problem.
What’s “uncivil” about it?
Sure, you can disagree with the OP’s speculation that Republicans in swing states may be deliberately using their ultra-conservative policy proposals as a “strategy” to drive Democrats out of those states and thus make them more solidly Republican.
But I don’t see anything inherently “uncivil” in proposing such a speculation, or in discussing how such a strategy would work.
Similarly, I don’t see what you consider “uncivil” about remarking that draconian bans on abortion, such as many Republican legislators have proposed or enacted since the overturning of Roe, will force people with unwanted pregnancies to have unwanted babies. I mean, that’s what such bans are intended to do: to force pregnant people to carry their pregnancies to term, whether they want to or not.
It is as if a mugger refused to stop because the victim wouldn’t be civil about what was going on.
The plan is certainly working on this Fl, dwelling Dem. I’ve been wanting to get out of this shithole for some time and DeSantass is the last straw. Not even for sweet democracy will I continue to live here. It’s proving very hard to “up and move” but it has become my life’s mission at this point. I can’t tell you the state of my blood pressure every day when I see whatever new evil he has perpetrated splashed across the newspaper. Anyone who isn’t worried about him is not paying close enough attention.
The solution must lie in making democrats as easily visible as possible. Perhaps pass a law requiring them to wear a patch on their clothing, say a donkey symbol.
Due to the expense and effort in moving (which increases with distance), he might end up driving blue voters toward nearby southern states that have flickered blue at times (GA with 16 electoral votes, AL with 9, both with beach destinations!). DeSantis might succeed in making FL into a certain type of machine. But what he gains there might hurt him when he runs for President or eventually needs the assistance of national politics.
Certainly GA is no liberal haven, but at this point it’s much more attractive than most other southern states. I don’t know how much that actually matters but I am mildly concerned about mass influx of FL refugees to GA. I would welcome their political influence and diversity, but our infrastructure is already crumbling and our water supply is tight especially in dry years.
Correct. It’s not a strategy at all.
And, as @HMS_Irruncible correctly points out, if you are a disaffected liberal in FL looking to move for political reasons, you are much more likely to go to GA than NY.
Finally, don’t the population numbers show that FL is gaining voters, not losing them? While CA and NY (and IL) are losing them?
I think the much larger trend making CA “bluer” is more conservative voters in those states moving to other states (NV, for example). It’s far less onerous to leave CA for a lower-cost state than the opposite.
My son moved to Iowa for work but is so disgusted with the political climate there he’s probably going to move at the earliest opportunity. I’ve encouraged him to stay and fight for the good guys – Iowa was purple not so long ago – but I don’t think he will.
That said, I don’t think it’s an intentional strategy by GOP governors. There probably aren’t enough people like my son to move the needle. OTOH, if enough people like my son left Iowa, they’d lose a tremendous amount of business and technical leadership.
Is there evidence that it’s not merely economic opportunity? I mean, we get a lot of Californians moving to Texas, and from what I can tell, they’re pretty evenly split between liberal and conservative. All of them move here for economic opportunity- lower housing prices, lots of job opportunity, etc… not because they’re fleeing liberal California for somewhere more red.
I don’t have hard evidence, and in fact I think you are right.
I would guess (again, no evidence) that factors including job opportunities, cost of living, family situations, and tax policies dwarf any political reasons for relocating.
Anecdotally, I have heard of a few people moving within their metropolis for political reasons - to be near like-minded people - but never to a different state (other than when the metropolis crosses state lines, but even then the state-level politics is secondary to the local situation).
To make it personal, I live in the St. Louis area, on the Missouri side. I’m in a moderate-to-liberal enclave in a ruby-red state. I could move to Illinois, and still be near my family and have the same job situations. But that would actually put me in a more conservative local area (southern IL is very red) in a more liberal state. I would never do that. Being around similar-minded people locally is much more important to me than state-level politics.
IL lost 18,000 people from 2010 to 2020, less than 1/10% of its population. CA and NY both grew across that decade, but at rates less than those of most other states. All three states lost one congressional seat due to reallocation and redistricting.
I know a young couple that moved to Idaho, they didn’t like the politics of Western Washington. They have discovered a few things since the move. Not being near their families kind of sucks, they are missing family events because it’s either an 10 hour drive or an expensive airplane flight. The last time the flew home they got stuck at the airport for 5 hours due to a snow storm than hit the area. They also discovered the southern part of Idaho, the part that borders Utah, is mostly Mormon. Plus in Idaho the people pay sales tax on food at the grocery store. They are now reconsidering their choice.
It’s not a strategy, and if it is it’s a bad one, but here’s my WAG on what happened with Florida to turn it red and with Texas to keep it red. It’s not that Democrats are leaving in droves. It’s that Republicans are fleeing California and New York and moving to Florida and Texas, in large part due to lower overall taxes including no state income tax.
Maybe. But I think a lack of state income tax is a huge incentive, and we all know which party is the party of low taxes. It’s possible a middle of the road Democrat moving from California to Texas or from New York to Florida gets there and tells themselves “Tis isn’t so bad. There’s no state income tax and things aren’t falling apart just because of the lack of one. Maybe voting for the party of low taxes isn’t such a bad idea.”
Ultimately it’s just politics, and the other stuff like living near their families, or having good jobs/schools/friends/etc… would trump the annoyance of living in a place where the ambient political climate wasn’t exactly like me.
Fair enough. All I was saying is that most people moving here seem to be doing so because of economic reasons, not because they’re disgusted with California politics and want out. And I’d go so far as to say that the lack of a state income tax is an economic reason more than a political one.
Wait till they learn they moved from a state with no income tax to one with!