I understand the data files I appended for the last post don't turn out so well. Try saving them and opening them in MS Paint. Or, try visiting www.bea.gov and www.census.gov for the numbers with which to do your own analysis.

So, among the many jokes making the rounds regarding last week's election (it's usually phrased as a joke), is that the blue states of the nation ought to find some way to secede (perhaps joining up with Canada to create something fun like this). Fun to kick around and laugh about, until someone on the right goes and takes the idea a little too seriously. The author of the alluded to article (brought to our attention by Talking Points Memo), attempts to present his statement as satire, but a quick read through seems to indicate he wouldn't mind if it became truth. Obviously, it's just bluster, anyway, with no shot at becoming reality, but it gives me an opportunity to ride an old hobby horse: that the red states would be screwed without the blue states.

I love talking about this with conservatives, because they're ever so quick to talk about the rotten coasts, no-good liberals trying to suck on the national teat, draining America of its lifeblood, and so on. It's then that I pull out my charts (which, you know, I carry around with me).

For the purpose of this back-of-the-envelope analysis, I've split the country two ways: the stupid sort, which is used by the conservative author in question, and which forces out independent minded New Hampshire while hanging on to uber-lefties Hawaii and Washington, and the red/blue sort, which breaks the states up by their electoral predisposition. I think the point would be even clearer if I could do this by county, but hey, some of us have to work.

Take a look at comparisons of state Gross State Product, Per Capita Income, and Federal Funding per Tax Dollar Collected. In the red/blue sort, eliminating 19 of the 50 states deprives middle America of over half of American output. Meanwhile, the twenty poorest states in the Union would stay in the Union given a stupid sort, and over half of the red states in both sorts are below the national average for per capita income, compared to fewer than five for the blue states. But the kicker is in tax contributions/receipts. States which give the federal government more money than they receive are overwhelmingly more likely to vote for the Democrat, and those sucking on the national teat are overwhelmingly likely to vote Republican. So welcome to the real America (minus the blue states), an economic weakling, poorer than many of those dastardly EU nations, with a huge tax gap to fill on those measly incomes. So kick us out. We'll be able to reduce taxes and provide more and better services for our better employed, richer residents.

Start The Bellows...now.

Over the past six days, there's been an epidemic of hand-wringing among leftist pundits over how the Democrats lost America, how they lost touch with the red states, even, as Slate (ironically?) put it, "Why Americans Hate Democrats." I think one excellent answer is that after Democrats lose, they spend months in weepy self-examination asking themselves why Americans hate Democrats. Were the Republicans to lose, they no doubt would travel the country asking why Americans hate freedom, or they'd just spend the time more usefully stacking the deck back in their favor, but they would never ask what they could do to win more votes, especially not publicly.

As a Democrat, it's maddening to me to see the party repeat after the election the very mistakes that cost them the Presidency, as well as shots at the House and Senate. As a party, Democrats consistently fail to define issues on their terms, and they consistently fail to sell those terms. When faced with difficult issues or questions, Republicans will, nine times out of ten, simply avoid the accusations or create an alternative truth; they will never attempt to address such hackles on their merits. Perhaps the admirable thing to do in such situations is trust the voters and answer tough questions with truthful detailed answers, but that really seems to have screwed us so far. Given this, it's especially frustrating, particularly after such a hard-fought, passionate campaign, to see Democrats accept that Bush has a mandate, accept that they're out of touch with America, and go about publicly trying to find a solution.

This is an epidemic problem for the left. Democrats have allowed late-term abortions to be called "partial-birth," they have allowed the estate tax (which wildly favors the extremely rich) to be dubbed the death tax, they allowed Bush to sell Kerry as an ultra-liberal, and they are allowing the right to sell this election as a rout for the GOP. If there is one easy answer to the election loss, it's that the Democrats cannot play hardball, not just in elections, but in the constant political day-to-day that defines election year issues.

If there is a second answer to the Democratic loss, it is in the party's choice of candidates. Now, I'll admit that Bush has never been a great candidate; only his talented political advisors and the weakness of Democratic strategists have saved him from his unimpressive, elite past and his bumbling persona, but given said weaknesses, couldn't the Dems find someone to nominate other than an unimpressive elite with a funerary persona? I liked John Kerry, and was very happy that he wasn't Al Gore. As the campaign went on, I even felt that Kerry was a better choice than my personal horse, John Edwards (who lost me more and more on trade issues, and on his maturity). Is it really, though, that difficult to nominate someone with a modicum of charisma who does not fall into the most easily caricatured categories of the Democratic Party? Well, yeah, I guess so. And it's not clear that Republicans will do much better next time around. Good candidates are hard to find; Clinton does not come along every day. Which is why it's so important to have talented (and unified) political strategists. Perhaps that was Clinton's biggest strength. In sweeping along the Democratic party and recreating it in his image, he quieted many of the party's less winsome wings. In that sense, the weakness of the field of Democratic candidates is an echo of the weakness of the Democratic sales pitch: there isn't toughness, and there isn't unity.

But the best answer to the Democratic defeat is found in Bob Herbert's Monday Times column. In Slate's fray, Jane Smiley was savaged for professing the ignorance of red-staters, and the damage that ignorance did to the Democratic cause. I, like many of us on the left have some righty friends, and lots of righty family, and therefore must offer the standard qualification that, of course, not everyone voting Bush is stupid (and as someone who lives in a blue state, er, colony, it's clear to me that there are many foolish lefties). But our Democratic frustration arises from the fact that we feel anyone who had all the facts, who read what we read, would vote the way we voted. And as it becomes clear that the victory-through-moral-values explanation was a red-herring, it seems ever so likely that, yes, much of America does believe Saddam and Osama were intimately linked, much of America does believe that Iraq had nuclear weapons, and much of America could not find North Korea on a map. I've been told many times that one does not win points by thinking that most of America is stupid, but that is exactly the game the GOP is playing. They count on the fact that more Americans will accept their misstatements than will be turned off by the complicated clarifications posted online or noted in the Washington Post (or, god forbid, in a blog). So while I readily accept that red America is home to millions of intelligent, well-read people, I cannot help but think that the difference in this election, the historically tiny difference in the popular and electoral vote totals, was due to popular ignorance. Perhaps Slate should instead pose the question, Why are Americans such ill-informed suckers?

In any case, the Democrats ought not to change their positions for anyone, and especially not for the millions of middle Americans who won't take the time to read about policy anyway. Winning is selling, and right now the left is routinely out-sold by purveyors of inferior merchandise. When they learn to drive the hard bargain, the Dems will be back on top.