If things go right this fall, a majority of Americans will live in Democratic “trifecta” states, and only a quarter in Republican trifecta states. Such a shift would greatly improve the lives of millions of Americans, as well as strengthen our democracy.
But what happens in red states isn’t something Democrats or small-d democrats should consider acceptable. States under total Republican control are constantly passing restrictions on abortion and transgender rights, rolling back academic freedom at colleges, making it harder for Black people, college students, and other-left leaning constituencies to vote, and implementing a plutocratic economic agenda of low taxes for the wealthy and corporations and low wages and meager public benefits for everyone else. These states are “Laboratories Against Democracy,” the title of a book by University of California, Berkeley political scientist Jake Grumbach that describes how radical GOP policymakers at the state level have become.
Democratic governors could veto the racist, anti-democratic, plutocratic policies that emerge from their state legislatures. They could oppose hyper-aggressive gerrymandering schemes being pushed by GOP legislators that make it easier for Republicans to control state legislatures and the U.S. House without winning that many voters. And as Georgia incumbent Governor Brian Kemp showed in 2020, governors and state legislatures often play a major role in certifying presidential election results. Having Democratic governors in these states will make it harder for Republicans to again attempt to cheat and overturn the results of an election that they don’t win.
If Democrats won in those six states, an outright majority of Americans (52 percent) would live in a blue state trifecta. Blue states aren’t panaceas, and writers at The New York Times and other centrist publications rightly harp on high housing prices and other ills of Democratic states. But those writers rarely live in red states and don’t seem like they are itching to move to them. Why not? Because blue states are at least trying to achieve the deeper, more equitable democracy of our dreams. They have expanded Medicaid through Obamacare, raised their minimum wages, and are constantly trying to make it easier, not harder to vote.
None of this is guaranteed for Democrats. Republicans of course have a good chance to win in any state where they currently have the state legislature or the governorship—-they had to win to gain such control in the first place. And Democrats are likely to lose two governorships that they now hold, in Kansas this fall and Kentucky next year, turning those into red trifecta states.
We’ve been split into Two Americas for a long time and that’s likely to continue. So the best we can hope for is what’s likely to happen in November—-the pluralistic social democracy America being practiced in the blue states keeps expanding while the anti-democratic, plutocratic red state America shrinks.
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