State of Mind

The past couple of weeks, so many news analysts have been seemingly stumped in their reporting as they try to find conflict in primaries. And what is bewildering to me is that it just doesn't strike me me as perplexing as they do.

I'm referring to how baffled they are with what they describe as seeming confusion in the Democratic Party as a progressive Senate candidate in Minnesota won the party's primary, while the moderate candidate for governor in next-door neighbor Wisconsin won the governor's primary -- and their Midwestern neighbor Michigan's far-left Senate candidate won, even though a moderate won California's Democratic nomination for governor, and a Democratic Socialist won the election for New York City Mayor.

Let me see if I can help explain to clear up their confusion. Though Wisconsin and Minnesota are next-door neighbors and have cows, farms and lakes, and all three with Michigan are in the Midwest, they are all three different states. The people who live in them are different. Their interests and needs are different. And also, the needs that people want for governor and senator are, in fact, different. I've spent a lot of time in Wisconsin, and some time in Minnesota. My brother lived in both. Wisconsin has a very progressive base -- and an extremely conservative one, as well. (It's the home base of Joe McCarthy.) Minnesota is fairly liberal. In fact, they don't even actually have a Democratic Party in Minnesota! It's called the Democratic-Farm Labor Party. California is a totally different state (indeed, from most of the universe), 2,000 miles and often light-years away. It's fairly liberal. But they have an open "jungle" primary system, and this year eight major Democratic candidates ran in the Senate primary, but only two major MAGOPs were on the ballot. The top two finishers, whatever their party, would be the nominees in the General Election -- so conceivably both MAGOPs could have been the nominees in the very Democratic states, as Democrats split votes. All of that impacted results.

And New York is 3,000 miles away from that. And the race everyone has focused on there wasn't even for the state at all, but it was a city election. And New York City is much more liberal than many other parts of the state, and has city issues it's most concerned with (public transit, street cleaning, garbage pickup, rental housing), which tend to be totally different from state issues and all the more so than national issues. Sometimes they do overlap. Often they don't.

I'll make it simpler. Each state is different, even if they're neighbors. Illinois is fairly liberal, Indiana is pretty conservative. Oregon is very liberal, Idaho is extremely conservative. North Caroline is purple, leans Red. South Carolina deep Red, Virginia is purple, West Virginia is deep Red. (In fact, even within a state, there can be huge differences. People think of my home state Illinois as being liberal, Chicago, northern and urban -- but just 30 minutes west of downtown Chicago is farmland. And even more, there actually is a Southern Illinois. And it's shocking to most people to learn that the southern tip of Illinois...is south of almost the entire state of Kentucky!) And governor, U.S. senator and mayor are completely different political offices. Georgia leans Red, they have a MAGOP governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state and attorney general -- and two Democratic senators.

But most of all, the Democratic Party is made up of liberals, moderates and conservatives. It's a wide-ranging party of very diverse political views, often contradictory. Will Rogers famously said in 1933 -- "I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." That was 93 years ago! It hasn't changed much. Today, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani are Democrats. So, too, are Joe Manchin, Jon Tester and John Fetterman. In fairness, the MAGOP has political differences, as well, although only if you consider conservative and very conservative to be differences. The party does have moderates, though those are better known as "former Republicans." Ronald Regan famously said in 1966 that the 11th Commandment of the Republican Party was "Though shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."

To be clear, there are differences within the Democratic Party -- just not for the reasons the press seems to think. That's because there always are differences in the Democratic Party. It always has had wide-ranging edges. If a group of local Democrats got together for lunch, there would be differences. Down to what's on the menu.

It's very basic.

Don't confuse states, even if they're next door.

Don't confuse national, state and city elections.

And most of all, don't confuse the two parties.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NQB-Hg73jM