Standing atop Mt. Washington, looking at the mouth of the Ohio River tonight, I thought it should be renamed the "Blue River," spreading sense through.... Standing atop Mt. Washington, looking at the mouth of the Ohio River tonight, I thought it should be renamed the "Blue River," spreading sense through a state seemingly taken over by those who would send us back to the dark ages. Yet all along the Ohio, along Lake Erie and even in the state's capital, it's pretty blue. Ohio is very urban--and it wasn't Cleveland and Columbus who won Ohio for the Republicans.

Thinking about California and New York, together unable to choose a presidential candidate I started to think about blue states and red states. Seeing things this way makes the country look even more red.

That of course is misleading. A blue-red county map overlaid a map showing population distribution undoubtedly shows blue areas and areas with people are one in the same. Socialist Eugene Debs and other anti-urbanites are certainly filling their graves with laughter at this one. The countryside rules in the United states. In fact, despite continually increasing populations--in numbers and percentage-- in the countries largest MSA's, all cities with 500,000 people or more together couldn't elect a president.

As the Urban Archipelago points out, John Kerry won among the highly educated, Jews, young people, gays and lesbians, and non-whites. "What do all these groups have in common? They choose to live in cities. An overwhelming majority of the American population chooses to live in cities. And John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000. He took half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000."

Further, other recent accounts in leading publications show the extent to which blue states finance red states. It would be interesting to learn how much of the GDP is represented by red areas. I have a hunch the blue more than pull their weight. From Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley, where there's an economy, there's a blue splotch.