So, who are the members of this “suicide caucus”? Ryan Lizza, writing in The New Yorker, proviced a very useful breakdown: “The members of the suicide caucus live in a different America from the one that most political commentators describe when talking about how the country is transforming. The average suicide-caucus district is 75 percent white, while the average House district is 63 percent white. Latinos make up an average of 9 percent of suicide-district residents, while the over-all average is 17 percent. The districts also have slightly lower levels of education (25 percent of the population in suicide districts have college degrees, while that number is 29 percent for the average district). The members themselves represent this lack of diversity. Seventy-six of the members who signed the Meadows letter are male. Seventy-nine of them are white. As with Meadows, the other suicide-caucus members live in places where the national election results seem like an anomaly. Obama defeated Romney by four points nationally. But in the 80 suicide-caucus districts, Obama lost to Romney by an average of 23 points. The Republican members themselves did even better. In these 80 districts, the average margin of victory for the Republican candidate was 34 points. In short, these 80 members represent an America where the population is getting whiter, where there are few major cities, where Obama lost the last election in a landslide, and where the Republican Party is becoming more dominant and more popular. Meanwhile, in national politics, each of these trends is actually reversed.”
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 02:54:41 +0000
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