Wednesday, July 22, 2009  MORE PREDICTIONS OF SUCCESS, MODIFIED
FOR NEW REALITIES. Joel Kotkin has an essay about the failure of
the blue states and the prospect therefore of red states surging
to bring Republicans back to power. To the surprising extent
that it relies on long-term data -- that "red-state strongholds
such as the Dakotas, Idaho, Texas, Utah, and North Carolina,
dominated the list of fastest-growing regions recently compiled
for Forbes," versus the "decades-long meltdown" of blue states
-- one might ask why this historic growth did not elect John
McCain and a Republican Congress in 2008. Kotkin briefly
mentions "the failure that stuck to Republicans in the wake of
the Bush presidency," but with becoming reticence doesn't say
anything more about it, except to predict the same thing
happening to Democrats, presumably for the same reasons.  The
future is unwritten and anything can happen, but if you're going
to mine demographics for electoral gold you might take a moment
to consider why they faile