The ‘fly-over’ states between America’s east and west coast are pretty quiet most of the time. Like the rest of the world, they are overwhelmed by the vast cultural and economic power exerted by the coastal cities of New York and Los Angeles. When we say American films, we mean films almost exclusively produced in California. When we talk about US money, we mean the greenbacks controlled out of Wall Street. In between, among those endless plains and mountains, is another country.
You can quantify the difference in many ways – income, religion, foreign travel, politics. Or weight. Sixty-five per cent of Americans are overweight. Although walking around Manhattan you experience a derriere deficit – it’s small hinnies only in the big apple – outside the great population centres you see the butts where all the butter went. It’s in the suburbs and the ‘exurbs’ (the population centres outside cities altogether) that you tend to find the third of the US population that’s obese. A person living in the most sprawling county, Geauga near Cleveland, will be carrying an average extra 2.9kg. That is the weight of a cat, or rather it would be if 40 per cent of cats weren’t also now obese in the US.
The only time that this silent nation really throws its considerable weight about is during election times. The political map of America after the last elections show not so much a divided nation as a blue (Democrat) coast, wrapped around a red (Republican) desert. And with few exceptions, the fatter the state, the more likely it is to go Republican. At elections the America that feels isolated from its culture and close to its dinner gets to cast its vote. The gun-toting, church-going, salad-dodging masses turn out. Then, for one fatal day, all that is civilised, educated, urbane, cosmopolitan and interesting in America gets out-shouted. The next day we can get back to watching repeats of Frasier. But that dire interruption has installed a rightwinger for another four years.
Clearly the task for the Democrats is to talk round enough of the plains and mountain people. They need to argue with them that moral values are not just about telling others how to live, they are also about helping others and creating a fairer world. They need to embrace an economic populism that lines them up with the interests of working-class people, as well as the very poor. They need to pass the threshold on national security and prove they can win the war on terror, not just fight it.
But does not all that sound like a great deal of hard work? That’s a lot of difficult conversations with some rather unpleasant people. Time after time the Democrats offer red-staters hugely qualified blue candidates and they pick a red monkey instead. Too often red-staters go into a polling booth, deliberate, ponder and then vote squarely against their own interests, when it would save everyone a lot of time if they just stayed at home and hit their head against the wall. There must be a better way.
And there may just be at that. How about changing the electoral college so that if the Republicans ever want to win an election they have to start coming to blue states and talking in moderation rather than talking mentalist garbage down on the farm? California and New York – two populous, liberal states – put 86 electoral college votes in the back pocket of any half-decent Democrat candidate. But that itself is outweighed by the 157 votes of the old confederacy, which all fell to Bush. So the question now becomes this: where can we find enough extra votes to alter the centre of gravity?
Can you think of a leftwing (by US standards), English speaking state with enough history and culture in common with the America to join the union? I’ll give you a clue. You are sitting in it. Britain would add about 110 electoral votes to the blue column. Yes, it would be a sacrifice, but surely anything is better than this?