Colorado's changing tint from purple to blue is bad news for Republicans

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Social scientists, say Colorado boosters, have plausible metrics identifying their state as the happiest and healthiest state, the former quality perhaps producing the latter. Or the other way around. Or maybe the tangle of causation cannot be unwoven. Be that as it may, 300 days of sunshine each year — this Mile High City is practically cheek-by-jowl with the sun — entice people into outdoor activities that help the state have chubby America’s lowest obesity rate.

Among the least happy and healthy Colorado cohorts is the Republican Party, which is less svelte than emaciated. This state is in many ways a glimpse of the nation’s future, so when national Republicans are done congratulating themselves on having lost only the most important half of what the Constitution’s framers considered the most important branch — Congress is accorded

When asked whether his party’s rout of Republicans on Nov. 6 indicated that many voters recoiled when they saw “R” next to a candidate’s name, Gov.-elect Jared Polis demurs, saying what they effectively saw was: “T.” Polis, and many of the Democratic candidates who will be in lopsided majorities in both chambers of the next state legislature, did not need much more help than President Trump. This flight from the president’s party matters as a national portent because Denver and its suburbs, which undulate east toward the plains and west toward the mountains, contain 50 percent of the electorate. Eighty percent is in the booming urbanization of the Front Range from Fort Collins and Greeley down to Colorado Springs and Pueblo.

Also, Colorado’s population has a lower median age than those of 38 states, and its Hispanic percentage, 21, is the nation’s seventh-largest. The state ranks second, behind Massachusetts, in the percentage of residents with bachelor’s degrees. The state last elected a Republican governor 16 years ago.

Polis, 43, was born and now lives in Boulder, a university town that is the Paris Commune with skiing. He is a progressive apple that did not fall far from the tree: Both parents — one a poet, the other an artist — were antiwar warriors in the 1960s. But rather than manning the barricades to overthrow jackbooted capitalism, Polis opted for acquisition: As a Princeton sophomore, he and two friends started an Internet access company. Soon he founded two other Internet-related companies, eventually selling the three for more than $1 billion, thereafter devoting his overflowing energies to public matters, including education, with charter schools aimed at helping immigrants thrive. Polis was elected to Congress in 2008, became the first same-sex parent in the House and will now become the United States’ first openly gay man elected governor, a fact that is interestingly uninteresting to voters.

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Since George W. Bush carried Colorado by 8.4 points and then 4.7 points, it has voted Democratic in presidential elections by an average margin of 6.4 percentage points. Because it is increasingly young, urban, educated and diverse, Republicans, who fancy themselves saviors of “flyover country,” might just as well fly over Colorado.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/colorados-changing-tint-from-purple-to-blue-is-bad-news-for-republicans/2018/11/28/a7d7cf40-f275-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html?utm_term=.e56b7bd2f897

[bearsfootball516]

1. Same with Virginia.

And I'd venture to say that Arizona is officially purple.