Role reversal of the two Virginias shows key shifts in politics along economic, educational lines

For decades West Virginia was a reliably Democratic state, its mother Virginia just as reliably Republican. In the current presidential race, each lean the other way, illustrating some critical shifts in the nation's political geography, Alec MacGillis writes for The Washington Post.

"It would be hard to find a pair better positioned to clarify the split, and show which segment holds sway in 2008 than (Sen. Barack) Obama and Sen. John McCain," MacGillis writes. "Obama, 46, offers himself as someone who can transcend the red-blue divides of the past decade. But the biracial senator from Illinois epitomizes the new Democratic coalition, with his years living abroad and in big cities, his intellectualism and his urbane flair, and his campaign's lofty rhetoric and Internet savvy. McCain, 71, lacks Bush's ties with evangelical Christians, yet the Republican from Arizona still embodies a more traditional America, with his wartime heroism, his mantra of service over individualism and his admittedly limited technological literacy."

But at the root of the shifts are changes in economics and lifestyle. "As the distance between the rich and the poor grows, so too does the gap between regions," MacGillis reports. "In places such as West Virginia, manufacturing and mining have been decimated by automation and foreign competition, and hopes for reinvention are undermined by the stream of young people leaving." In Northern Virignia's dynamic, "technology-driven economy ... Democrats are strengthening their hold," while Republicans "consolidating their hold in rural areas and small cities, while making inroads in struggling Appalachian and Rust Belt regions that were a core of the Democratic base," MacGillis writes.

"Democratic areas are sopping up people with B.A. degrees; Republican areas are sopping up white people without degrees," said Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. "There are all these things telling people they should be around people like themselves. And every four years, this has political consequences." Click here to read a review of Bishop's book by Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, in The Courier-Journal. Bishop is a member of the Institute's advisory board.

West Virginia voted for George W. Bush in 2000, in large measure because of fears that Al Gore was adverse to coal and guns. It went even more strongly for Bush in 2004 and presents a challenge for Obama this year. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, the only Republican in the state's congressional delegation, said Democrats "do appeal more to an upper-middle-class, higher educated, faster-moving kind of voter. Voters here are still waking up in the morning saying, 'I want to make sure my kids get fed and that someone's not trading away my constitutional rights." To read MacGillis' entire article, click here.