It’s popular among presidential candidates these days to say that there is no difference between blue states and red states, and that Americans all really want the same thing - to elect the candidate who is speaking. Barack Obama pioneered the message in his 2004 speech at the Democratic presidential convention, but since then, it’s used as a truism by candidates of both political parties.
Of course, a just because something is a truism doesn’t mean it’s true. Often, a truism is just something that seems obviously true because it’s something that people want to believe. The underlying unity of red states and blue states is one of these untrue truisms.
The environmental scorecard by the League of Conservation Voters gives one strong example. The League of Conservation Voters is not a partisan organization, exactly. However, the organization does promote environmental policies, and in doing so, it ends up promoting an agenda that is more often associated with Democrats than Republicans.
This trend is seen quite easily in looking at the state delegation scores in the LCV National Environmental Scorecard, which tracks how members of Congress vote on environmental legislation. Blue state delegations to the House of Representatives get an average LCV legislative score of 74.05 percent. Blue state delegations to the U.S. Senate do even better, getting an average legislative score of 78.31 percent.
Red state delegations to Congress don’t do nearly as well. Red state delegations to the House average only a score of 28.96 percent. Red state delegations to the Senate do even worse averaging only 26.8 percent.
That’s a gap in the LCV legislative score of 45 percent in the House, and 51.5 percent in the Senate. No difference between red states and blue states? That’s not what the record in Congress shows.
Blue states are progressive states, and they chose the Democratic candidate in 2008. If you care about the environment, you can trust blue state judgment much more than you can trust the judgment of red states.
For right now, the best option for voting Green is voting Blue.
(Source: League of Conservation Voters, National Environmental Scorecard, 2006)
