Comparing the maps

In reference to my earlier post comparing the electoral maps from 1896 and 2004, one reader points out that:

The comparison of the past election and 1896 basically mirrors the division of the states around the compromise of 1850.... It reinforces my belief that the coalition put together by FDR during the greatest economic crisis in US history was truly an anomaly.

The cultural divisions of the Civil War are indeed still being fought.

However, I don’t agree with the suggestion in the last line that the New Deal coalition is necessarily dead, though it is certainly on life support. Economic populism can and must be resuscitated, this time on a higher plane not encumbered by the ghostly albatrosses of Marxism. To state the obvious: just because Communism was a failure doesn't make capitalism perfect.

Thinking carefully about how FDR overcame the divisions of the Civil War would be a good start.