The D.C. Nationals

According to CNN, Paula Zahn has “Today’s Toughest Questions, Asked and Answered.” This, of course, got me wondering what I would ask Paula, and I think it would be something to the effect of, “Paula, do you know that your last name means ‘tooth’ in German?”

I’m going to follow up that random tidbit with another one. I was reading Sports Illustrated online, specifically Pete McEntegart’s Ten Spot, which mentioned the uniforms for the new D.C. Nationals baseball team. He joked that, like the country, they would be mostly red, with blue trim along all the edges. I chuckled to myself- and then, panicking, checked the old Expos website, to see what the jerseys actually looked like. Turns out they haven’t designed them.

(If there’s one thing I’m more obsessive about than politics, it’s baseball.)

Regardless of what the Nationals end up wearing, I don’t really like the fact that the mainstream media continues to promote this notion of “red vs. blue” states, especially since people I know have begun to identify themselves based on their state’s “color.” I’ll admit that I’m guilty of this myself- it’s comforting to know that your friends and neighbors probably didn’t vote for the bad guy.

But the red/blue state split only takes the Presidential race into account. The red states voted Bush, the blue states voted Kerry. But that ignores some important differences in Senatorial and Congressional races. New Hampshire, a Kerry state, still re-elected Republican Senator Judd Gregg. And Colorado, which went for Bush, still sent arch-conservative Pete Coors packing in favor of environmental attorney Ken Salazar. Now Pete can go back home and brew mediocre beer, make commercials about twins, and take a bath in a pile of his own money.

It’s not that splitting the party ticket is anything new. My home state of Massachusetts- widely reputed to be the most liberal locality this side of Toronto- has had Republican governors since the first Bush administration. It doesn’t prove anything- it just reminds us that November 2nd wasn’t a numbers competition between all-red and all-blue voters. It still boggles my mind that the whole thing was less than a month ago.

But over the course of the last 27 days, it seems like some of the divisions are starting to heal. The election threw everyone’s political opposition into caricatures of themselves; every red state was packed with gun-toting, bloodthirsty Christian evangelists out to turn the country into a conservative theocracy, and all we could do was hope they didn’t cross the border into our bastions of blue. We, of course, didn’t help our image by screaming about moving to Canada and being terrified of the “moral values” discussion- we came across like a bunch of effete Communist pansies.

Of course, it just seems like some of the divisions are healing, and that’s because we don’t have to hear about the red-vs.-blue state thing as much anymore. It’s divisive and it needs to stop, and unfortunately, it’s not over yet. Websites like www.sorryeverybody.com are continuing to promote the spirit of election-night defeatism that seeped into the brain of every committed liberal in the country.

I guess all I really have to say is that they’re not going to stay red- or, to be fair, stay blue- forever. Time’s beginning letting the ideological heat cool down, and I think that’s good. Because when you get people to calm down and start thinking, they start voting Democratic.