Red State, Blue State

I like the new political color-coding scheme that has become the norm since the 2000 election. That is, Red States are Republican and Blue States are Democrat. It sure beats the old scheme, in which the incumbent party was Blue and the challenging party was Red. That's too hard to keep up with.

Think about recent history. In the election of 1976, Republicans were Blue and Democrats were Red. But because Carter was elected in 1976, the color scheme for the 1980 election had Republicans as Red and Democrats as Blue. Then Reagan was elected, so the color scheme for the 1984 election had Republicans as Blue and Democrats as Red. It stayed that way until the 1996 and 2000 elections, when Republicans were Red and Democrats were Blue. It should have changed after the 2000 election, but most political analysts -- wisely -- decided to stick with the Republican-Red and Democrat-Blue theme.

It's a more fitting color scheme, anyway. Republicans are the party of positive thinking -- as in "We won't stand for any more of this crap; we're coming to get you. We're not slowing down our economy just because some pseudo-scientists mistakenly think that global warming is a bad thing caused by humans." Red -- an aggressive color -- is definitely Republican.

Democrats are the party of doubt and pessimism. Blue suits the Eeyore Party.