One-Party State watch By Arnold Kling

Dan Balz summarizes the grim demographic statistics. He quotes Robert Lang of Virginia Tech.

“There’s just not enough rural folks and small-city people left in America.”

For Republicans, the most hopeful statistic is this:

Democrats lost white college graduates by 20 percentage points in 1988 but by four points last November.

Potentially, that is reversible. You probably have to take it as given that among less educated voters, Democrats will sweep urban minorities and Republicans will sweep rural and small-town whites.

So for Republicans to win, they have to dominate among college-educated voters. That tells me that Sarah Palin is not the right person to head the ticket.

Of course, I think that the one-party state will be based on more than mere demographics. I think it will be a case of Democrats systematically rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies, using the increased control over the economy to do so.

I predict that while the Democrats hold power, the share of college-educated people who work for the government will rise dramatically, while the share working in the private sector will fall. That is why so much of the stimulus is focused on giving money to state governments, even though unemployment already is low among government workers, The goal of the “stimulus” is to enlarge the constituency that is most likely to vote Democratic.

The dramatic increase in state control over the economy was initiated by George Bush and Henry Paulson. Ultimately, we can thank them for the one-party state.