THE GREAT AMERICAN POLITICAL ROADTRIP: MASSACHUSETTS AND MICHIGAN
See last week’s posts on Maine and Maryland here.
MASSACHUSETTS
The mother of all “blue states,” Massachusetts has become nationally infamous for being a liberal mecca. It’s owed to it being a hub of intellectualism, with many colleges and universities and a state populated by working-class descendants of European immigrants.
Though Massachusetts has been a liberal bastion for some time, it wasn’t always. Before the early 20th Century, Massachusetts was a Republican stronghold due to its abolitionist history and Puritan background. The phrase “Banned in Boston” entered the lexicon, referring to the strict social conservatism of the Boston area.
Today, it’s hard to believe that Boston was once that conservative, but times change. Nevertheless, even as Massachusetts has become a liberal, Democratic bastion, it hasn’t become a total loss for the Republican Party. Four of its last six governors were Republicans, one of whom was 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. In 2010, Massachusetts voters brought President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda to a dead stop when they elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate. In what felt like a final insult, Scott Brown was elected to serve the rest of the late liberal icon Ted Kennedy’s term. Elizabeth Warren avenged the liberals by defeating Brown in the next election, but the damage had been done.
Since the Donald Trump era, however, Republicans have seen whatever little hope they’ve had at clawing back power in the Bay State wither away.
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