Hair dye, silicon, and tofu country

Ted Cruz seeks Texas love with a swipe at California.

Ted Cruz with black hair

There really is a difference between the two states.

Tofu.

"The extreme left, they're angry, they're energized, and they hate the president. That level of fury and rage, we underestimate that at our peril. We are seeing tens of millions of dollars flooding into the state of Texas from liberals all over the country who desperately want to turn the state of Texas blue. They want us to be just like California, right down to tofu and silicon and dyed hair."   Ted Cruz

There is a lot to unpack in what Ted Cruz said.

Late night comedy shows took advantage of the obvious hypocrisies, the first being that Ted Cruz either dyes his hair black to cover the gray, or he is successful in praying away former gray. Another thing to unpack is that he almost certainly meant silicone, not silicon. Texas is proud of having high tech (silicon) and presumably less proud of the Hollywood depiction of women of Dallas.

Then there is tofu. 

Tofu represents effete. Feminine. Prudently health conscious rather than courageously rugged. New rather than traditional. Vegetarian rather than beef. Blue rather than red.

Dallas

Ted Cruz's statement links politics--red and blue--to culture. Those liberal invaders aren't coming with their political buttons. They are invading to change "Texas blue" values into California's cultural symbols and values. Politics is culture, not policy.

Cruz's statement imbeds another notion, one progressives and Democrats can observe and integrate, to their profit. Cruz is appealing to cultural resentment over presumed imposition of liberal hypocrisy and condescension by outsiders. Ted Cruz is appealing to the resentment "regular folks" have of Democrats who call out the behaviors of "deplorables."  

This blog's experience with posts on Facebook in progressive groups provides ample evidence of progressive condemnation of supposed "centrism." Many progressives condemn this blog, considering it both morally necessary and politically expedient to condemn perceived dog whistles and micro aggressions in order to purify the culture. (The is blog has taken the position that whatever its moral merits, it backfires and is counter-productive.)

A third takeaway is Ted Cruz's assumption that Texas and California are different. He is right, they are different. The New York Times presented a useful data set on the geography of culture with maps of areas where different television shows are popular. Click: NY Times

Here is Duck Dynasty, a show that self-consciously celebrates rural values, hunting, and traditional Christianity. Darker red represents more popularity. It is the high water mark for red state rural popularity:

Duck Dynasty. Red State America.

Contrast this with the map for Modern Family, a comedy show about a California extended family which celebrates non-traditional family arrangements.

Modern Family: Urban and blue

The Daily Show is a comedy show with a decisively liberal bent. Under both Jon Stewart and Trever Noah it primarily skewers GOP hypocrisy and Fox News--and now Trump.

Daily Show: note "heartland" America.

The long running TV show The Simpsons runs on Fox (the broadcast network, not the cable Fox News) and it is a comedic satire of middle America. Ted Cruz says that the Homer Simpson represents red America, and that the meticulous rule-following Lisa represents liberal Democratic America. It is evident that red state "heartland" America does not enjoy the satirical view of itself.

Simpsons: Note the unpopularity in the Bible Belt

Summary and take-away:  There are in fact cultural differences in the US, and Democrats have attached their brand and policies to urban people and urbane, cosmopolitan attitudes, including racial and gender inclusion and tolerance. In Texas, Beto O'Rourke is working against that typecasting by looking scrappy, by having refused PAC money, and by having traveled to each of the 254 Texas counties, a fact that appears frequently in stories about him, making him a man of the people, Texas people.

As Democrats narrow their field of presidential candidates and establish new visible party spokespeople they need to recognize that they are easily caricatured as being the "San Francisco" party. Many Democrats will want to embrace that. A frequent media theme is that San Francisco and California are the face of the future, demographically, economically, and politically, and, besides, their values are correct.

But they might hesitate when they look at the map of three TV shows that seem funny to Democrats. Democrats don't need the Bible Belt but they cannot win without winning some states in the upper midwest. They may need a candidate who is comfortable eating steak and potatoes and saying so. And they might look at the TV shows popular in Missouri and West Virginia and recognize that Claire McCaskill and Joe Manchin are attempting to be Democrats in difficult terrain.