The new American dreamers

Last week, after the most of the Indiana Daily Student staff had gone home, I sat alone in the election coverage "war room" at 3 a.m. I was finishing last week's column when one of the school's custodians stuck his head through the door.\n"Hey, how's the election coming?"\n"Bush is leading and will likely win," I said.\n"Man, I was hoping the peacemaker would win."\nIt's funny what happens when you get a bias flipped on you. As soon as he said that, I realized that because of his slight twang and long curly blonde hair, I'd typecasted him in the role of a Bush supporter. When he spoke, the flashing "Conservative!" sign above his head disappeared, and I learned something.\nA true analysis of the nation's electorate would not yield solely red and blue states. An accurate picture, not the winner-take-all picture presented by media outlets, would be in varying shades of purple. This year's election magnified the identity division between city and country. Maps of democratic strongholds California and New York had a lot of counties lit up in red, many more so than most people would think. In those states, like many others, it was the city vote that turned the states blue.\nYou show me a red state, and I'll show you cities that voted blue and were never heard. You show me a blue state, and I'll show you dozens of disenfranchised rural Republican citizens. \nDavid Brooks, one of two Republican-leaning New York Times columnists, recently wrote about a phenomenon he calls "exurbia." It's where a group of "middle class" people don't live in suburbs of cities, but they don't quite live in the country, either. Exurbia is the home of the strip mall, the golf course and the planned community unit, where the houses are grouped by price range. Exurbia is found in places like Mesa, Ariz., and Lawrenceville, Ga. These are places where half of the people who live there drive an hour to work in the cities. The other half work in the sterile office buildings that sprout up like weeds along the interstates, five minutes by SUV from their planned community unit.\nThese are the voters who Brooks says won Bush the election. I say they are the voters who voted with the least to lose. They don't have to worry about farm subsidies. Their kids are likely the ones who will go on to college instead of to Iraq and Afghanistan. They don't have to worry about urban blight and rising crime rates because they're only driving through the inner city during the safety of daylight hours. Whether taxes go up or down is inconsequential to them. They make enough to be well off but not so much that they would bear the brunt of increased taxes. These are the people who were the values voters because they could afford to vote that way. They didn't really have any other pressing concerns on which to vote.\nIn many ways, the exurbian vote was a selfish one. Their insular communities are shielded from what affects everyone else in the world. But instead of voting to help others, they voted on issues that have no bearing on the well-being of anyone else. They voted to appease their consciences and, in some cases, to appease their ministers who told them to "vote their faith." \nI'm afraid the American dream has become an ivory tower. The nation, especially the "values voters," needs to start paying more attention to the guys pushing brooms and emptying trash cans. They can teach us a lot more than we think.