THE AGE OF POLITICAL SEGREGATION You don't know me, but you don't like me. —HOMER JOY, "Streets of Bakersfield" How can the polls be neck and neck when I don't know one Bush supporter? —ARTHUR MILLER IN THE SPRING before the 2004 election, I heard from LaHonda Jo Morgan. Jo Morgan lived in Wauconda, Washington, a one-building town (combination grocery, cafe, and post office) about 150 miles northwest of Spokane. She was convinced that Wauconda remained on the map "simply because mapmakers don't like to leave a lot of empty space on their products." Jo Morgan was writing about segregation—political segregation. She had seen an article I had written about the tendency of places to become politically like-minded, either increasingly Republican or Democratic. She noticed that the article came from Austin, her hometown. So she recounted that through fifty years of marriage, she had lived in a number of places across the United States and elsewhere in the world. And then she described a change she had noticed taking place in Wauconda: This is a predominantly conservative area with most residents tied to ranching, mining and apple orchards.
