Somebody needs to tell Texas that they can't secede...

[A Black Falcon]

On point 1, the "stolen" thing was more than anything else referring to the fact that Gore won the election, but it was taken away from him by the Supreme Court. In 2008, however, Obama won cleanly, no tricks.

You're right that the losers of an election often don't like the way things go (the fact that you still have that sig proves it...), and there was a bit of mostly-joking talk about the Northeast seceding and joining Canada or something after the 2000 and 2004 elections, but this is quite different in tone... they're actually serious, at least somewhat.

On point two, while the idea does have a certain appeal (get rid of the most conservative part of the country...), sorry, but you can't secede from the US. I think the Civil War settled that matter. :)

But also, the nation's better off whole. If those places were their own nation(s), the poorer people there wouldn't have a chance at all... at least with the federal government, we can at least try to do things to help people. They may not like it (even Democrats from the South are pretty bad on a lot of things...), but at least we can try... though it does make me think of that 'if people refuse help and elect anti-federal-gov't people, should we be too sorry when they then suffer for it? They're the ones that voted those people in... but anyway.

So yeah... secession thoughts among liberals after 2000 and 2004 were occasional entertaining thoughts, but never went beyond that. I hope things go similarly with conservatives... but with how much more extreme the average conservative in the US is than the average liberal, I don't think I'd bet on it.

I mean, the Republican Party is very far right. The Democratic Party? Barely left of center. The American left is very centrist compared to most other major democracies... though there are lots of other countries well to our right (or left, Communism shows that the far left is no better), of course.