2.15.2024

Where the girls are the fairest and the boys are the squarest *

Democrats look to Nebraska to shore up Biden’s blue wall

“The industrial north strategy — the old blue wall that held even for Al Gore and John Kerry when they lost — you now need Nebraska-2 to make that math work,” said Kyle Kondik, an election handicapper at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “The importance is that it may be that Biden’s best path back to a second term is to essentially hold the Upper Midwest and win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.”

First of all, Pennsylvania is not a Midwestern state, though it may seem that way to people in Washington, D.C. All we can say for sure is there are four Cornhuskers in D.C., one for each of Nebraska's four electoral votes.

The story of how Nebraska (and Maine) came to vote by congressional district instead of by state in Presidential elections is here, in the Smithsonian magazine.

* From the fight song, Dear Old Nebraska U, Words and Music by Harry Pecha, class of 1924. I learned to sing it in the second grade but this line, and "we'll all stick together in all kinds of weather" were the only two (or four) I could remember; I had to look the rest of the lyrics up (it's the second one on the list). 

Only the Second District, which includes Omaha and Lincoln (the site of said university) is true blue, it turns out.

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