The Reagan Democrat phenomena won Ronald Reagan the election in 1980. It put him over the top and changed America, for the worse, for 25 years and counting.  They also contributed to his crushing electoral victory in 1984. Note that African Americans, who also voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the decades leading up to the 1980 election, continued to do so, while many white so-called "ethnic" American groups, including self-identified Irish-Americans, jumped ship.

Now, why could that be?

In my book, the 1980 election was the defining one in terms of making America the fairly politically regressive and economically social-darwinist state it is today. The 1984 election simply underlined this. And we are still living with the consequences of this, as both Americans and Europeans. Dubya in the White House is simply an extension of the same logic.

You'll note that all I said above was that I bet if you put two population density maps together, one with density of Reagan Democrats, one with Fans of Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, you'd get a real good correlation.

Folks took extreme issue with that statement, which I will continue to point out, and poemless confirms, is not at all controversial. For this, I got called something akin to a racist at some point up there in the thread.

All I gotta say is the numbers back me up.

Y'know, all these folks who are of 1/4 Irish extraction, simultaneously self-identifying as Irish-American, Italian-American, Polish-American and Norwegian-American (I've seen it done) tend to accentuate their putative Irishness when convenience, for instance mid-March. Many somehow had a grandparent who was discriminated against for being Irish, despite the fact that anti-Irish bias in America was in full swing 125 years ago, not 50.
But somehow, these folks vote overwhelmingly for a race-baiter like Ronald Reagan and, by extension, think racism against African-Americans no longer exists (blacks in and around South Boston might think differently of course).

The idiocy is this myth of Irish-American victimhood, expressed above, and the corresponding myth that Irish-Americans are a wellspring for the righteous fight for social justice, also expressed above. Irish-Americans are no different from most other white Americans. They are generally conservative, they hew to a number of myths which point America in the direction it is pointed today, they like their non-neogitiable creature-comforts the externalities of which be damned, and they are sure they are good people despite the consequences of their electoral choices.

Excuse me for not drinking the kool-aid.

Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant