We are on the brink of history. On Tuesday the US could elect its first ever blue president.
The fact that Barack Obama would also be the first black president has obscured the significance of his political colouring. If he wins, he will be the first northern, urban liberal to win the presidency since the culture wars broke out in the US in the 1960s.
For the past 40 years, cultural conflicts over race, religion, patriotism and the permissive society have gradually divided America into Republican “red” states and Democratic “blue” states. There have been three Democrats elected to the presidency since the mid-1960s – but Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were all white southerners, whose cultural heritage blunted the sharpness of the division between red and blue America. Their states – Texas, Georgia and Arkansas, respectively – all went for George W. Bush in 2004. Mr Obama, by contrast, is a college professor from Chicago with one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate. He is blue America personified.
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