Is There a Great Divergence in American Political Life?

This morning I took my daily, one-mile walk in the lovely little town of Walpole, NH, which is located about 20 miles above Massachusetts, which is where I live.

Walpole is a town of some 3,500 residents and it would not be an understatement to say that the poverty rate in Walpole is — actually, they don’t have a poverty rate.

In my walk, which takes me about 25 minutes, I probably pass by several sozen private homes, each of which I suspect would probably bring a couple of million bucks I they ever went on sale.

When my wife and I visit her daughter in Westport, CT we often drive home through Danbury on a back road which is about 30 miles and goes through four or five towns which are no different from Walpole except they have different names.

Unless I’m on the road, which I was today, I usually do my writing in a walk-in medical clinic in the South End neighborhood of Springfield, MA. Springfield has about 125,000 residents and is one of 31 or 32 cities of its size in the United States.

Of all these cities, or what the Census refers to as Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA’s,) when it comes to the usual demographic measurements to determine the quality of life in these places (income, education, employment, home values) Springfield ranks dead…