Yet national Democrats seemed increasingly to write off red states—or red areas within blue and purple states—completely. The result was that many parts of our country had heard so little from Democrats and progressives that anyone living there who sympathized with our party might assume they were totally alone. If that loneliness prompted them to keep quiet about their values at coffee after church or on the local radio call-in shows, then the sense of a Republican monopoly on opinion in these communities would become self-fulfilling.