As codes for the electoral maps, red and blue have been vocabulary fixtures ever since November 2000, and most likely will remain such, because what else can replace them?

However, they never did take root as cultural terms.  For that, there need to be at least references to people- leftist, rightist, which never did happen with red and blue.  

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The article contains some odd word usages:

Those piled-on participials enabled you to ridicule liberal affections while conspicuously dropping your g's.

In retrospect, the whole "two Americas" business was mostly the narcissism of small differences...

In places of those bold words should be affectations, fixations.

Robert said: In places of those bold words should be affectations, fixations.

I'm not so sure about that. I also read the article Glenn linked. I think affections works as well as affectations (if I infer the meaning correctly). What it didn't get was the dropping your g's at the end of that sentence. All I could come up with is that some people, liberal or not, tend to pronounce words ending with "ing" as if they were ending with "in." Example: voting pronounced as votane. Kinda' the same thing as pronouncing electors as electers ... just careless or lazy diction.

In that second sentence, I think narcissism may be closer to the intended meaning than fixation (though both emotions are likely in play). From the context of the overall article, I think the author was sniping at the smugness of both reds and blues being proud of their perceived differences, regardless of how small those differences really are in practice.

I'm open to rebuttal on this, of course. But I'd be most interested in hearing what others think about that dropping your g's comment.

If you listen to the recording of this report, you will find that Mr. Nunberg actually says, "affectations."  There is an error in the transcript.  As far as narcissism or fixation goes, I think either can work.  They both indicate being overly attentive to the object but narcissism includes a kind of love for it.  Since this was pre-recorded with opportunities to re-record and eliminate any errors, I suspect Nunberg, being a linguist, said exactly what he meant.

The dropping of the g's can be careless and lazy diction, but it also suggests a casual, down-home folksiness. I think Nunberg is suggesting that critics of liberal pretention can bolster their arguments by appearing to be "just folks". (In the original ad none of the g's are dropped, and Nunberg drops only two: tax hikin', latte drinkin'.)

And it's no small matter; a recent (8/1/2014) article in Salon has this headline: "Peggy Noonan: America is divided because Obama is "out there dropping his g's". The WSJ columnist says the country can't come together until the president starts enunciating properly."

The article, by Simon Maloy, quotes Noonan refering to an aquaintance "who thinks America is going to break apart into red and blue factions." She goes on to criticize Obama: "He shouldn’t be out there dropping his g’s, slouching around a podium, complaining about his ill treatment, describing his opponents with disdain: 'Stop just hatin’ all the time.' ” 

Notice that Noonan invokes red and blue as up-to-date markers of political schism. Nunberg's claim however is "The media still use "red" and "blue" when they're talking about the electoral map, but not for a deep cultural divide." As far as the Nunberg/Barrett smackdown goes, Grant might have the advantage.