Verisimilitude

So, I've been watching House of Cards. The protagonist, played by Kevin Spacey, is the ruthless, power-hungry Majority Whip of the House of Representatives, Rep. Francis Underwood (D-SC). And you know, I had a hard time getting my suspension of disbelief to accept a white Democrat from South Carolina with seniority in the House—I mean, seriously, this guy must have won reelection as a freshman congressman in the Republican wave of 1994, and held on through the 1990s and 2000s as Southern white Democrats became a rarer and rarer species, all with a constituent base apparently made up of rural mostly white peach farmers. But then I looked up the actual fifth Congressional district of South Carolina, and apparently it was held by a white Democrat up until the big Republican gains of 2010—and who knows if that even happened in the show's universe. (Probably not, since the show's universe has a Democratic House majority in the 212th Congress.) So I guess I withdraw that objection! Though it still seems more surprising that a first-termer like Underwood would have held his seat in 1994 than that the real-life Rep. John Spratt hung on after 12 years in office.

It's a brilliant tactical move on the part of the writers to make Underwood a Democrat from South Carolina, though, to avoid alienating any of their audience—conservatives can assume he's evil because he's a Democrat, and liberals can assume he's evil because he's a Dixiecrat.

Meanwhile, another main character on the show is Rep. Peter Russo (D-PA), played by Corey Stoll, and his constituents include a bunch of South Philly shipbuilders, and every single one of them has a New York accent, and that's just unforgivable.