Wednesday, August 13, 2008
back during bittergate
With the revival of the "elitism" charge against Obama -- including by none less than Cokie Roberts, herself the daughter of a famous Congressman and product of exotic Louisiana and expensive DC private schools -- I decided to post my various posts on the topic at the time of "bittergate." But first a thought about Hawaii, where I lived for four years, two in Kailua where Obama is staying: the most striking thing about it for me is the heavy military presence. Obama stayed within spitting distance of huge marine base, and there are multiple other naval, army and air force bases on Oahu alone. With all those military personnel, could it really be that exotic?!
OK back to bittergate:
1. I sent the following as an email to Maureen Dowd, whom I normally love to read. The article is here.
Sigh. Et tu, Mauree? I kept waiting for a trace of the Dowd irony in your piece but to no avail. Well your argument is as silly as every other "my Irish Catholic and/or working class roots have just been spat upon" columnist, and my there are a lot of you! He was not talking about why people love guns or anything else in his list. He was talking about why people in small, economically devastated towns might be resistant to his campaign. And last I checked, whatever your -- or Joan Walsh's or Chris Matthews' -- roots you are no longer qualified to speak for those people. But the evidence is that they are bitter, and far less offended than their well-to-do cousins in the nation's journalistic elite who love to wear their populist origins in their sleeve. As for the drift of Kennedy Democrats to Reagan Republicanism, that began with the defeat of the populist Hubert Humphrey and reached its peak with the populist Mondale. Poor egghead Dukakis got the second highest share of the popular vote of any Democrat between 1964 and 1996, after Jimmy Carter.
2. The reference to Joan Walsh was for this in which she mostly defended him but still found it necessary to trot out her "Irish working class roots" against his purported elitism: "Barack Obama does have an affluent, educated, Ivy League sense of self-righteousness and entitlement that my Irish Catholic working-class side occasionally chafes at. So does Michelle Obama." To which I responded as follows:
the sound of one hand clapping
[Read the article: Obama and the white working class]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]
Speaking as an Obama supporter I would give one thumb up to both you and Obama. To Obama because as effective as Obama was in his response, it still begs the question of why he lumps all those issues together as things that need to be explained and, implicitly criticized. (The two that I thought were problematic were religion, given his frequent description of himself as a devout christian, and anti-trade sentiments, given his frequent reference to the evils of trade agreements). To you because of that unconvincing little riff about your working class background and the Obamas (and Obama supporters') elitist ones. Never mind Obama, whose background is well-known and not all that privileged. Michelle Obama is a working class girl who made good. And you, for all your working class origins, are one too. So let's drop the populist posturing, please.
Permalink Saturday, April 12, 2008 12:48 AM
3. The really inane piece of reporting on this on Salon, however, was this piece of faux populist posturing by Michael Lind, to which I responded as follows
#
#
populists and progressives
[Read the article: The rubes and the elites]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]
This recycling of old cliches is disingenuously incomplete. First, let's be clear who the counterparts to the populists are. They are the "progressives" -- a term those who sneer at "goo-goo" types avoid because of its positive connotation -- heir to the Roosevelt/Wilson (hence bipartisan) efforts to reform everything from political machines to the corporate malfeasance. Second, let's be clear why the New Deal "populist" coalition broke down: it was the direct result of the civil rights movement and the attempts to give blacks a fair shake in the coalition which led to the defeat of the great populist Hubert Humphrey. The "Reagan Democrat" phenomenon was really a Wallace/Nixon Democrat phenomenon. Third let's be clear on what Obama was trying to do -- BRIDGE the existing schism by getting the progressives to be a little more understanding of the populists. Last person to do this? FDR. OK maybe Clinton, too. Fourth, let's be clear on the win/lose records of the two types -- Carter was a progressive; Mondale, the biggest Democratic loser in since WW II a populist. The article attempts to fudge this by conflating "populists" with "southerners" and "cultural conservatives." But the "southern strategy" has been a best since Gore, the southerner lost the south. Ironically, Dukakis actually got the highest share of the popular vote of any Democrat between 1976 and 1996, losing 53-47 and ran much closer in the once-Republican industrial Midwest showing the potential of winning these states which Clinton (with help from Perot) eventually did and every Democrat has done since (except Ohio). Finally, in the end, let's be clear on who loses the most when the white working class "populists" vote Republican on "cultural issues" because this that or the other progressive seemed somehow, inexplicably, more elitist than Bush. They, the white working class, do. Maybe it's time to start building a party without them. They are, after all, dwindling in numbers.
Permalink Tuesday, April 15, 2008 12:50 AM
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Predicting campaign 08
A year ago, when the first reports of Obama's fundraising success emerged, I wrote the following on the NYT's politics blog, The Caucus. I'm starting to think it was prescient! (Note the reasoning.)
*
My prediction: A hung convention turns to Al Gore as a compromise candidate. (With so many big states going early now and two candidates with so much money and support, neither will be able to knock the other out with "momentum." And Gore is the one candidate who is likely to be acceptable to both camps — tho' just barely to the Clintons.
— Posted by Arun R. Swamy
* The original is comment no. 312 here
*
My prediction: A hung convention turns to Al Gore as a compromise candidate. (With so many big states going early now and two candidates with so much money and support, neither will be able to knock the other out with "momentum." And Gore is the one candidate who is likely to be acceptable to both camps — tho' just barely to the Clintons.
— Posted by Arun R. Swamy
* The original is comment no. 312 here
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Has New York Lost Its Soul?
Some months ago I posted this to an article in the New York Times. #
66. The link to the original blog is here.
October 4th,
2007
4:54 pm
Well this is a subject close to my heart but I just don’t know the answer. I love NY more than any place on earth but every time I move there I end up leaving … and wishing I could move back. I lived there in the mid 70s, early to mid 80s (lower east side and Tribeca) and for a year during the Giuliani era, ending just before 9/11. I just moved to LA from western Massachusetts where the only solace I could find was my ability to drive down to The City in 3 hours — for an afternoon, a weekend, a week it didnt matter.
In the early 80s when I was a high school teacher on the upper west I assigned my students two NYT articles to read on the “neighborhood preservation” debate one denoucning efforts to “clean up” 42nd St. (and yes I do miss the old Times Square and hate the new), the other about efforts on the Upper East Side to keep chains out. My students were all from the hip UWS and couldn’t care less about the snooty UES but now I notice that it’s Upper Broadway that is the biggest victim of chain mania while the UES looks like a quaint old NY neighborhood.
But are chains necessarily the problem? My one complaint about NY in the 70s and 80s is that you couldnt get a decent cup of coffee there — it was either cappuccino in an italian pastry shop or deli bilge. Moving to Berkeley which had a real cafe scene was a real discovery. The only real cafe I knew of in lower Manhattan other than the afore mentioned pastry shops with tiny tables, and where you could never hang out and read a book was the Cloister Cafe on E. 9th St. Sadly the Cloister Cafe went upscale and then out of business but it’s been replaced by many cafes in the area. For the most part, Starbuck’s has created the market for indie cafes (in NY and most of the country) not destroyed existing cafes.
So what do I miss about NY of the 70s and 80s when I visit now and which could plausibly be described as soul? Independent bookstores — as far as I can tell only the Strand remains. The Pageant, also once on 9th St., which appears in Woody Allen’s Hannah and her sisters, had three stories of old books and maps; now gone online, last I checked. The Village area used to have little bookstores all over the place, now gone. Small repertory movie theaters like the old St. Mark’s. Cheap good places to eat all over like those places that served huge helpings of pork chops and Spanish rice in the neighborhood that became Chelsea. The Odessa on Avenue A remains but what else? And the grit, which I do miss, also produced a kind of egalitarianism — everyone dressed scruffy (the better not to be mugged I suppose) whereas now people where their class status literally on their sleeves.
But for all that, if I could afford it, Id move there in a second still. NY’s soul for me is the street energy — people bustling rubbing shoulders walking. Long Beach where I live now has lots of indie cafes but most people drive which means they are still just islands in a sea of freeways. There is little interaction and when it does occur, it turns out most people dont have much to say.
So in the end Im reminded of an essay I assigned that high school class years ago along with those newspaper clippings. I think it was by H.L. Mencken — or else some equally iconic NY author. And it remarked on how the hallmark of NY is that it is always changing and people are always complaining that the true NY is dead. I guess I agree with all the people who say the soul of NY is New Yorkers — and the physical layout of Manhattan which forces them to acknowledge each other whether they want to or not.
66. The link to the original blog is here.
October 4th,
2007
4:54 pm
Well this is a subject close to my heart but I just don’t know the answer. I love NY more than any place on earth but every time I move there I end up leaving … and wishing I could move back. I lived there in the mid 70s, early to mid 80s (lower east side and Tribeca) and for a year during the Giuliani era, ending just before 9/11. I just moved to LA from western Massachusetts where the only solace I could find was my ability to drive down to The City in 3 hours — for an afternoon, a weekend, a week it didnt matter.
In the early 80s when I was a high school teacher on the upper west I assigned my students two NYT articles to read on the “neighborhood preservation” debate one denoucning efforts to “clean up” 42nd St. (and yes I do miss the old Times Square and hate the new), the other about efforts on the Upper East Side to keep chains out. My students were all from the hip UWS and couldn’t care less about the snooty UES but now I notice that it’s Upper Broadway that is the biggest victim of chain mania while the UES looks like a quaint old NY neighborhood.
But are chains necessarily the problem? My one complaint about NY in the 70s and 80s is that you couldnt get a decent cup of coffee there — it was either cappuccino in an italian pastry shop or deli bilge. Moving to Berkeley which had a real cafe scene was a real discovery. The only real cafe I knew of in lower Manhattan other than the afore mentioned pastry shops with tiny tables, and where you could never hang out and read a book was the Cloister Cafe on E. 9th St. Sadly the Cloister Cafe went upscale and then out of business but it’s been replaced by many cafes in the area. For the most part, Starbuck’s has created the market for indie cafes (in NY and most of the country) not destroyed existing cafes.
So what do I miss about NY of the 70s and 80s when I visit now and which could plausibly be described as soul? Independent bookstores — as far as I can tell only the Strand remains. The Pageant, also once on 9th St., which appears in Woody Allen’s Hannah and her sisters, had three stories of old books and maps; now gone online, last I checked. The Village area used to have little bookstores all over the place, now gone. Small repertory movie theaters like the old St. Mark’s. Cheap good places to eat all over like those places that served huge helpings of pork chops and Spanish rice in the neighborhood that became Chelsea. The Odessa on Avenue A remains but what else? And the grit, which I do miss, also produced a kind of egalitarianism — everyone dressed scruffy (the better not to be mugged I suppose) whereas now people where their class status literally on their sleeves.
But for all that, if I could afford it, Id move there in a second still. NY’s soul for me is the street energy — people bustling rubbing shoulders walking. Long Beach where I live now has lots of indie cafes but most people drive which means they are still just islands in a sea of freeways. There is little interaction and when it does occur, it turns out most people dont have much to say.
So in the end Im reminded of an essay I assigned that high school class years ago along with those newspaper clippings. I think it was by H.L. Mencken — or else some equally iconic NY author. And it remarked on how the hallmark of NY is that it is always changing and people are always complaining that the true NY is dead. I guess I agree with all the people who say the soul of NY is New Yorkers — and the physical layout of Manhattan which forces them to acknowledge each other whether they want to or not.
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