We're all watching the GOP rip itself up, but Joel Kotkin sees a potential civil war brewing among the Democrats -- between its "gentry" and its populists. Fascinating piece. Excerpt:
Although peace now reigns between the Clintons and the new president, the broader gentry-populist split seems certain to fester at both the congressional and local levels - and President Obama will be hard-pressed to negotiate this divide. Gentry liberals are very "progressive" when it comes to issues such as affirmative action, gay rights, the environment and energy policy, but are not generally well disposed to protectionism or auto-industry bailouts, which appeal to populists. Populists, meanwhile, hated the initial bailout of Wall Street - despite its endorsement by Mr. Obama and the congressional leadership.Geography is clearly a determining factor here. Standout antifinancial bailout senators included Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, and Jon Tester of Montana. On the House side, the antibailout faction came largely from places like the Great Plains and Appalachia, as well as from the suburbs and exurbs, including places like Arizona and interior California.
Gentry liberals, despite occasional tut-tutting, fell lockstep for the bailout. Not one Northeastern or California Democratic senator opposed it. In the House, "progressives" such as Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank who supported the financial bailout represent districts with a large concentration of affluent liberals, venture capitalists and other financial interests for whom the bailout was very much a matter of preserving accumulated (and often inherited) wealth.
Green issues will also be a big fault line between liberal constituencies, Kotkin predicts:
Another critical front, not well understood by the public, could develop on land use - with the adoption of policies that favor dense cities over suburbs and small towns. This trend can be observed most obviously in California, but also in states such as Oregon where suburban growth has long been frowned upon. Emboldened greens in government could use their new power to drive infrastructure spending away from badly needed projects such as new roads, bridges and port facilities, and toward projects such as light rail lines. These lines are sometimes useful, but largely impractical outside a few heavily traveled urban corridors. Essentially it means a transfer of subsidies from those who must drive cars to the relative handful for whom mass transit remains a viable alternative.Priorities such as these may win plaudits in urban enclaves in New York, Boston and San Francisco - bastions of the gentry class and of under-35, childless professionals - but they might not be so widely appreciated in the car- and truck-driving Great Plains and the vast suburban archipelago, where half the nation's population lives.
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TTT,
I'm not talking about "people who live in cities."
I'm talking about sh*te-headed "progressives" who live in *certain* cities -- especially New York City and Washington DC.
And who do indeed "hate normal people" (as you put it).
"City values" of the sort we are discussing here *can't be* "populist values" (again, as you put it), because most people -- most of the populace -- do not live in cities like the ones from which those "values" emanate.
In any case, you're the one who brought up cities and the composition of "progressives'" heads -- not me.
I thought we were discussing a distinction between different kinds of Democrats that your Dear Leader made all too clear in his remarks in San Francisco.
Jillian,
Go read your Philip Pullman books; go listen to your Bauhaus or your Nine Inch Nails cds.
Leave conversation to the grown-ups in the room.
Daniel,
Do *you* realize that McCain won religiously-observant Roman Catholics nationwide by the same margin as Obama won the state of Pennsylvania?
If so, then, by your logic, I think it's only fair of me to note that if *I* must acknowledge that Pennsylvanians voted "in their own best interest" in voting for Obama, despite his "bitter" remarks, then *you* must also acknowledge that Roman Catholics voted "in their own best interest" in voting for McCain, despite your "antipathy" toward McCain -- someone "who is not like you."
And I likewise think it's only fair for me to also note that perhaps it would have been in *your* best interest, as a Roman Catholic, to have voted for McCain, as most of your coreligionists did -- at least those who ever go to Mass.
Let me say in closing that I have no dog in this particular fight, not being Roman Catholic or from Pennsylvania, and not having voted for Obama or for McCain.
My one dog in the fight here is the dog of "truth" -- though, admittedly, a thread on Democratic party politics may not the best place to walk *that* particular dog.
Go read your Philip Pullman books; go listen to your Bauhaus or your Nine Inch Nails cds.
Leave conversation to the grown-ups in the room.
Hugh, I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Another critical front, not well understood by the public, could develop on land use - with the adoption of policies that favor dense cities over suburbs and small towns. This trend can be observed most obviously in California, but also in states such as Oregon where suburban growth has long been frowned upon.
As a long term Oregonian, and one who has suffered endlessly from the meddling by the twits on the west side of the state who live to vicariously abuse all other forms of living, by regulating land use in mostly insane and absurd ways, the anger and division among Oregonians grows continually over this very matter. 80% of the land mass of the state is depopulated and empty. But the voters locked into the urban jungles of the two metro areas still believe that the empty land should be controlled according to their "anti development" fetish.
Three counties in oregon have less than 2000 people in them. Yet, the same anti-urban sprawl nonsense controls how they use their land and whether or not you can build a home, farm, or anything else. All it has done is make home ownership unaffordably expensive in Oregon, and has NEVER benefitted anyone or anything.
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