He misspelled "l'arnin'"

Quote of note:

Kansas City and St. Louis and Iowa City and New Orleans, and Athens, Georgia, Austin, Texas, Durham, North Carolina, Buffalo, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin. All blue. All towns known to be relatively quirky and progressive and safe and kid friendly and beautiful and all-American and replete with big universities and mediocre Thai restaurants and underground music scenes and healthy smatterings of gay culture and lots of gul-dang book-learnin', and every single one of 'em seems to be right in line with the big cities in understanding that Bush is utter poison to anything resembling true juicy spiritual hope or intellectual progress or really exceptional semidrunken sex.

Is this really still the rule? The bigger and more vibrant and more vigorous and more culturally dynamic the city, or the more educated and progressive and literate the small town, the more likely they were to vote blue, Democrat, progressive, open minded, less fearful? Have we progressed almost not at all from the days prior to the Civil War, when the nation was split almost exactly as it is now? Verily, it would appear not, not so much. In fact, it's only getting worse.

Down With Fancy Book Learnin'
What's it mean that the big cities and college towns of America all voted blue?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, November 12, 2004

Is this why everything's so mangled? Is this why we're so divided?

Is this why we're so damned confused and bothered and itchy and wondering why we are ever at each others' throats and ever snickering in each others' direction and ever sighing heavily and wishing we could somehow have a magic glimpse into the year 2104 to see how the hell we survive it all?

Because there remains this astonishing and yet ever present fact: all the major cities of America, the great cultural centers and the places with the most concentrated populations and the most extraordinary restaurants and the highest percentage of college graduates and the most progressive laws and the truest sense of the arts and food and sex and music and dance and money and technology and lubricant and drugs and porn and love and fashion and spirituality, well, it seems they all voted blue.

True. From terrorism-ravaged New York to Botox-ravaged Los Angeles, Chicago to San Francisco, Philly to Portland, Seattle and Miami and Boston and Minneapolis and Detroit -- blue as the sky, blue as the Danube, blue as the color of your soul-crushin' wine-slammin' I-need-a-bath-and-an-emetic postelection melancholy.

Posted by Prometheus 6 on November 14, 2004 - 2:20am :: Politics
 
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Columns like this really give me a headache.

I'm an electrician. In my area, we're actively organizing nonunion shops. There was a time when there were no nonunion shops, but then union shops got lazy, and stopped bidding residential and light commercial jobs. Or, in the infamous words of one of our larger union contractors, "I want the 20% of the work that represents 80% of the profit". He felt it was a waste of time to go after the small potatoes, because the costs to bid those jobs presented such a slim profit margin. Better to go after the fat stuff. And it worked.

For a while. When work was good, when there were plenty of big, fat jobs to choose from, when everybody had a piece of the pie, this strategy worked. Now that shop is seriously on the skids. The economy went sour, there was suddenly more competition than usual for the big jobs, and nothing small to fall back on. Contractors who started looking at smaller markets did (and are doing) much better.

It's like that for the Democratic party, too. For years, they've had a strategy of abandoning "middle America", going for the meat in the big cities and leaving the potatoes in the fields alone. Too much time, money, and energy to organize in those areas. Besides, you can always count on the usual suspects in the college towns to boost the numbers, right? It was a strategy that worked well in the heyday of industrialism, when manufacturing jobs and a ready-made Deomcratic constituency was easily available. Those days are over.Meanwhile, Republicans were diligently building their base in the "heartland", a land that has always had strong progressive streaks running through it.

The margins are slim. It could easily swing the other way, and pundits would suddenly be talking about a "progressive revolution". But it AIN'T gonna swing the other way on its damn own. There is work to be done.

And Morford? You seriously need to get in a damn car and drive through some of these places you think you know.

Posted by  La Lubu on November 14, 2004 - 9:31am.