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| Home Front: Politix |
| In Manhattan, you can smell the despair |
| 2010-11-02 |
The liberal residents of Manhattan and Brooklyn aren't looking forward to the midterm results tonight. Many of them have only just recovered from their Halloween partying and are still trying to shrug off that lingering post-hangover depression. The New York Times is bravely trying to raise their spirits, pointing out that midterm defeats don't stop presidents being handsomely re-elected. So that's a straw progressive voters can cling on to, however bad the news. But will they be rushing to election-night parties? You must be kidding. Maybe they'll head off to a bar to watch the results and let out a lukewarm cheer when Andrew SonnyCuomo is elected governor or the Democrats fail to lose their Senate majority. Then again, they could do with an early night after the weekend. In a trendy bar in SoHo, a young writer told me that some of his friends in New Hampshire were so revolted by the antics of the Tea Partiers that "they just don't see any alternative to moving to Manhattan, an island of sanity". Well, good luck with that, because it's also an island of astronomical rents. Still, if they've got a couple of million dollars to spare, some of those brownstone apartments are fetching significantly less than they were before the financial crisis. New York may be insulated from the icy winds blowing down Main Street, but in some quarters there's serious anxiety about Wall Street's long-term health. If New York is psychologically unprepared for an enemy surge tonight, it's even less willing to contemplate what could happen to its "island of sanity" if its prosperity evaporates. No one has a clue, says a business analyst who has been reporting on Wall Street for 30 years. "A return to the crime and ethnic tensions of the 1970s? Not likely, since the city isn't divided along neat ethnic lines any more. New York could fragment, but it's not knowing how it would fragment that's so nerve-racking." And, he adds -- but in a low voice, because you have to be careful about dissing Barack B.O.Obama in SoHo -- the uncertainty isn't helped by the fact that the President increasingly strikes even sympathetic voters as a remote and elusive figure. Belief in his powers is patchy, even in Manhattan. Wealthy psychologists on the Upper West Side think he'll outwit a hostile Congress as masterfully as he pushed through healthcare reform (or, at least, the one I met yesterday thought that). And radical students who rallied for Obama in 2008 were on the streets of the East Village yesterday trying to revive the spirit of two years ago. The pedestrians didn't give their flyers a second glance. Too hung over, perhaps. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #7 On a larger scale California and Texas appear to be playing that game. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2010-11-02 18:12 |
| #6 Speaking of fish bowels... I propose an experiment. Take two towns, each with the resources needed for basics, food, water, power, etc. and fill one with socialists and the other with people willing to work in a capitalist society. Make it a reality TV show and watch each town and see how it makes itself work. My vote is the socialist one will collapse before the end of the TV season because no one outside the "fish bowel" will pay for the benefits. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2010-11-02 18:05 |
| #5 ..were so revolted by the antics of the Tea Partiers that "they just don't see any alternative to moving to Manhattan, an island of sanity". Back to the fish bowl of unreality. Next stop they can follow their trail of their Royalists predecessors. In today's case, their Euro Socialists brethren back to good old Europe. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2010-11-02 17:14 |
| #4 In a trendy bar in SoHo, a young writer told me that some of his friends in New Hampshire were so revolted by the antics of the Tea Partiers that "they just don't see any alternative to moving to Manhattan, an island of sanity". What antics? The fact that they had the audacity to question the elite political class? If Manhattan is an island of sanity, give me insanity. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-11-02 16:23 |
| #3 Uh oh. Sounds like a mutant strain of BDS has returned. And I'll bet they thought they had eliminated it once and for all. Wait'll Palin gets in and dusts off the Escape From New York idea. Heh heh heh heh... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2010-11-02 15:06 |
| #2 Oh, boo hoo. Poor babies. |
| Posted by: anymouse 2010-11-02 14:17 |
| #1 |
| Posted by: HEU 2010-11-02 12:31 |