Newt Gingrich: Biden vs. suburbs — here's how Dem plan would declare war on American dream

President Trump will stand with the suburban Americans who are being threatened

The longer presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Joe Biden stays hidden in his basement, the further away he gets from everyday Americans.

Only the left can get to him in his basement, and the result is a steady slide to politically disastrous positions.

His most recent attack on the American people was his endorsement (or borrowing) of the Cory Booker-James Clyburn plan to use the federal government to destroy the suburbs by forcing changes imposed by Washington bureaucrats. The plan would seek to diversify American suburbs by withholding federal dollars from communities that do not change local zoning ordinances to accommodate denser housing.

Now, this policy is opposed by 65% of all Americans, with just 23% favoring government playing a role in diversifying neighborhoods, according to Rasmussen Reports. Among Democrats, 56% say it’s not the government’s job to dictate local community plans – along with 73% of Republicans and 68% of independents.

“People of all races, colors, and creeds move to the suburbs for the same reasons: Single-family homes with big gardens on wide streets that have minimal traffic and quality, safe schools that aren’t too far away from home. It’s all about raising children where they can safely play outdoors and get a good education. These things, of course, are the opposite of what one finds in a densely populated city.”

Of course, the tremendous increase in violence in big cities and the collapse of unionized bureaucratic schools have increased the desirability of moving to the suburbs.

Despite this near 3:1 majority against his policy, Biden would require any state getting highway grants to develop a program to change zoning so it is more inclusionary.

Whenever I hear about this subject — the subject of the left's enmity toward the suburban lifestyle and desire to end it — I always think of a beautiful song that was a famous part of a famous Broadway play called West Side Story.

This play, which was a huge hit in the late '50s, was basically a rehash of Romeo and Juliet, set in 1950s New York City. At that time, NYC was experiencing lots of gang-related crime, at a level that would be considered small potatoes today, but back then was highly topical. The musical's fantastic score was written by Leonard Bernstein, and contained many songs which have stood the test of the time and become American classics. The lyrics were equally fantastic, having been written by Stephen Sondheim, in what was his first big Broadway success.

One of these songs, called Somewhere, is a duet exchanged between star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria; Tony being of European descent ("white"); Maria's parents are from Puerto Rico. The song describes their aspirations to live life on their own in better surroundings than those they are forced to endure in Manhattan's gritty West Side.

In that song are these lines:

There's a place for us
Somewhere a place for us
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us somewhere

As a teenager who grew up with this music, those lines were a throwaway, barely noticed happy talk.

But as I got older and observed the rise of the "suburbs are awful" movement within the left, those words began to develop an ironic resonance for me. What do they describe? Where can one find "peace and quiet and open air" ? Where did millions of young New Yorkers move out to as soon as they were financially able to do so, back in the '50s and '60s? That's right: the suburbs. These were rapidly being built on Long Island, in New Jersey and Connecticut, and in Upstate New York at the time West Side Story was in development.

Both Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim were very, very liberal people. Bernstein famously hosted a big dinner party and fundraiser for the Black Panthers with a huge number of NYC's glitteratti in attendance; this party was described in exquisite detail in Tom Wolfe's article Radical Chic, which was published in New York magazine in 1970.

So here we have in one small way — but also I would argue in a very big way — liberalism coming full circle, eating its own tail in a self-contradictory circle.

The solution they accepted and advocated in the '50s has become anathema to them decades later.

Very well said.

I was raised in So CA and as a young kid literally thousands of small homes were being built on land that was formally agricultural land, mainly citrus groves.

They were built to accommodate not only veterans after the war but urban sprawl from the larger cities.

At that time CA wasn’t a leftist controlled commie state, sad how it’s changed because it was a wonderful place to live then.

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