Posted on 01/07/2022 4:24:19 AM PST by Kaslin
One way to anticipate what may be ahead in politics is to gauge the balance of power in the nation's two political parties. The Republican Party has always been centered on people regarded by themselves and others as "typical" Americans but who do not by themselves comprise a majority. The Democratic Party has always been a coalition of out-groups, powerful when united but often at risk of division.
The Republican Party has typically centered on one dominant leader, and it is an interesting question today whether Republican voters will continue to see Donald Trump as the party-defining figure. But the more immediately interesting question is which constituency is dominating the Democratic Party, which holds the White House and (admittedly narrow) majorities in both houses of Congress.
That dominant group is clearly what I call the Lindsay Democrats.
That label may puzzle readers who don't remember that John Lindsay was a Republican congressman from the affluent and then-fashionable Upper East Side of Manhattan, who was elected mayor of New York City in 1965 and 1969. He became a national celebrity while winning against divided opposition with only 45% and 42% of the vote. In that second race, he won only 36% of the vote outside Manhattan.
Lindsay had an admirable record in many ways. He was more alert to violations of civil liberties than most politicians then or many liberals today. He was one of 22 Republicans who voted with the Kennedy administration to end bipartisan conservative control of the House Rules Committee.
In line with Lincoln Republican tradition, he was a strong and fervent supporter of equal rights for Black people. But at the same time, as I noted at the time, he was scornful of the vast white middle classes in between his fellow Protestant elite and the Black people and Puerto Ricans whose numbers in New York had skyrocketed in the postwar decades.
Unhappily, Lindsay's good intentions produced bad results. His generous welfare policies and police reforms resulted in a doubling of the welfare rolls and more than doubling of annual murders in the city. His tax increases were followed by a loss of 600,000 jobs.
Lindsay switched to the Democratic Party in 1971 and ran for president in 1972, winning 7% in the Florida primary. He never won another election. He died in 2000, but his spirit lives on in the affluent white liberals, whose numbers have swelled after generations of increasing college enrollments, and who increasingly dominate the Democratic Party's coalition.
Like Lindsay, today's liberal white college graduates are eager to defer to what they imagine are the desires of Black voters. Thus, when Rep. James Clyburn endorsed Joe Biden in the Black-majority South Carolina primary, exit polling shows that white college grads in state after state followed his lead.
When Black Lives Matter leaders called for mass demonstrations after the death of George Floyd, liberal white college graduates who had observed COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions with religious fervor suddenly argued that the risk of spreading the virus was less than the risk of not participating in what turned out to be not "mostly peaceful" events.
Affluent Lindsay Democrats tend to be insulated from the "unexpected" ill effects of their policies and predilections, but they are not totally unselfish. In the backrooms of Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders insisted on making restoration of deductions for state and local taxes the top-dollar item in their House-passed Build Back Better bill, although both liberals and conservatives pointed out that nearly all the benefits of this policy would go to rich people in high-tax states.
One identifying characteristic of Lindsay Democrats is the faith they place in credentialed experts, even when their expertise is falsified by events.
Hence their reliance on academic criminologists who insist that de-policing will not lead to more crime, even as murders spike in city after city. Hence the faith that electricity can reliably be provided by intermittent sources such as wind and solar power.
Hence the faith that masking nursery schoolers and locking down entire cities can stop the propagation of a virus that is easily communicable and asymptomatic in its early stages.
"One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that," George Orwell once wrote in a very different context. "No ordinary man could be such a fool."
As inflation, illegal immigration and violent crime spin out of control today, the proudly highly educated Lindsay Democrats' narrow hold on power looks to be as endangered as their namesake's political career was 50 years ago. Maybe other Democratic constituencies, with more skin in the game, need to step in and stage an intervention.
Wishy washy
He sure was.
Barone has always been a never-Trumpet.
His understanding of the electorate is that of any other New York pundit - zero.
I agree he was... I was introduced to Mayor Lindsay by “Whiz” Miller of IBM. I had been Miller’s private ski coach for a year and became Mayor Lindsay’s private coach for a few years. he actually skied well. We never talked national politics but as I remember we did talk international affairs. The Mayor was one of the most attentive clients I have ever had, he wanted to learn and he was a complete delight to be around. In retrospect he was wrong about many things but I had the privilege of interacting with him.
We worked for Bill Buckley when he ran against Lindsay, and had a blast. We would go to Lindsay rallies and heckle! On one occasion a viscous middle aged woman grabbed Jim Farley by the throat, screaming, and dug her nails into his neck! Even back then, the Communists we used to fight at Union Square would show up to support Lindsay. Of course, Buckley said that if he was elected he would demand a recount! Buckley was an American intellectual giant. We need his kind today.
In ‘72 my Dad had a bumper sticker that said “McGovern will do for the country what Lindsay has done for New York”.
Any date, any city, any democrat. The same still applies.
Pretty boy. In NY you get attention running GOP. No competition. Bloomberg.
Lindsay’s career should have ended in 1969, but he won because his opposition failed to unite behind a single candidate—a movie we have seen over and over again. George Wallace finally finished him off in the 1972 Florida primary.
My first and only vote for a RAT ever came in the 1969 NYC mayoral election. I knew the Republican/Conservative candidate (Marchi) could not defeat the Liberal/fusion candidate (Lindsay) and that ONLY the RAT Procaccino had a chance to save us from the scumbag former Republican.
Many a mayor today (Michelle Wu, for example) had as little connection or understanding of his or her city as Lindsay did.
"Equity" before competence is very Lindsayesque.
Even though I was on the other side of the country, I was paying attention to that election because I was eager to see a liberal media darling ousted. Lindsay's opponents should have united behind Procaccino the way they united behind a single candidate in 1950 to get rid of Rep. Vito Marcantonio (R-NY), a Stalinist who toed the Moscow party line like a slave.
Political parties were the true
GANGS OF NEW YORK!!!
They may still be, but I left 20 years ago and Fun City has changed a lot since then.
The ‘65 election was the first time I ever heard the word “charismatic” when the press used it to describe Lindsay. I had absolutely no idea what charisma was.
He represented the Upper East Side, aka the Silk Stocking District. Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx were on the wrong side of the bridges for those folk and Staten Island might as well have been another country. You had to take a boat to get there!
But,Hey....he was a Republican!
He saw himself as the righteous benefactor of the city's African-Americans and Puerto Ricans. He had what's now called a "White Savior Complex."
The irony was that he owed his whole career to the fact that the state legislature drew the boundaries of his congressional district to keep nonwhites (who would have voted Democrat) out.
John Lindsay was the worst Mayor in NYC history, and arguably one of the worst in American history. A million residents (mostly the productive White working and middle classes) fled from the period he took office around 1965 up to 1980, when it was still suffering from his disastrous legacy (lasting up until Giuliani). Not even David Dinkins or the Sandinista Kaiser Wilhelm accomplished such a feat.
A Demonrat party following this pattern could easily destroy the nation in short order.
I interviewed at Lindsay's law firm in the 1980s but couldn't do it in the end; went to a rough and tumble Wall Street litigation firm instead. I met Buckley in the 1980s when he visited U of Chicago — the same visit when he notoriously offered David Brooks a job.
This thread was a reminder of a time when FR was full of people who had accomplished things, not just keyboard warriors in their pajamas. Thanks. I'd like to buy you all a round of martinis or single malts in the kind of dark Midtown bar that doesn't exist anymore.
Your post is as good as those that preceded it.
Problem was Proccacino had the brains of a hamster.
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