Beware the Blue State Model: How the Democrats Created a "Liberalism of the Rich"

[Ferd Berfel]

Let’s go to Boston, the spiritual homeland of the professional class and a place where the ideology of modern liberalism has been permitted to flourish without challenge or restraint.

Thomas Frank
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When you press Democrats on their uninspiring deeds -- their lousy free trade deals, for example, or their flaccid response to Wall Street misbehavior -- when you press them on any of these things, they automatically reply that this is the best anyone could have done. After all, they had to deal with those awful Republicans, and those awful Republicans wouldn’t let the really good stuff get through. They filibustered in the Senate. They gerrymandered the congressional districts. And besides, change takes a long time. Surely you don’t think the tepid-to-lukewarm things Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have done in Washington really represent the fiery Democratic soul.

So let’s go to a place that does. Let’s choose a locale where Democratic rule is virtually unopposed, a place where Republican obstruction and sabotage can’t taint the experiment.

Let’s go to Boston, Massachusetts, the spiritual homeland of the professional class and a place where the ideology of modern liberalism has been permitted to grow and flourish without challenge or restraint. As the seat of American higher learning, it seems unsurprising that Boston should anchor one of the most Democratic of states, a place where elected Republicans (like the new governor) are highly unusual. This is the city that virtually invented the blue-state economic model, in which prosperity arises from higher education and the knowledge-based industries that surround it.

(snip)

This is a curious phenomenon, is it not? A blue state where the Democrats maintain transparent connections to high finance and big pharma; where they have deliberately chosen distant software barons over working-class members of their own society; and where their chief economic proposals have to do with promoting “innovation,” a grand and promising idea that remains suspiciously vague. Nor can these innovation Democrats claim that their hands were forced by Republicans. They came up with this program all on their own.

[ChazInAz]

1. Eh?

Is there some reason you're posting this conservative screed?

[Odin2005]

2. Thomas Frank isn't a conservative.

[alarimer]

3. Liberals have abandoned the working class

as well as the poor. THIS is why so Trump is so popular. It's not racism, it's that liberals (starting with Bill Clinton) have abandoned them and the New Deal, in favor of some Third Way bullshit. This is also why Bernie resonates so much and what pisses me off most about Hillary.

[moonbabygo]

4. I second your post nt

[Ferd Berfel]

5. EXACTLY - I 3rd the post

And this is why, if the DLC candidate is the nom, she will loose.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. Agree.

This what pisses me off the most about the superdelegates. We haven't been just abandoned, but exiled from the political process.

[erpowers]

7. Disagree With His Premise

I disagree with his premise that Boston Democrats were not forced to do the things they did by Republican politicians. Thomas Frank's position might be true if Boston was in a world all by its self. However, that is not the case. Boston Democrats had to deal with Southern Republicans. If Democrats had not worked hand-in-hand with "high finance and big pharma" those industries could have gone South and gotten better deals. In that case there would have been even more job lose and pain for Boston residents.

The real problem is that businesses learned they could pits cities and states against each other. When that happened business were able to ask for tax breaks they did not need, but states were reluctant to deny because it was know the business could move to another city or state. As a result there were Democratic leaders making deal with businesses in order to keep the businesses and the much needed jobs in cities and states. So, even the hands of Boston Democrats were forced.