This city is not nearly as liberal or different as New Yorkers believe

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2180650,00.html

New Yorkers like to think of their home town less as a city than as a nation unto itself. They refer to the country in which they reside as little more than a geographical accident of little relevance. "I don't live in America," they'll tell you. "I live in New York." It's not difficult to see why. New York is an impressive and distinctive global city. It moves like a disco without the music - the aficionados try to stick with the rhythm but so long as you're into it nobody much cares. For a European visitor it has more in common with London, Paris or Rome than it does with Phoenix, San Antonio or San Jose, which are among America's 10 largest cities.

Politically, the last seven years have made New Yorkers feel particularly estranged from their fellow Americans. With three quarters of them voting for John Kerry in 2004, they discuss what has been going on in the rest of the country as though Ohio and Florida were foreign states. In some ways, they almost pride themselves on being out of touch.

But judging by presidential primary races, New Yorkers might be disappointed to discover they are not quite as different as they would like to think. The frontrunners for both the Democratic and Republican nominations - Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani - both have their campaigns based here. Giuliani was the city's mayor from 1994 to 2001; since 2000 Clinton has been the senator for the state - a disparate, more conservative entity than the city, but the farther you are from the Hudson, the more that becomes a distinction without a difference. Even the possibility that they may face off against each other in 2008 raises some serious challenges to the conventional wisdom that has dominated American political thinking over the last seven years.

If Bush's victory illustrated a nation polarised between the heartlands and the coasts, how is it that two candidates most identified with the city that most symbolises one of those poles could hold such sway nationally? If values and morality were so central to Bush's victory, why are two anti-abortion, pro-gay candidates who are both lukewarm on guns and immigration control, doing so well from Iowa to South Carolina? In short, if New York is different, why are agendas and candidates that have proved so popular here doing so well elsewhere?

[Warren DeMontague]

1. Because the idea that the religious right and the "values voter" are all-powerful is bullshit.

It's a lie- designed to cover for, among other things, election theft by the GOP.

The American People are far more socially libertarian than either party will give them credit for (this is why Terri Schiavo biting the GOP on the ass took them by such surprise) The American People want church and state separate, they want government out of peoples' bedrooms, business, and bloodstreams. They want an end to the drug war, they want an end to the wars on birth control and reproductive choice. They don't like censorship. They like their civil liberties. They like the Bill of Rights.

What WE need to do is court the disaffected libertarian wing of the GOP (and independent voters) by standing up, unapologetically, for things like the right of people to make their own decisions about their own bodies. For the right of pain patients to palliative care without DEA agents breathing down their doctors' necks. For the right of the terminally ill to a dignified, pain-free exit of their own choosing. For stem cell research. For teaching SCIENCE- and not creationist claptrap- in public school science classes. For full equality, including marriage rights, for our GLBT citizens.

By falling all over ourselves to woo "values voters" from the GOP, we're chasing a constituency that generally won't vote for our people, and even if they do, they're not nearly as legion as their apologists would have us believe.

[benEzra]

5. Well said. (n/t)

[Cobalt-60]

2. The more into the open the Hypocritical, thieving , Luddite Republicans

move into the open, the more repellent they are. No one wants to vote for that.
Because once the Republicans and their corporate masters bit into the family budget,
once they sneaked a few fallen soldiers back into the country as cargo, once it became apparent that
they're a pack of lying, profiteering curs, they ceased to be an option at the voting booth.

[MADem]

3. The Senator and the former mayor lead in the polls...and it's a shock that all politics is local?

I mean really...this bit is just, well, goofy:

New Yorkers might be disappointed to discover they are not quite as different as they would like to think. The frontrunners for both the Democratic and Republican nominations - Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani - both have their campaigns based here.

[nealmhughes]

4. New Yorkers are a different animal: they say "on line," vice "in line" like Real Americans!

Good Lord, anyone who has lived in New York knows that New York City is America! With a few minor exceptions: like tolerance increased, and not being 100% auto dependent.

Too many people judge the city by its turista inspired $25 breakfasts and neglect the neighborhoods, even those in Manhattan! NYC is a whole lot more than Greenwich Village and Midtown.

This former New Yorker-by-choice can not understand the bashing of the greatest city the world has ever known. New York is the only city where you can find construction workers riding the subway alongside Bloomberg, a Kennedy and an anonymous cubicle rat with the tourists scared that something untoward might happen any second.

Has anyone ever actually been frightened in New York City during normnal hours? I have been frightened in several cities, but never in New York!

The fact that something like 1 out of every 20 people in the US live in Greater New York might say a lot about American culture. . .

But let us not speak of rent.